Technology

I worked with a French guy in Amsterdam. His parents were Portuguese, but he was born and raised in France. As far as he was concerned, he was French.

Contrariwise, I worked with an American woman in Virginia. Her grandparents were Irish, and she considered herself Irish, in spite of having been born and raised in America, and both of her parents having been born and raised in America.

It is a kind of fetish in America to hyphenate yourself. Irish-American. Cuban-American. And so on.

My own theory is that this is because America has no culture going back many generations, so people try to find one.

What's with the negativity from you and the other comments?

I can tell you why Americans care. Because identity matters to people. The story of the melting pot is central to the American story as a nation of immigrants (even today) and central to individual identities. Thus, there is a lot of interest in backgrounds and geneology. If you ask the average American about their heritage you're likely to get a surprising answer - so people talk about it more.

I get why it seems weird to many other cultures - if you ask the average French person (for example) their heritage they'll say 'French as far back as we can tell'.

The French person celebrates their identity through the lens of the French story, and the American does too, it's just that the American story is the immigrant story.

I hope you do actually care. I hope in this era of rising nationalism and online hate enough of us value diversity of backgrounds and ancestries.

Kinda weird obsession when a big part of the population hates strangers so much.

And even British/Irish/Spanish/.... doesn't mean much as there was mixing for centuries

We are in 2024 and they still use the word "race" to segregate the American population in several groups. So no surprise a DNA service could be so popular in the USA.

If they were American citizen and just that - without subdivision and the legal right to ask or use their gene, color skin or whatever_they_think_is_important_to_distinguish_themself - well a lot of issues and strange "behaviour" (aka racisme) would have disapeared.

Or at least decreased as nobody would have the legal tools and data to enforce it: gerrymanding, blaming a vote on a "community", having your town split in "community" sectors and no shame at all to call it like that officially! Which others country put "chinatown" on their map?

As a teenager, I was shocked by this fact when visiting the USA 25 years ago. That and the fact i have found in a normal marketplace unprotected ammunition sold near the baby milk. "baby stuff, baby stuff, 9mm ammo... what!?!"

This DNA service is just the result of this global problem: the american society and its laws are still allowing passive racism.

So americans want to prove (to themself, to others?) via DNA results that they can’t be racist because they have a ~~black friend~~ sorry : black DNA ancestors.

Some will tell you: "ho it’s just for fun". But is fun really the only motivation here?

And congrat to them as they don’t only expose themself (genetic data are priceless and should be protected at all costs) but also they expose all their children, children's children, etc. These chidren probably wouldn’t have agreed to that if they were born.

Europeans: haha you guys have no history!

Also Europeans: haha you're curious where your family emigrated from! Losers!

You speak for yourself. As an Englishman I get 5% water resistance and +2 charisma when dealing with non-Europeans.

...English is not the "default" ancestry for Americans. I think I know one dude from Michigan who has English heritage. Most folks I'd know have blood from Poland, Ireland, Italy and Germany. It varies regionally.

Nationalities aren't Skyrim races. You don't get special abilities.

"It wasn't until I learned that I was 90% British that it all made sense... my inhuman ability to queue for hours, my fastidiousness surrounding permits, and hatred for the French... I knew I was special, but I never imagined how special."

A large number of Americans generally seem to grow up with a main character complex thanks to all the individualist & jingoist propaganda people get bombarded with over there.

The search for something "exotic" as you put it is just an ego-driven search for the piece of evidence that they are, in fact, more special and unique than everyone else.

One guy writes an article. literally just one dude.

the comments: "AMERICANS ARE WEIRD AF. ALL AMERICANS DO THIS AND FEEL THIS WAY."

I'm worried about insurance companies getting it and changing rates/services based on my DNA.

I want to upvote this, but ... Why did you have to shorten "relatives"?

I read the headline and went, “…I mean, what were you expecting?”

Title is misleading, FTA:

Confirmation that I am 63% British and Irish, 17% Danish and otherwise “broadly north-western European”. I felt a resounding ambivalence about the results, including some disappointment that I had not discovered a newfound heritage – a piece of information that would give my identity new dimension.

But also:

My father’s side of the family is meticulous about tracking our ancestry, with records that hold the name of the exact small village in Ireland our ancestors hail from.

Those results often can't narrow down to exact countries so it says he's 63% British and Irish. Seeing as his fathers family has records of being from a small Irish town it's likely he's more Irish that British, not that it means anything if you're actually American anyway.

Like honestly, I'd rather be open sourced than sold as proprietary data haha

In either case the actors to worry about (whatever they might be) gets access, in the latter case it might additionally do some good.