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> Assortative mating eventually bounced back and is still going strong. British matchmakers Gray & Farrar, for instance, with their minimum fee of £15,000, boas

> 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. [1] https://www.grayandfarrar.com/ https://www.grayandfarrar.com/

solardev 4y ago
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/ https://www.grayandfarrar.com/services/ Kinda makes me glad I'm not in THAT dating circle.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  This design style bothers me to no end. https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/67891/what-is-the-reason-for-small-lightly-coloured-text https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/67891/what-is-the-rea...
- cs137 4y ago
  Not to mention, the gratuitous capitalization and the grammar errors.
mxkopy 4y ago
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
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  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.
  - dash2 4y ago
    Maybe it’s for neither. Their marketing blurb is all about being global and very successful - not actually old money and certainly not for plebeians.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      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.
      - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
        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.
        RalfWausE 4y ago
        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.
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        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.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  That says more about your biases.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    IDK it's not like old money is some nonspecific abstraction that you can't characterize with some biases. Money drives a Ferrari, wealth doesn't drive and all that right?
jayceedenton 4y ago
> 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.
- Biologist123 4y ago
  I thought you might be right, but the business seems to have been around for a while as a mother and daughter partnership. https://www.spears500.com/adviser/4455/claire-sweetingham https://www.spears500.com/adviser/4455/claire-sweetingham https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC346350 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... All-in-all, toe-curling. But my guess is that they only need 3 or 4 clients a year to run it as a sideline.
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    > 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.
    - Biologist123 4y ago
      I wonder if the author is just being incredibly naive about the real business here.
      - 4y ago
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
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.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  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.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    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.
    - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      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.
switch007 4y ago
> 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 even The Onion couldn’t do parody that well
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Poe’s law in advertising.
barry-cotter 4y ago
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.
melony 4y ago
Has nobody heard of the International Debutante Ball?
strix_varius 4y ago
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.
- divbzero 4y ago
  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.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago

solardev 4y ago

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/ https://www.grayandfarrar.com/services/ Kinda makes me glad I'm not in THAT dating circle.

dotancohen 4y ago
This design style bothers me to no end. https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/67891/what-is-the-reason-for-small-lightly-coloured-text https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/67891/what-is-the-rea...
cs137 4y ago
Not to mention, the gratuitous capitalization and the grammar errors.

mxkopy 4y ago

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

barry-cotter 4y ago
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.
- dash2 4y ago
  Maybe it’s for neither. Their marketing blurb is all about being global and very successful - not actually old money and certainly not for plebeians.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    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.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      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.
      - RalfWausE 4y ago
        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.
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        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.
avgcorrection 4y ago
That says more about your biases.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  IDK it's not like old money is some nonspecific abstraction that you can't characterize with some biases. Money drives a Ferrari, wealth doesn't drive and all that right?

jayceedenton 4y ago

> 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.

Biologist123 4y ago
I thought you might be right, but the business seems to have been around for a while as a mother and daughter partnership. https://www.spears500.com/adviser/4455/claire-sweetingham https://www.spears500.com/adviser/4455/claire-sweetingham https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC346350 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... All-in-all, toe-curling. But my guess is that they only need 3 or 4 clients a year to run it as a sideline.
- Joeboy 4y ago
  > 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.
  - Biologist123 4y ago
    I wonder if the author is just being incredibly naive about the real business here.
    - 4y ago

fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago

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.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
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.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  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.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    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.

switch007 4y ago

> 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 even The Onion couldn’t do parody that well

barry-cotter 4y ago
Poe’s law in advertising.

barry-cotter 4y ago

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.

melony 4y ago

Has nobody heard of the International Debutante Ball?

strix_varius 4y ago

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.

divbzero 4y ago
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.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago