Aziz Ansari’s book trailer for Modern Romance is a throwback to VHS dating profiles

For most comedians, writing a book is a matter of translating standup material into something more readable — expanding on some jokes, rewording others in a way that better fits an audience of readers that won’t necessarily match the author’s intended rhythm.

Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance sounds more like Freakonomics. For the new book, Ansari teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and made this a massive international research project that included focus groups, interviews with prominent social scientists, and yes, some time lurking on Reddit. As the title suggests, the focus is on modern romance and relationships in the age of the smartphone, which has been a big part of Ansari’s material.

Modern Romance is coming out June 16th followed by a book tour later this summer, and like all media releases, there’s a trailer (embedded above) — a very weird trailer that pays homage to bad dating videos in the age of VHS or... something like that.

Aziz Ansari on friendship before and after the internet