comment: >
  
  I don't, I stay within the first 3 to keep the bloodline pure but not too pure
context: This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.
  Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
  (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)
  Rule-breaking posts may result in bans. >
  
  I did my family tree and found a very distant cousin (not a direct ancestor) who was a serial killer. He’s the guy they wrote about in Devil in the White City. (Corrected to say distant cousin, not distinct.) >
  
  Almost enough to dox yourself.  Here's hoping your history is clean. >
  
  He said very distant cousin. So they could be one of hundreds of people. >
  
  Technically we are all distant cousins. The most recent individual common ancestor of almost all humans is probably only from 2000-4000 years ago (of course not in the sense that we branched out in the main since then, but that due to the exponentially increasing number of ancestors as we go back each generation to ~10^24 only 2000 years back, people moving around, and incidental mixing, the most recent person who ‘happens’ to be in the ancestry of almost all of us, including most of Africa, Europe, Asia and the New World today is almost certainly more recent than we’d naively expect). That’d be maybe 100-200 generations, making almost all of us at most 100-200th cousins - for just a particular pair of two random humans, the most recent common ancestor is very probably even more recent.
  The only people likely excluded are in those small long-isolated pockets like North Sentinel Island, and even then they may have been isolated recently enough not to be an exception. >
  
  Dont be fucking your 100th cousin