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Trekkie Dating, is it Good for the Gene Pool?
Eloketh writes "It seems that Tucker Carlson of MSNBC thinks that Internet Dating services are a somewhat disturbing trend. Specifically, when talking about Trekkies, he says 'Is this good for the gene pool?' He also goes on to question whether allowing Trekkies to meet and mate is 'in the national interest.'"
I figured that after Jon Stewart emasculated him on Crossfire people would have written the bow tie wearing blowhard off for what he is -- a moron.
My wife is a low-level Trekkie; a fan of the series, especially the original, but not one who goes to conventions or wears Trek-based costumes.
We met before the Internet was open to the public -- the old-fashioned way, in a coffee shop where we were sitting near each other.
I wasn't aware of her Trekkie tendencies for several months. Finding out about them changed nothing. We (obviously) ended up married anyway.
'Is this good for the gene pool?'
I don't know about other people but statement like that really scare me. We as humans should really stop trying to control our evolution and let nature take its course.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Well, first of all, you're assuming that these services match for similarity, that someone who put in the exact same answers as you will score the highest. While the early dating programs did exactly that, I highly suspect that the more modern ones work on a black box based on data from existing relationships. Odds are, the people who set it up don't even know whether it's a case of "like to like" or "opposites attract"; they just plug in all the data in and get back what appears to be the statistical patterns. The more people who sign up for your service, the more data that you have.
The result is potentially increased incidence of genetic diseases. Ultimately I think things like this will weed out the bad genes naturally as they express themselves in children but there's the suffering and potentally increased healthcare costs.
There's an additional fallacy you've got here, assuming that genetics are that influential. Unless the system is specifically matching to get blue-eyed, blond-haired, fair-skinned people together (eAryan?), I suspect a lot of the factors are personality-based, which is more of an environmental thing. I'll assuming that you're not arguing that a fondness for long walks on the beach correlate to a recessive gene coding for receding hairlines and color blindness.
That said, there is some interesting data regarding the rise of autism in Silicon Valley which is suggested to be the result of a generation or two of geeks breeding with geeks due to the environmental concentration thereof. While this is more of a case of them living in a target-rich environment rather than specifically matching for it over personality matrices, there is some fit there in that today's society allows you to pretty much pick your mate rather than having to select from the small pool of your local area.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Why wouldn't you want to marry a Trekkie? I'm a Trekkie, my friends are Trekkeis, my husband's a Trekkie, my Father is a Trekkie. all of us managed to find love, some have even reproduced. I've yet to have someone come to my home while I had Star Trek on (NG or DS9) and said anything negative about it. infact, normaly it's something to the effect of "Oh, I remember this episode!!"
Trekkies just aren't really all that rare anymore.
"Just call me Girly Blank"
Just think if the US populace had more intelligent/nerdy people get together and procreate, why, there might be more intelligent people out there. And then who would be left to watch Tucker Carlson?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
As people tend nowadays to leave their house less and less thanks to the news media and their condemned perspective on the world in general. And since there are now less social venues as parks and drive-ins turn into parking lots and shopping malls, online dating has exploded. Now people like Tucker Carlson are going to say that's bad too? What is a person who doesn't want to pick up a mate at a bar supposed to do if they aren't in a friend circle with a bunch of single females? You know, real life isn't like Friends or Seinfeld for everyone. Sometimes people have to venture outside of their social group for a mate. Everyday the choices of activities outside the house get slimmer, and the social ones even more so. It's getting to the point where everyone is a potential online dating candidate because nobody is meeting anyone new anymore.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Allowing Trekies to breed can't possibly be any worse for the gene pool than, say, allowing rednecks to breed...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.