- 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.
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.
https://www.spears500.com/adviser/4455/claire-sweetingham
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.
https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-millionaires-ma...
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 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.)
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.
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/OC346350/GRAY--FARRAR-INT...
£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.
"I have noticed that your son, Phillip von Twattenheim the Fourth, is graying at the temples. Have you betrothed him yet?"
"I have not, but he has recently been accepted by the finest matchmakers in all of Britain, Gray and Farrar."
It doesn't actually have to solve the problem. It just has to make it look like the problem is being solved.
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.
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.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CILANE
2 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17503259/where-is-anna-delvey-...
You don't have to fake having an imaginary special humanness, well any more than the rest are faking anyway.
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.
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.
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.
Because she didn't actually have any money and was ripping everybody off.
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.
I applaud her for capitalizing on the public gullibility to believe in devine humans with special rights.
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.
even The Onion couldn’t do parody that well
Kinda makes me glad I'm not in THAT dating circle.
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/67891/what-is-the-rea...
Money drives a Ferrari, wealth doesn't drive and all that right?
> 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.