> fifteen years ago, a friend asked him to donate sperm at a clinic to help them because they were having trouble conceiving.. "The boss of the clinic told me that ‘high quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples.. I plan to open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily.. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it."
> “They are all my children and will all have the same rights! I don’t want them to tear each other apart after my death,” he said, after revealing that he recently wrote his will.
I agree that it's pretty cringe to refer to all of them as his children when he's literally a sperm donor, but he definitely did call them that.
That depends a lot on your definition of "children" and "father".
Many people with uninvolved biological fathers would disagree with you that the guy who impregnated their mother counted as their father, especially if they were raised by another man who actually did stick around, and that's even for dads who actually impregnated the mother. Sperm donation takes this even further because he claims to have actually done it anonymously [0], meaning he's as uninvolved as he possibly could have been in the process of being a father.
Many or most of these kids have real men who were actually there helping to raise them through their childhood who they refer to as "father", and it's pretty disrespectful of Durov towards those men to attempt to usurp that title on the grounds of what was supposed to be an anonymous donation.
I'll grant that Durov is more likely than most sperm donors to have some of these kids actually claim him as their father, but that's in no small part because there's now a substantial amount of money tied to them identifying him as such. Cynically I wonder if that's a major motivator for him doing this, because he knows that the kids wouldn't otherwise know or care who he is.
What term would you prefer he use? "Offspring"? "Biological children"? I agree that he is in no way a father in the same sense as others who have actually helped raise children, but I also don't think he's claiming to be, and his phrasing makes sense to me. He is literally their father (in the most uninvolved way possible), and they are literally his children.
As an adopted person "biological <insert title>" has worked well for the parents that had sex to make me. For a donor parent, I probably just use "donor <insert title>". I'd advise not worrying too much about the language though. Being kind and thoughtful is far more important than selecting the correct words. A snap judgment selection of proximal words is sloppy but it's impractical to pause to select exactly the right language in all cases for all statements. So too with something this sensitive it might be good to slow a little.
My main point in the last comment is that inserting himself into their lives at all is disrespectful. He doesn't need a word for them because he has no relationship to them: he was an anonymous donor to enable their actual parents to have kids that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to have.
Agreed, it's highly unlikely. But they have a choice, it's not forced by anyone. If they do nothing (maybe their parents never tell them, or they don't read news, or facial recognition never informs them of similarity), there's no inheritance. If they take consensual action to make a claim via DNA paternity test, the inheritance can be claimed.
To be fair there's not really a good word standardized for what you're describing ("biological progeny without parental relationship"). People are going to use shorthand if they don't have a good term.
* Please be advised that the writer of this post in no way advocates murder and any such actions taken will be considered the sole, whole, and complete responsibility of the actor.
> I decided that my children would not have access to my fortune until a period of 30 years has elapsed, starting from today. I want them to live like normal people, to build themselves up alone, to learn to trust themselves, to be able to create, not to be dependent on a bank account
I believe he doesn't even spend time with them at all, or even know their names
Oh, so he is one of those who want a legion of Mars children to prevent apocalypse. Why are rich people so weird?
He better makes all 100 aware of each other for a much simpler reason: incest prevention. Even though the chance being slim, it is possible.
A dutch man was sentenced to not donate any more sperm because one company illegally used his to fertilize dozens of eggs resultingin statistically problematic number of children from one individual.
So listen techbros, this is not how you "safe" humanity.
Eminem hinted at the answer. During the peak of his fame he was at a restaurant with his crew and having a great time and he was making jokes and everyone was laughing and then in a flash of clarity he realised:
> of course they're laughing, every single one of these people are on my payroll.
Riches have an incredibly distorting effect, especially once you cross the threshold of becoming a target. At that point you _need_ security, you _need_ to move to a gated community and you can no longer lead a normal life. The only other people you can meet who aren't trying to get into your wallet are other rich people and they're as insane as you are. You also have "fuck you" money so being nice, having other people like you isn't necessary any more. You no longer have a limiter. It gives people the opportunity to be more monstrous and I worry that much monstrosity lies dormant within us all, simply waiting for its opportunity.
IMHO Hoardcurse only has two cures: put yourself at risk by forcing yourself to interact with normal people who don't owe you anything and don't know how rich you are, or give-away/spend your assets and become normally poor again, which ofc nobody ever does.
It's fame more than riches that does this. You can be as rich as you like, but if you stay out of the news and don't splash cash no-one will ever know. I know someone like this. The live an upper middle class life (nice house, etc.) but could easily afford a lot more. They don't want all the bullshit that entails.
Not entirely, its more a worry than an assertion, humanity's greatest strength is that it isn't a monolith so I'd figure YMMV. Its just when the jeering crowd point and shame others for being reprehensible, part of me wonders if all that crowd would pass that vibe-check if they'd been presented with that same opportunity. Is it morality, or is it just opportunity? Idk but I think its hard to prove either way.
So, true wealth removes the limiters and the consequences that might keep some people in check. It's like how, for all the horrors that religion foisted upon us over the centuries, one of the good things it did was to encourage a general populace to attempt to better people using the threat of hell and encouraging an acknowledgement of sin.
There's also some selection bias going on: in order to become obscenely wealthy, you probably need to lack some empathy and decency to beging with. Once you get there, these qualities can then flourish unhinged.
Only 6 of the children were conceived naturally. The rest were from sperm donations. Interesting that he claims that there isn't a difference for him though in how he views his offspring.
Which is silly, anyone can buy DNA test kit for 50$ and then download the result file and upload to the miriad DNA sites out there like gedmatch, myheritage so you can be easily found.
That's how the families of my relative who donated sperm (anonymously) found me and now trying to figure out who the donor is and are contacting me.
From what I can tell (which isn't much) Durov is living in France and seems to like it there. I'm not going to assume the people that are a product of his sperm donations are all living in France, but I will assume some are.
In France paternity tests are legal, but they are highly regulated and require a court order to preform at a very small number of labs that can do it. This goes back to 1994. Even going outside that system and gaining a paternity test in another country is illegal and risks a year in prison and a 15,000 Euro fine. Not that it stops questioning husbands, but hey.
Additionally, the claim that these children lacked a father/adequate parenting is not in evidence. They were probably more likely than average to be born into stable two-parent households since their parents were planning to have children & evidently have access to healthcare.
Sure but GP has a point. He is going around saying he "fathered" them, that they are "his children". Sure that's true in the strict sense of the word, and it is good that he is providing for them in some respect, but it is sad to reduce fatherhood to this transactional, materialistic sense. Are those children going to think of Durov as their "real dad"?
Ah this is fair, I thought Pavel was doing similar Muskian thing of singling out women he found hot, making them sign NDAs, and keeping them in hotel rooms for the duration of their pregnancy and then ignoring those children.
I didn't realize this was more of a traditional sperm donation effort. Kudos to him then!
> fifteen years ago, a friend asked him to donate sperm at a clinic to help them because they were having trouble conceiving.. "The boss of the clinic told me that ‘high quality donor material’ was in short supply and that it was my civic duty to donate more sperm to anonymously help more couples.. I plan to open-source my DNA so that my biological children can find each other more easily.. The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it."