Comment by jkhdigital
Comment by jkhdigital 10 months ago
I don’t think anyone is actually trying to connect with distant cousins for social interaction; rather the shared DNA segments provide hard evidence to confirm distant ancestors. I got into genealogy a couple years ago after thumbing through some old family documents and I’ve been able to confirm 6th cousins (traced via our shared ancestors) using 23andMe data.
Now there are probably some who think genealogy is a silly pastime and maybe it is, but researching my family history helps me feel grounded and more connected to humanity so I derive a lot of benefit from it.
I mean, computer games are a "silly pastime" too. Whether or not one feels grounded, it can also just simply be fun, and that fine. I've even enjoyed helping strangers solve genealogy problems because piecing together the evidence and ruling out options is just another type of puzzle and one that is often very challenging.
For "close" relatives, I agree there can also be more to it.
E.g. my mums mum never told us that much about her family (we never asked while she was around), and my mum didn't know either, and so uncovering more about that was very fascinating (it helped that there was plenty of drama to uncover) and helped fill in a lot of gaps.