It’s Thursday again, and I think we all know what that means: it’s Thaco Thursday! Oh crap, wait, that’s not right. I mean it’s Conspiracy Theory Thursday! You know, the series I started last week and I suspect most of you assumed, quite reasonably, that I would have forgotten about by now. But I didn’t! At least, not yet. So get ready to open your minds for a new installment, and, actually, maybe open your legs, too, because this time our theory is all about crotches, and the fruits thereof. And car HVAC systems.
Specifically, I want to talk about one particular component of car HVAC systems, one of the airflow vents that was commonly installed in car air conditioning systems from the 1960s up until around the early 1990s, though they peaked in popularity sometime around the mid-1970s. I’m talking about a small vent, usually able to be directionally adjusted on the vertical axis, that was positioned directly below the steering column on the driver’s side, and if present on the passenger side, would be installed below the glove box.
I’m talking about crotch coolers.
Crotch coolers get their name from the fact that these vents are unusually well positioned to blow air on that hottest, moistest of human body crevasses, the crotch. Even prior to cars having air conditioning, there were some fresh air-based crotch cooling solutions, as you can see on this 1952 Volkswagen Beetle:
…but I’m primarily talking about the A/C-fed crotch-cooling vents on cars, and primarily (but not exclusively) American cars.
Here’s a nice little video discussing the crotch-cooling vents and even speculating on some reasons for their demise:
Okay, so let’s get into the conspiracy theory part of all of this. I’m not sure how well you keep up with the average sperm count of the average male, but if you haven’t been paying attention, it seems that the news isn’t great. On average, studies are showing that sperm count has been dropping pretty precipitously since the 1970s. If modern semen was a muffin, and sperm were blueberries, then semen since the 2000s is more like Robert DeNiro’s blueberry muffin in this scene from the 1995 movie Casino, and 1970s semen is more like the other guy’s:
If you prefer a more scientific chart format instead of a cinematic muffin/mafia-related analogy, you can see the trend here:
Now, I’ve highlighted the periods of time when crotch cooler vents were commonplace, and, as you can see, sperm count was much higher in that era. It’s pretty clear why this is the case: without the summertime cooling effect of the crotch cooler vents, testicles have been dangerously overheated and just simmering like a Ziploc bag holding a pair of meatballs boiling on a stove. Other trends like skinny jeans and cell phones in groin-adjacent pockets may be factors as well, but the real issue is that without the cooling reprieve of the crotch coolers, nuts have been getting cooked en masse.
This leads us to our conspiracy:
The removal of crotch cooler vents in cars has directly caused a dramatically lower sperm count in men, which was part of an intentional plan by the Freemasons and the Automotive Industry for the purposes of directed population control and genetic manipulation.
Now, I had to extrapolate the Freemason and genetic manipulation parts, but we can definitely see the direct correlation between the end of the crotch cooler era and the lowering of sperm counts.
[Ed Note: If you want actual science, it turns out too much heated seat use is not good for sperm count, and neither is prolonged time sitting behind the wheel! -DT]
Can I prove any of this conclusively? Well, no, mostly because I just don’t have enough sperm samples from the 1970s in good condition, and every time I try to get samples from my contemporaries I encounter in society, they either slap me and threaten to involve the authorities or they demand I get into their car and have far too many demands for how the sample is to be collected. It’s not practical, so this will remain just a conspiracy theory.
But you know what that means! Spread it all around! Killing the crotch cooler is killing sperm!
Am I the only guy who hated these things? They were on my ’85 Caprice and ’98 C1500 and I just couldn’t stand them when wearing shorts.
“02 4Runner baby!!!
Maybe you are right Torch, but I think the decreased birth rate is caused by the loss of single cab pick-ups with bench seats. Vehicles of opportunity…..gone.
We’re through the looking glass, people…
And here I thought it was the Doctor that did my vasectomy that killed off my sperm count. It was Big Auto and the Freemasons all along!
Hey, a series with more than one article! Great 😉
MY theory about the fertility rate has do with the well established fact, that people didn’t love their children before the late eighties, they just had them.
So if you had 4 kids and one of them died, no big deal, you still had 75% of them left.
But if you – later – loved your one or two kids, you didn’t have to have as many, and took better care of the ones you had, like for instance making rear seat belts mandatory, have several side airbags, healthy diet, actually using sunscreen, bicycle helmets and trackable smartphones and all that.
Most forms of sunscreen are worse for you than the sun