Jonathon Jacob Meijer has fathered more than 1000 children. Some believe the number could be as high as 3000.
Joe Donor has more than 180.
Ari Nagel has donated his seed over 165 times.
Kyle Gordy has fathered at least 80 kids.
Anthony Greenfield has fathered 64, but his goal of becoming the biggest mass donor in the world and surpassing Meijer is well underway.
Because for many of these men, it's less about helping prospective parents and more about 'winning'. A bizarre race to populate the world with as many mini-mes as possible.
Greenfield's quest was given a boost when he handed over 500 specimens to a Kenyan sperm bank, who plan on producing at least 200 babies using his sperm a year.
The company in question offered him (and any other willing men), an all expenses paid trip for their seed, and Greenfield was more than happy to oblige.
"They milked me like a cow... I don't mind though. I like making babies," he told Netflix's The Man With 1000 Kids.
The documentary focused on the deceptions of Meijer, the Dutch sperm donor who made headlines around the world in 2021 for his astronomical number of children. He'd been telling families he'd only helped create four children; little did they know that number was over 1000.
Fertility fraud activist Eve Wiley told Tudum she suspects that number to be closer to 3000.
Watch the trailer for The Man With 1000 Kids.
Eventually a group of affected families forced Meijer to stop, concerned about what his continued breeding would do to their children's lives.
In April 2023, a judge in The Netherlands forbade him from donating semen to new parents anywhere in the world. For each violation, he will be fined AUD $160,000. He was also ordered to have sperm banks destroy any of his semen.
The case was groundbreaking; the first of its kind to restrict and control a male's bodily autonomy.
But the rest of the men remain at large. Many are boastful about their 'super' sperm donor status and travels around the world helping families conceive. They've created a community online where they share hotspots and advice - where they compete for the highest number of babies on Earth.
Some offer to have sex instead of artificial insemination. Joe Donor, for example, insists at least half of his babies are created the 'natural' way.
Last year, Greenfield and Gordy met up in Amsterdam, posting videos with strangers telling them "we are sperm donors!"
"Don't you wish you had an American kid so they can be rich and successful. It's the best passport," Gordy, an LA accountant, can be seen telling one woman he stops on the street.
Watching their content, it's obvious this goes beyond doing something nice for hopeful parents. That might be part of it, but they also seem to be drunk on the power, bragging rights and fame it brings them. That so many women want to create life using their sperm.
Nagel, a New York math professor, refers to himself as "The Sperminator." He likes to keep in touch with his many offspring, plastering their photos around his office.
Appearing on a video with Vice, Gordy shared, "I'm like superman".
"I have 2500 friends [on social media], they're almost all girls looking to get pregnant," he told the interviewer with a smile.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Joe Donor admitted he wasn't averse to trying to father more than 2500 children, calling himself the "miracle maker."
"I enjoy being successful," he told Tara Brown, when asked why he donates.
The most obvious by-product of having as many offspring as these men do, is the increased risk of incest. Genetic sexual attraction is described as a well-documented phenomenon of intense attraction between biological family members that most commonly happens when they grow up unaware of each other.
In the case of Meijer, this threat is particularly concerning, because he made numerous donations within a small geographical area. Three of his offspring even ended up in the same daycare in The Netherlands.
These men are also at risk of passing on various diseases or inherited conditions at a much higher rate than nature intended. But the concerns go further than that.
As Australian lawyer Steven Page, a leading voice on donor conception told Nine, these men are "playing the role of God".
"Why would you willingly bring into the world a child who has a hundred siblings? This isn't a soccer club or community group. These are your half-brothers and half-sisters and you're going to try and work out your place in the world and be constantly challenged by that for the rest of your life," he said.
It's a criticism that was levelled at Meijer. Some of the women who used his sperm criticised his "God-like complex," pointing out that he liked to refer to himself as 'a lion'.
The most sinister side, however, was revealed in the Netflix documentary.
"I want to BLEACH Africa," Greenfield said in a text message.
"Soon more countries will be colonised by my glorious and mighty white seed," he said in another.
In a Kenyan Sperm Donors page, he and other serial donors can be seen chatting about Kenya as the "promised land" because of the high demand for donations.
The bottom line is donating sperm is not a lucrative business to be in. Some countries ban money from being exchanged. In Australia it is illegal to profit from sperm donation, but you can be reimbursed for certain costs involved. Many of the men simply ask that families cover their expenses and travel.
It's also not doing them wonders in the love department.
"I have the dating apps, but haven’t had much success finding a woman who wants to date someone with 165 kids and 10 women pregnant," Nagel told the New York Post.
"I am hoping I will, one day, meet that special someone who can accept me for who I am - someone who wants to have children and can accept my scores of children I already have," Donor told the Daily Mail.
They say they're motivated to keep doing it by the happy faces on the mothers. For how good it feels to help.
But when you actually immerse yourself in their content and their commentary. Their jokes, bragging posts and flashy titles for themselves tell a different story.
It really does feel like they, perhaps, just get a kick out of playing God.
Feature image: Facebook.
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