Ancestry and Internet Cousins: On the Algorithmic Construction of Virtual Kin

As the season for reflection on friends and family approaches, I am reminded of the non-traditional family structures we create. Within the Black community, certain people exist as essential parts of the imagined family we have in our minds. For me, one of these people is Levar Burton. Growing up on “Reading Rainbow,” just hearing Levar Burton’s voice has a soothing and grounding quality that puts my mind at ease. Many nights, I go to bed listening to the “Levar Burton Reads” podcast and learning about new authors from him, even in the absence of “Reading Rainbow.”

As a result, I often find myself mentioning Levar Burton to other people. However, depending on the age and ethnicity of the person, it is unusual for others to have the same knowledge or awareness of his significance in African American culture. But this is normal when discussing Black celebrities and online content creators. Despite the popularity of the media I consume or the entertainers I follow, whenever I discuss the content creators I follow, they have yet to attain the same fame as other less culturally significant content.

For example, over the past few months, well-known influencer and food critic Keith Lee has reviewed popular restaurants and food trucks around America. Even though Lee has gained a large and loyal following online, during in-person interviews and interactions, his credibility and standing are constantly questioned due to his popularity within the Black community. These critiques came to a head during a recent Breakfast Club Interview, where co-host DJ Envy described Lee’s content style as “ghetto.”

This disrespect from his detractors has led many of Lee’s fans and viewers to come to his defense, demonstrating the strength of the online bonds formed within Black communities. Consequently, I began to think much more about this connection between parasocial relationships and fictive kinship, especially regarding being “Black Famous,” the popularity of “Internet Cousins,” and how we relate to celebrities and content creators.

The Algorithmic Curation of Black Culture

For those who don’t know, “Black Famous” Celebrities and influencers are only publicly notable or recognizable to other Black people and usually don’t receive significant recognition outside the Black community. Black Famous Celebrities will likely have multiple honors from the NAACP Image Awards, BET, or the Soul Train Awards, but no singular indicators of their success from mainstream award-granting organizations like the Grammy’s or the Oscars. When you are Black Famous, you receive invites to every Essence event, but maybe not the Met Gala, because Black media and publications do the work to recognize those who deserve their flowers in the community.

Being “Black Famous” is also relevant when studying social media because algorithms and recommendation systems work to construct virtual communities that create echo chambers of content where we usually only see people who are critical or relevant to us. Additionally, this algorithmic design has moved us further away from the monoculture of the past, where a majority of Americans had the same cultural referents and knowledge, to an era of multiculturalism in which specific groups are cultivating more insular communities and counter-publics built on shared interests and identity.

Therefore, it is not surprising to me when people don’t know about the content that I know. However, I would argue that when it comes to the Black community, understanding what is popular online is essential to understanding the future of cultural expression and identity formation. As new content creators are gaining popularity and virality on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, we are entering a renaissance of artistic production that reflects the new gilded age of technological innovation that the turn of the 21st century brings. At the same time, like the previous age, new technological innovations also bring new levels of oppression and marginalization.

However, there are many ways in which Black Americans have used their marginalization to create community and culture within the context of media production or even political activism. Through sharing sites and digital media platforms, Black content creators can produce and reproduce texts and artifacts that speak to shared cultural experiences, fictive kinship, and identity formation. Therefore, this post will focus on how we can relate searching for ancestral roots within Black communities to constructing virtual kinship within social media platforms.

Fans and Fictive Kinship — Defining Internet Cousins and Virtual Kin

It is also this cultural difference and creative production that makes studying the Black Internet so enjoyable. Not to be confused with the dark web or some other sordid network structure, the Black Internet is one of those cyber niches where the Black community and culture proliferates. In contrast to the rest of America Online, the Black Internet is full of unique practices that reflect the ancestral and cultural roots of Black people offline. And one of my favorite aspects of the Black Internet is the concept of “Internet Cousins.”

Although I cannot be entirely sure of its origin, I have always attributed the concept of “Internet Cousins” to the writer and digital storyteller “Evelyn from The Internets.” In all of her videos for the past decade or so that I have watched, Evelyn would address her audience of followers and fans as “internet cousins,” usually beginning videos with a hello to her cousins, both new and old, as well as a sign off that she would “see you on the internet somewhere.” Most recently, Evelyn has expanded her platform and now has a TikTok account under the user name “myinternetcousin” and a Patreon for her community of cousins to gather together online.

The term “cousin” has been colloquially used in the Black community to refer to anyone who feels like family, even before the internet era. Black families combine familial and fictive kinship structures, whereas fictive kinship refers to non-blood-related individuals considered part of the family due to close community ties.

Internet cousins hold the same significance as those in your family who have been elevated in their kinship status through the honorific of cousin, aunt, or uncle simply due to their longstanding friendship with family members. Therefore, being an internet cousin is more than being a fan or follower, as it indicates an extended virtual family.

And, while many scholars utilize the term virtual kin or virtual kinship structures to articulate the unique bonds between individuals online, I have always been partial to Evelyn’s use of the term Internet Cousins. Especially after reading The Atlantic’s latest piece titled “The Great Cousin Decline,” it would seem that as families get smaller, the number of genetic cousins people have is also dwindling.

However, this article does not consider cousins’ role in our fictive online and offline kinship structures. So, while there is an argument that cousins are on the decline, I would argue that our capacity for taking on new internet cousins is growing increasingly with the expansion of our lives online.

Finding Your Virtual Roots: Science, Technology, and Tracing Ancestry Online

For many people, the internet is a place for fun and entertainment and to find people who reflect us to ourselves. In my research, I have found a strong relationship between the expansion of virtual kinship structures and the popularity of genetic testing and tracing one’s ancestral roots. For example, in the essay “Roots and Revelation: Genetic Ancestry Testing and the YouTube Generation,” scholars Alondra Nelson and Jeong Won Hwang discuss the role that social media has played in reinvigorating our collective interest in seeking deeper roots and family connection.

In the essay, Nelson and Hwang note that in the 1970s, there was a revitalized interest in family trees with the release of Alex Haley’s book “Roots” in 1976 and its subsequent adaptation into a television mini-series. The story explores ancestry by depicting a family’s journey from West Africa during the middle passage of the slave trade to becoming African Americans. For many viewers, “Roots” was their first exposure to the brutality of slavery in vivid color, and it inspired African Americans to explore their ancestral roots and take pride in their cultural heritage. Overall, “Roots” reframes the story of slavery as a tale of perseverance and resilience, highlighting the journey from slavery to freedom.

It is important to note that when the TV series “Roots” gained popularity, technology was not advanced enough to determine ancestry from biological data. In the 1960s, blood type could identify parental relationships, but paternity tests were only about 80 percent accurate. It was in the 1980s that Sir Alec Jeffrey (UK) developed DNA profiling, which revolutionized the means of identification. In addition to blood, our saliva, hair, skin, etc., can also be used to trace DNA and ancestry. Therefore, Nelson and Hwang point out an intriguing connection between the rise of the YouTube platform and the development of ancestry tests that use a mouth swab to decode someone’s DNA.

The article goes on to specify the 21st-century trend of people sharing the results of their ancestry tests online, which mirrors the relationship between internet cousins and ancestry. In the early 2000s, I remember how widespread this practice was on social media platforms like Facebook, where many users would freely share their 23andMe results. Therefore, the article notes that people who take these tests, also known as Root seekers, use social media to share their genetic testing results for several reasons, such as to document their identity and self-discovery journey, connecting with a larger community, seeking affirmation and acceptance, and scientifically confirming their cultural beliefs.

So, root seekers are interested in the story of where they come from and need to get a response from others about that information, as well as connections to unknown families. On television series like PBS’ “Finding Your Roots,” we see this manifest through the search for “DNA cousins.” For those who are unfamiliar, “Finding Your Roots” is a series hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr that focuses on tracing the genetic and historical roots of various celebrities and public figures. In recent years, this ancestral search has also led to the discovery of “DNA cousins,” in which past guests learn that they have genetic or ancestral ties to other celebrities on the show.

Reconceptualizing Cousins: On Internet Ancestry and Virtual Root-Seeking

Although DNA cousins, or even the ones we find online through sites like Ancestry.com, are genetically part of our extended family, I believe that these individuals are no more connected to us than the fictive kin we claim in our communities or the internet cousins that one develops ties to online. In her writing on DNA and ancestry, Alondra Nelson uses the term “root-seeking” to describe how people find their family history and genealogy through genetic testing or searching digital archives and historical records. However, utilizing the term root-seeking to explore how we see ourselves within communities and content creators online is just as important.

Finding our roots online is more than just relegated to searching the past or attempting to locate long-lost cousins in the present. It also includes these practices where we can find community members online that reflect the most niche and difficult-to-recognize aspects of ourselves.

For me, finding Evelyn From the Internets was incredibly influential because she was one of the first creators to represent a diasporic Black identity, combining African and American roots. Bridging that gap between fried chicken and fufu, or jerk and jollof, I could relate to her use of accents and critiques of culture as someone who was also growing up in a multicultural community and family in the American South.

In this sense, embarking on the journey of virtual root-seeking allows us to find family and fictive kin that reflect the hidden parts of ourselves that only the technology of social media algorithms have the power to uncover. Additionally, this means that many of our online social networks are leading to the creation of collectives and virtual kinship structures that constitute their own families both online and offline.

For example, it has become even more common to see media personalities and creatives engage in cross-overs and collaborations that bring more recognition to their fictive kin (like the popularity of podcast families spawned by The Read or even the development of content houses). I have also been tracing my own connections online and how the creators I like and follow reflect larger communities and cultural shifts.

In this age of algorithms and artificial intelligence, the key to success for content creators lies in building online communities that can trace their ancestry through the connections that they have made online. By creating virtual networks of family and friends, content creators can easily increase their viewership and gain success on and off digital platforms.

Therefore, it’s time to construct kinship networks and build communities of internet cousins who can help us elevate our content and gain recognition. But overall, I can’t wait to see which groups will transcend beyond the Black community to gain notoriety and influence in the offline world.