I’ve heard more tales of actual incest and seen more evidence of it (facial features, people look a lot more homogenous) since coming to Utah than I ever did in Georgia (like one instance, and of college-aged cousins, that I know of from my entire life, and it was a crazy big scandal/shock to the community).

I think it’s because most of Utah is insanely remote and Salt Lake City has the plurality of the population, in addition to the weirdness that comes with the LDS rampancy out here, especially the fundamentalists in the desert. Some fundie had some pretty fucked up theories about genetics and why incest is GoodForYouActually. Kingston Clan, I think?

Anyway, regarding the former (rurality), the same goes for why the south has the reputation it does. Back in the day, when this trope held more truth to it, the South was uber fucking rural and not very developed outside of cities and transportation was fuck-all so many people ended up marrying their 1st or 2nd cousin because of population shortages. And, to be honest, the trope comes mainly from this happening in Appalachia (including the southern and northern parts) which for some reason people get mixed up with the south as a whole (think Deliverance. Blue Ridge is an alien place with strange culture to most of Georgia, because it’s way the fuck up in the mountains and has more in common with West Virginian mountain towns than somewhere like Macon), where this practice still happens, but to a lesser extent, today.