Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Conspiracy in Genealogy?

There is a certain segment of the U.S. population that is convinced that there is a conspiracy in everything going on in the country. Undoubtedly, there are conspiracies but from my perspective, the genealogical community seems somewhat remote from any of those concerns. Notwithstanding the extremely remote possibility that genealogy is rife with conspiracy, I get occasionally receive comments concerning my posts about the ownership of the large genealogy companies in which the commentators allude to a conspiracy between say, FamilySearch and Ancestry.com. I recently received another of these long rambling comments which contained content that I am not comfortable in repeating. The gist of the comment was a conspiracy that existed between FamilySearch and Ancestry.com. The commentator indicated that Ancestry.com was obviously controlled by FamilySearch and that FamilySearch was using the user information and profits from Ancestry.com to promote certain candidates for the office of President of the United States.

Frankly, I had never thought of this possibility. This is especially true since I can find no connection between FamilySearch and Ancestry.com except the sharing of certain genealogical resources. Perhaps the reason why I have found no evidence of a connection is because of the conspiracy?

I am not quite sure how the cause of genealogy would be advanced by any particular candidate being elected and as a genealogist, I am somewhat oblivious to the minute by minute developments in the political campaign. I do have to admit, that I have yet to hear any of the current presidential candidates even so much as refer to the topic of genealogy, although the parentage of political candidates always seems to become an issue in any national campaign. Maybe before any candidate runs for prominent political office in the U.S. they should be required to have published their four or five generations on Ancestry.com's Family Trees and then we could all discuss their qualifications based on their ancestry?

It is strange that even genealogy is not immune to conspiracy claims. I certainly hope that I am not a helpless dupe of some unknown conspiracy, but I can say that I am not going to spend much time worrying about the possibility.

4 comments:

  1. I've never seen one of these genealogy conspiracies. Like you, I can't imagine what genealogy cause would be furthered by one candidate or the other being elected. I wonder if these conspiracies are fueled by Mitt Romney and John Huntsman being Mormons. I suspect there are some folks who can find something suspicious about everything.

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  2. Just remember that in 1960 everyone thought the Pope was going to take over if a Catholic was elected president. The world is full of conspiracy theorists.

    I would worry more if an athiest was running for president.

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  3. I'd like to comment, but they're probably watching...

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  4. I think genealogy is rife with conspiracies - it is a widely guarded secret that our parents and ancestors were at one time children, teenagers and young adults! In fact they may have acted like humans! If that got out how could they hope to keep control over their kids? Only by love of course.

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