Research Regarding Vampire Dating Habits

Posted on August 2, 2010

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I’ll be the first to admit I have a certain thing for vampire TV shows and movies and occasionally a vampire book (although I’m a lot pickier when it comes to literature). But that doesn’t mean it always makes sense to me. Here’s the thing I don’t understand about vampires. They live forever right? (assuming someone doesn’t stick a toothpick in them). And yet, in the TV shows and movies they are always falling in love with young humans. Now, I’m speaking from personal experience here when I say that young humans are pretty much complete idiots. I was one for about 25 years. So I get why a young person might find it appealing to date a vampire, in the same way I understand why a young person might date the lead singer in a band, or dye her purple. It seems like a good idea at the time and it’s a great way to piss off your parents. And that’s the whole point of being young right?

 So I’m on board with why a young person might date a vampire. What I don’t get is why on earth a vampire would ever fall in love with a teenage human being. Anyone over the age of 25 probably understands what I’m talking about. (And if you’re under the age of 25, well just archive this post and re read it again in a few years. You’ll get it someday.) 

The thing about teenagers is that by and large they are…well, insufferable. And the older we get the more insufferable they become. To demonstrate, here’s the evidence I’ve been collecting for the past 30 years on the subject:

Affinity for Adults vs Teenagers, by age & emotion

 According to my research, the general affinity towards teenagers peaks right around the age of 17 and then rapidly declines after that, evening out and staying at around “apathy” for a while. Now, I don’t have any hard data for what happens after the age of 30, but from what I’ve observed of old people, the level of feeling for teenagers declines to “wish they would all die” at around the age of 75 and stays there until the old person dies. So, given this information, I would extrapolate that vampires would probably feel even less for teenagers than older humans do, since they live for hundreds of years. After all, vampires used to be human, and they do EAT people, so it would only make sense that they’d eat the really annoying ones first to get them out of the way. Based on this assumption, here’s what I would guess should happen:

Predicted vampire-teenager affinity

 This seems pretty reasonable right? I mean, it’s based on reasonable evidence anyway. But the funny thing is, according to all the movies and TV shows I’ve seen recently, my assumptions are incorrect. Apparently the research groups at the big studios have found data that contradict my predictions. According to them, this is actually what happens:

Actual Vampire-teenager affinity

 Now, I find this rather surprising, given my own experience in this area. Granted, I’ve never actually MET a real life vampire, so I’m basing my conclusions on the assumption that vampires retain a residual human emotional responses to certain stimuli, such as aggravated annoyance. I’m also not sure to what extent the movie studio’s research has been peer reviewed for scientific rigor. I do know that my own research seems to be consistent with what my peers have found on the subject thus far. So, I’m not sure to what extent I am willing to consider this other data, if at all.

 However, if this other data is in fact valid, it does raise some interesting questions about mortality, the meaning of life, and the purpose of death. If the movie studio’s research is to be trusted, it would seem to suggest that the biological purpose of death is in fact a defense mechanism against an eternity of hanging out with teenagers. And that makes me feel a little bit better about my own innevitable mortality.

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