The impression of genealogy in the outside world

Those who are in genealogy circles, be it on Twitter, Facebook or wherever knows that genealogy is not an ‘easy as 1–2–3’ process but is that ideal ‘3 clicks and you’re finished’ fiction leaking into popular genealogy TV shows?

To me, it is — but not a lot. It can be seen as a message saying “Look, she found her family history by just typing in the name and that’s it! Come try it out for yourself”. But what if you’re looking for a John Smith? That’s finding a needle in a field load of haystacks. One example of this is in most cases, you see the celebrity going to a cafe and going onto a site and looking for that person, they stick in that person’s name and then hey presto, it magically appears as the first or second result. To me, it seems to be a false representation of the hard work that goes into the research. While I know of some genealogists and fellow Twitter genies who’ve contributed to the TV shows, to me personally I think more recognition is very much deserved because of the hard work they’ve done.

To quote Mary Poppins Returns [because why not!]:

“The cover is not the book so open it up and take a look!”

~ A Cover is Not a Book / Mary Poppins Returns [2018]

But this quotation shows that what (again it’s what is seems to me) genealogy TV shows tries to appear as and make genealogy seem. Now this could be seen as a way to get people intrigued but there also needs to be a even amount of “Ooh, look at what amazing discoveries we just stumbled across” and “please note this is not going to involve documents handed to you on a silver platter”. What I think would be nice to see, is seeing a genealogist at work with the guest next to them looking at how they work, seeing records etc…

Now while this may have a positive impact with more people starting into their genealogy journey but not all of them decide to continue their journey be it with the issue of money required to research or the hunt not being as thrilling as it might seem. They might experience a moment of inspiration, where they see someone on the TV researching their family history and then that spark of a “What if? What if?” feeling promptly disappears. So the only question is why are we drifting bit by bit from what genealogy actually is without the extra added flamboyance? Sure, it might not make it seem as thrilling for some but it has to be asked.

Another thing I find and it annoys me just a little that not one episode has been done where it’s covering farmers or not covering as a very entertaining history. And if you’re thinking it hasn’t happened, all you have to do is do a bit of Googling, this has happened for some such as Richard Osman, Eamonn Holmes and Sir Tom Jones to name a few. Like if it was me, I doubt I’d even be considered! They probably wouldn’t go near my paternal side of my family as they are all farmers [to make a possibly long story short] And I’m only asking for one! Just to show your family history isn’t always going to be like Danny Dyer’s or Hillary Duff’s where they established royal ties. To me it’s setting awfully high expectations and people can’t be lead to think that they will have someone famous or else they might [and I’m saying might because it might not always be the case] be setting themselves up for a bit of disappointment.

And we’ve all [if you haven’t yet, give it time!] come across those trees that have home person, the mother and the father in the tree and the member’s last seen is from 2015 or something bonkers like that you must wonder whether they were someone who experienced the feeling I talked about above.

All I’m saying is if we try to twist and alter how genealogy *actually* is done, researched and shown — it might not necessarily have a good effect on the industry in the future.

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