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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.'"
... pairs of males can't procreate. No, the Star Trek universe does not afford a real work-around for this problem, and procreation and replication via androids just isn't feasible.
I really wanted to see Tucker Carlson making an ass out of himself too.
..one should have a look at the Darwin Award statistics. How many Darwin Awards have been given to Trekkies, how many have been given to non-Trekkies? I'm afraid this will come out in favour of the Trekkies. However, that doesn't necessarily say anything. Trekkies are just as useless as non-Trekkies, perhaps just wee bit more able to survive.
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.
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Unfortunately this site came a little late into my life, for myself, and some of my friends, we had to resort to finding our mates the hard way.. on IRC.
I haven't seen that many men all trying to bang the same woman since the last time I watched...wait, I wasn't supposed to admit to owning that movie. Nevermind.
What does online dating have to do with "trekkies"? :-/
At least in the country I live in, online dating services have people from 18 to ~60 with interests ranging from gardening to space science to hair styling...
Online dating is very accepted and mainstream here. It's just one form of dating along with visiting clubs. Heck, it may even be seen as more hip than that nowadays, because it's more new and "in".
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
He also goes on to question whether allowing Trekkies to meet and mate is 'in the national interest.
Wow, what a coincidence! Here I was just wondering if allowing Tucker Carlson to mate was in the national interest.
Is this supposed to be funny?
Yes.
I exaggerated the male to female ratio of Trekkies for comic effect. The idea was that people would see the absurdity of there being fewer than 4 female Star Trek fans in the entire world, causing laughter.
Hope that helps explain the concept, Commander Data.
Trekkies are a national security risk. Trekkies are everywhere. I might even be a Trekkie. See, Trekkies tend to believe that people must be tolerant, and progress in science, in order for any aliens to pay serious attention to them. You can see why this isn't in the national interest. The effects were minimized before they started breeding. Luckily, many Trekkies are male, leading to certain problems in mating, and a Trekkie and a `Normal' have a good chance of having a normal child. However, the number of female Trekkies is not decreasing. We must stop this infection of our society.
If there are less than 4 female trekkies world-wide, then I'm married to one of them. I'm so lucky. :)
She also loves Stargate, Battlestar and Farscape, has a healthy interest in IT, and is the mother of all goddesses; a Librarian.
Every Trekkie who ever lived is worth million Tucker Carlsons.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Trekkie dating is OK, although somewhat dangerous. Particularly if bystanders don't move quickly when the Klingon gets excited.
And it's not necessarily good for the human race as a whole.
Take okcupid for example. Answer 500 muliple choice questions and the statistical grouping algorithm it uses matches you up with well lots of people who answered in a similar manner. You end up talking to people who think in a very similar way, often with similar interests. In fact it can be damned near telepathy at times. OK, that's great and getting on with someone is very easy but... As well as the influence of the nurture stuff there are underlying genetic mechanisms to the way people think and act but guess what, we're sorting these similar "good" and "bad" genes to be close to one another.
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.
Deleted
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.
The most interesting aspect of this species of critter is their seemingly complete lack of self-reflection. They've got images -- the bow tie -- but they're entirely externally facing, and seem not to be subject to introspection. It's like the trade requires a sort of obtuseness in that area, to the point where stuff like Jon Stewart reaming him probably got filed away as "People who didn't follow the script" by Carlson.
Small example of this lack of reflection: Carlson himself has an extremely high "nerd radar" presence for me. He doesn't seem that far from Trekkie country himself. Does he?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Well, when it comes to Eugenics Wars it's better late than never.
KHAAAAAAAAAN!
-Peter
...like men who wear bow ties.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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"
Hey! Damaged genes are the basis for evolution! That's our gene pool you're dissing. Not that I want to wade in that pool, but what crawls out might be interesting.
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.
Tucker Carlson is right, of course - trekkies mating is not something we can have. Why, if intelligent people had children, then the children might be intelligent, too - and who would still vote for the republicans in 50 years then? Just think about it - George IV. might not even become president anymore!
So we definitely need a program to keep this from happening. I wonder what we should call it; since it's a program for trekkies, how about "4T"? Or better yet... T-4! Yes, that's perfect!
Thanks, Tucker. Just what would we do without people like you?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Takei: ....You see, the show was banned after the Star Trek wars.
Zapp: You mean after the vast migration of Star Wars fans?
Nichols: No, that was the Star Wars trek. [Some mechanical hands come out of her jar, pick up a video tape and put it in the VCR.] By the 23rd century, Star Trek fandom had evolved from a loose association of nerds with skin problems into a full-blown religion.
[On the screen, a service is held at the Church of Trek.]
Priest: [on TV] And Scotty beamed them to the Klingon ship where they would be no Tribble at all.
Congregation: [chanting; on TV] All power to the engines.
Nichols: As country after country fell under its influence, world leaders became threatened by the movements power. [In Berlin a sign is unveiled saying "Welcome To Nazi Planet Episode Land. Formerly Germany".] And so the Trekkies were executed in the manner most befitting virgins.
[On the rim of a volcano two men throw Trekkies into the flames.]
Man: [on TV] He's dead, Jim! [They throw another in.] He's dead, Jim! [Another.] He's dead, Jim!
Nichols: Finally, the sacred texts were banned.
[The episodes are put inside a torpedo casing.]
Takei: The last copies of the 79 episodes and six movies were dumped on the forbidden world, Omega 3, along with that blooper reel where the door doesn't close all the way.
[As he speaks, a ship that looks like an Eagle from Space: 1999 fires the torpedo. It hits the planet like Spock's coffin in Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan. The video ends.]
Nimoy: Thus, Star Trek was forever scoured from human memory.
Bender: Another classic science-fiction show cancelled before its time.