Aziz Ansari Reads Men’s Dumb Dating Texts on ‘Fallon’
Jimmy Fallon and Aziz Ansari busted out the candles, the roses and the sensual jams for a new Tonight Show bit, “First Textual Experience,” in which the pair offered scintillating, dramatized readings of very real, very terrible texts men have sent to women.
The bit was inspired by Ansari’s new book, Modern Romance, a sociological examination of contemporary dating habits that includes a similar analysis of real text conversations between men and women. “It was really surprising, the kind of bozo texts a lot of dudes send,” Ansari said. “It seems like a very simple thing to say, ‘Hey would you like to do this specific thing at this specific time, you were nice.’ But most dudes are writing very weird things, or just saying ‘Hey.'”
Case in point: the poor guy who was doing fine until he wrote, “I wanted to say hi and sort of ‘texty’ introduce myself,” a phrase Ansari read with the perfect amount of nerve-wracked jitters. Fallon continued the bit with a weird, grammatically atrocious opening salvo from a man named Ron, after which Ansari read a one-sided exchange that seemed more exemplary of bad life, than dating, choices: “First text, 4:11 a.m.: ‘I love Alcohol!’ Next morning 11:47 a.m., ‘I regret everything.'”
Fallon was then tasked with a horrifyingly long first text that had Ansari howling before the host even began reading, let alone got to the really awful part. “You look like a piece of good god, wrapped up in some have mercy and a side of MM!,” read the text.
The pair then closed out the bit with a back-and-forth that started sweetly but proved when it comes to dating in the 21st century, in the age of auto-correct, everyone is Colonel Kurtz. “It was a horror to meet you!” Ansari read. “Horror! Horror!!! Honor, an honor!! Hello?”