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February 01 2012
The Strange German Disease Called “Kevinism”: Can a Lame Name Mess Up Your Life?
Young German Kevins are a few decades behind the U.S. trend.
Another day, another crazy German noun: Kevinismus, which basically means, “You’re named Kevin? Sucks to be you.” According to a study of interactions on the German dating site eDarling, online daters don’t even bother to click on the profiles of users with names that seem foreign and gauche to German ears, like Kevin. The authors suggest that this online neglect due to their unpopular names mirrors lifelong social neglect, which is also responsible for making Kevins smoke more, get less education, and have lower self-esteem.
That all sounds quite dire, but we’re gonna have to bust out the “correlation does not imply causation” card here. While exotic baby names may seem like a disease that most commonly afflicts celebrities, in Germany it’s really about the other end of the economic spectrum. An article on Kevinism [note: this article contains a lot of German] in Die Welt quotes sociologist Jürgen Gerhards, who asserts that Anglo-American names (Mandy, Justin, Angelina to name a few more) are a lower-class phenomenon. It seems that no one has actually crunched the numbers to prove that, but jokes like “Only druggies and ...
June 23 2010
Eugenics Today: Do Ugly People Deserve Beautiful Children?
Think picking a date on looks alone is a little shallow? How about picking your kids? The owners of the dating site BeautifulPeople.com have no qualms on the subject–they’ve launched a “virtual sperm and egg bank” where users can select beautiful people’s beautiful genetics by signing up for their beautiful gametes.
Though the company won’t perform egg extractions or accept sperm donations, they will serve as matchmakers and then forward the interested parties to the proper clinics. The company says its exclusive dating site–you can only join if other members judge you attractive enough–is a magnificent resource for those looking to breed up.
As reported by ABC News, the site has decided to generously offer its services even to the beauty-challenged.
“Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone–including ugly people–would like to bring good looking children in to the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool,” company founder Robert Hintze said in a statement.
Everyone from bioethicists to the professionals who run clinics are concerned about site visitors skipping over the proper medical and psychological screenings. There is also concern about the participants’ expectations–and perhaps basic understanding of genetics. Just because biological mummy and daddy have good looks, it doesn’t necessarily mean their offspring will. If BeautifulPeople.com doesn’t make that clear, things could get very ugly.
Related content:
Discoblog: Dating a Dud? Blame It on Biology
Discoblog: Worst Science Article of the Week? Women are getting “hotter”
Disoblog: In Japan, Your Blood Type Could Get You Hired…Or Fired
80beats: No Gattaca Here: Genetic Anti-Discrimination Law Goes Into Effect
Image: flickr / alainelorza
May 06 2010
Hey Baby, Wanna Come Over and Try My New iPad?
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
