> Assortative mating eventually bounced back and is still going strong. British matchmakers Gray & Farrar, for instance, with their minimum fee of £15,000, boast of having "the connections and network to attract the right people for the right people."
- That paragraph links to the site of top-tier matchmaker Gray & Farrar [1], which IMO is worth a visit. Beyond parody, and dripping with the smug evils of a British-style class system.
> dripping with the smug evils of a British-style class system
This smacks of a an entrepreneurial young chancer having a go. The business is founded on the hope that the smug evils of the British class system exist, rather than evidence of them.
Many startups are founded on the idea that there is huge profit to be made by targeting the rich. Sell 'high-end' services at crazy prices. The inflated price is one of the KSPs of the product as the exclusivity itself is what's on sale. The fact that these services exist doesn't really prove anything, other than that there is a perception of something there to exploit. Gray & Farrar looks like a website built by young business guys who have watched too much Made In Chelsea, and The Apprentice. The website is genuine, but yes it's a parody of the British class system, just not a knowing one.
> But my guess is that they only need 3 or 4 clients a year to run it as a sideline.
I mean, keeping a website and limited company running for a year costs a lot less than the minimum £15k quoted in TFA. They could have had one client since they incorporated in 2009, and be in the black.
There is some good incidental description of the operation of matchmakers within a mercantile community in the Ming dynasty in 三遂平妖傳 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Sui_Quash_the_Demons... ). In the story, a girl's father, one of the most successful merchants in the area, visits some matchmakers (who seem to operate as a pair) and commissions them to find a husband for his daughter. He gives them money every time he sees them (initially, plus every time they visit his home to mention a candidate).
There was certainly a lot of money available if you could hold the job.
(It's a humorous episode in the story. The matchmakers are overjoyed to be commissioned to find a husband for a girl widely known to be young, beautiful, intelligent, and rich. They bring back offers from a string of A-list merchant scions, which leads to frustration because the father specifically wants to marry his daughter to someone very stupid.)
> This smacks of a an entrepreneurial young chancer having a go. The business is founded on the hope that the smug evils of the British class system exist, rather than evidence of them.
Reminds me of one of the ads that follows me around the internet, for something called SEI Club. It claims to be a matchmaking service for the creme de la creme, but seems to wear the entrepreneurial chancing even more on its sleeve. None of the we've been around for over 40 years / second generation family business stuff. Just pure aspiration: glamorous pictures of pretty, rich-looking people of the type they hope will use the service.
By the way, SEI, I've been happily married for over a decade, and middle-class at best. But thanks for financing my baby white noise app.
In June 2021 the managing director owed the company almost £1.1 million, up from £924k in 2020. Not sure how meaningful the assets are. (Update: I think these are unpaid distributions to the LLP members.)
£2.8 million in turnover in 2018 though, £2.1 million of that from outside the UK.
There's also a parent company (Hadleigh PVT Limited) that indirectly owns the business. And the parent company paid £192k in rental income to Gray & Farrar in 2018.
It is all quite weird, e.g. in 2013: "strategic marketing and business promotion costs have been charged at arms length by a business wholly owned by one of the partners"
2016 accounts say the principal activity was matchingmaking services.
That’s hilarious. A 40 year old second generation business trading off the idea of British classism. The people who they’re implying use them wouldn’t be seen dead on their roster. The peerage know each other either personally or through reputation by friends of friends. Even if you’re going for the broader group of people who went to public school or who are second or more generation public school you wouldn’t find too many of them using the services of a firm that advertises. Where’s the exclusivity or cachet in that? All you need is money.
Netflix made a (mostly true) documentary “Inventing Anna” about someone who moved to New York with the fake identity of a German heiress (whose father occasionally cuts her off). She had a bunch of hotels and some tech investors fooled. I feel like she should have gone into the matchermaker racket instead.
A bit of a tangent, but i found the series to be insufferably bad. The story interested me, but the scenario was pretty bad (easily predictable, weird logical jumps being presented as genius ideas) and the acting was pretty meh bar the lead actress (i found her very annoying which seems to be the idea).
I felt that conclusion was unwarranted. So she was a 'fake' heiress. Aren't they all? Just jumped-up rich claiming some sort of divine right? Why wasn't she as good as any of them?
Because of dogma, chiefly. People of the time figured she wasn't 'real' in the sense she didn't follow some imaginary ideas of being deserving or whatever. But only after they initially believed her, which means she was socially as adept at the role as any of them.
> I felt that conclusion was unwarranted. So she was a 'fake' heiress. Aren't they all? Just jumped-up rich claiming some sort of divine right? Why wasn't she as good as any of them?
In many European countries there's still the concept of nobility[1] with titles, lineage, inheritance and all. It isn't some abstract thing that people choose to believe in or not.
The comment is about a young woman living in NYC who faked being one of these nobles, and used it to defraud people. She went to jail for it[2]. I have no idea what your comment is about or how it ties to any of this.
You're missing the point. There is an existing social structure of people who do care about these titles and the titles are often attached to assets or positions of power.
To your original point -- she went to jail for committing fraud, as in theft via lying. She did not go to jail for being judged "unworthy" by some dogmatic social circle.
I disagree. She went to jail because she claimed to be a magical being, and others thought they knew she wasn't. Consider: would an actual peer have gone to jail? No? Then she went to jail for 'not being a magical person'.
I honestly can't tell if your series of replies have been GPT-3 generated.
She went to jail because she failed to pay for the goods and services she used. They extended her credit because of the false pretenses, but she went to jail for grand larceny.
Yes, an actual noble would go to jail for a similar crime.
No an 'actual noble' (whatever the heck that is) might not have even been prosecuted.
But how many famous people have avoided jail for similar issues? If you're famous enough it doesn't even go to trial.
That's my point. She didn't pass some popularity contest because {reasons} and got prosecuted. Which may likely not have happened to a duchess or whatnot.
She was not what she claimed to be, if you're surprised that lying to people isn't OK then I've got really terrible news for you. Anna created numerous fake documents purporting to show she actually had lots of money in foreign banks (she did not) and there was a family trust that could access the money on her behalf (no such thing existed) and so she'd tell people it's OK, my trust will pay you back - knowing she's just taking services she hasn't paid for and has no intent to ever pay for.
In most jurisdictions Fraud requires two things: Dishonesty and intention thereby to gain or that another loses. For most people it's thus really easy to avoid committing fraud - be honest. If you don't like honesty you need to ensure you never have intention for you to gain or another to lose, which is going to be a really steep climb in many circumstances given we live under capitalism.
No person claiming magical special humanhood is 'what she claimed to be'. That's my point. Say you're a Dutchess if you like; your claim is exactly as valid as anyone else's; which is to say, nonsense.
I applaud her for capitalizing on the public gullibility to believe in devine humans with special rights.
The intriguing part is that if she had secured her final loan she could've covered her immediate debts and may bave had a successful business. In which case most of her malfeasance might've slid under the radar. More than one success has been built on some dicey loans and sketchy figures.
It was actuay quite common in the colonial period for quasi pirate types to overstate their experience, earn the remit of a monarch and secure loans for mercenaries in a bid to take some land from a competing European power and possibly enter the low nobility. There were numerous fraudsters among these. Several are well known for their eventual demise but I imagine more than a few managed to succeed and used their wealth and position to patch over the crumbly parts in their past.
Actually, every single line ever to claim 'nobility' started that way. All have crumbly pasts, meaning of course that they are perfectly normal humans like the rest of us. All are fraudsters.
your comment is akin to using a stolen credit card to eat at fancy restaurants, buy expensive clothing, and stay in hotel suites, and then congratulating the thief for "capitalizing on the public gullibility to believe in" a small plastic rectangle.
> OUR CLIENTS ARE PART OF A SELECT GROUP OF PEOPLE WHERE EQUALS ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN. THEIR LIVES MAY BE LIMITLESS, BUT THE NUMBER OF SUITABLE PARTNERS THEY MEET MOST CERTAINLY ISN’T
Wow, the rich British must have really good eyes. Can't read anything on that site... all caps light gray text on textured beige wallpaper, surrounded by lynched naked people: https://www.grayandfarrar.com/services/
Kinda makes me glad I'm not in THAT dating circle.
This is incredibly funny. Here I am thinking the upper echelons operated like Thurn and Taxis, using signals too subtle for the common folk to notice. It's just a .com on the clearnet lmfao
They’re selling the dream to plebeians. Patricians have Burka’s Peerage, the Almanack de Gotha, Who’s Who or the Social Register. This is for insecure strivers.
The nouveau riche are plebeian by definition. The haute bourgeoisie/gentry/patrician class isn’t just defined by money. It’s defined by no one on the family having a memory of a member of the family not having had wealth, power and prestige.
That’s not really how it works. High nobility can be very poor. They still remain member of high nobility. White Russian still frequented other nobles in exile after the revolution when most of them had become penniless. It’s not strictly about money.
Yeps, thats right... back when i was in school i had a "von" type classmate, they even "owned" a castle (a ruin... back then on the wrong side of the iron curtain), and lived in a social housing project.
At no point did I refer to nobles or nobility. The Roosevelts, Vanderbilts and Hearsts have never been noble but they’re the same social class the British used to call gentry or the French haute bourgeoisie.
I particularly enjoyed this trying-too-hard run-on sentence:
> THIS IS THEREFORE A HIGHLY SELECT AND SOPHISTICATED GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY THE UNSPOKEN RULE OF ONLY WANTING TO MEET OTHER PEOPLE LIKE THEM AND WHO ARE COMFORTABLE WITH WHO THEY ARE AND WHO THEY WOULD IDEALLY LIKE TO MEET.
They spend years conducting their selective search and succeed against all odds, only to discover that their ideal mate is similarly selective and unwilling to choose them in return.
- That paragraph links to the site of top-tier matchmaker Gray & Farrar [1], which IMO is worth a visit. Beyond parody, and dripping with the smug evils of a British-style class system.
[1] https://www.grayandfarrar.com/