We have a morbid curiosity with dark tourism, and while places like Turkmenistan and Cyprus' walled-off Famagusta were the focus of Netflix's Dark Tourist series in 2018, there's a reason journalist David Farrier visited America twice on his travels.
The popular Netflix documentary series headed to the likes of New Orleans to meet real-life vampires, chatted with one of Charles Manson's pen pals, and went inside the world’s ‘scariest horror house', McKamey Manor. Still, YouTube is full of other dark tourists who are racking up thousands (if not millions) of views by looking at the darker side of America.
While not as controversial as the notorious Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, MindSquire is known for tackling taboo subjects and sometimes 'pranking' people, like when the team headed to America's most 'racist' town and set up giant billboards.
In another video, they decided to take a trip to what's supposed to be the country's most 'incestuous' town, but as you can imagine, they didn't exactly get a warm reception when they tried to explain why they were there.
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Driving across the country to Alabama, the boys said they had the goal of finding 'an incest', so we're not sure they quite understand what they were looking for.
After an awkward moment where one woman thought she was being asked if Alabama has an 'insect' problem, they settled down in the town of Hartselle. One man admitted to his father's side of the family being known to sleep with their cousins, and another claimed his great-grandparents were also incestuous.
When speaking to locals, they were advised to go to Lawrence County as a supposed incest capital. Confirming they were in the right place, one local said: "Well, if you're from Lawrence County, you marry your cousin. That's what you always said, that's what I've always heard."
When questioning people in a Lawrence County store about the rumors of incest, the subject matter didn't go down well, and the manager ended up calling the cops. With the content creators literally being run out of town by the police, they had to find somewhere else to go.
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Tuscaloosa has a much larger population and sparked new hope that they'd find 'an incest', but in the end, their final day took them to Attalla, which one person referred to as 'Meth Mountain'.
Coming across a man who couldn't communicate, they offered him $10 for an interview. When asked if he'd ever kissed his cousin, the unexpected participant confirmed he'd kissed his cousin.
More than that, her said he'd had sex with his first cousin, concluding that he still does, but he wouldn't marry her.
Even though the pair says that they'd met a new friend in 'Steve', they admitted it was harder than they thought to find proof of incest in Alabama.