Alec Sillifant

 

Backdoor Eugenics

 

I was watching TV recently and of the many adverts that disconcerted me (there will be more about a particular subgenre of this industry in a future rant) one stood out from the others. It was for a dating agency but one that traded on its exclusivity of clientele and it got me wondering if this was a less than subtle attempt to create a new world order within the existing world order on some level?

I am not a rich man, despite a deep desire to be one, but I do not want to be sued for what little I have so I shall be disguising the real name of the dating agency and referring to it as the ‘Boss Fuckers Dating Agency’ (BFDA) because if I am right about the ‘players’ signed up for this service there will be quite a few lawyers in their number. And we all know lawyers are complete bastards…until we need one and then they’re actually alright…unless they lose the case and at such time they are complete bastards again with the added bonus of being complete bastards of the useless variety.

I saw two versions of the advert during the commercial breaks allocated to the programme I was watching (which was probably something intellectually challenging like a ‘Midsomer Murders’ repeat) one featured a woman, the other a man, both of whom were well groomed and had an air of the stable, successful and intellectual about them. Each spoke a couple of concise sentences, in about ten seconds flat, that perfectly encapsulated their needs from a life partner. All well and good, some people on the pull putting their best, well versed, chat-up lines to use. Perfectly normal. However cut to the logo and the voice over and we get the kicker that to join these desirables, to have a stab at pulling them, you not only have to be single but also a professional too.

I assumed the use of professional in this instance was not referring to a career in the sex industry which left me with a problem; what exactly is considered a profession. To my mind if you get paid for doing something you are a professional such-and-such but I got the feeling the term professional being used by the BFDA was definitively specific. It was more than hinted at that the working class professions of builder, plumber, secretary, hairdresser would not be warmly welcomed by the agency and they were after the ‘higher order’ professions: doctors, lawyers, bankers, educators (that last at a pinch, I imagine) etc. ‘Exclusive’ is one word that could describe the BFDA but in the same breath ‘exclusion’ is another that could be employed. (I have since discovered job and profession have different definitions but I won’t bore you with them here, feel free to bore yourself researching it in your own time if you need enlightenment as I did.)

I smelt a conspiracy on a scale of the shooting of JFK or 211, a date in February when I was short changed by a famous fast food chain and then followed home by two men in clown get-up and warned off trying to get my 50p back ever again or I would be served a very unhappy meal. As such I knew I needed to go covert on BFDA’s ass, drop behind the lines and do some digging…or at least do a cursory Google search to gather up some kind of dodgy foundation material to build this rant upon. So that’s what I did…

The highlights. A vast majority of the members on the BFDA database possess a university degree, they are also predominately affluent and there’s even a hint that single, looking for love, millionaires are up for grabs for the lucky few. So far, so sinister. Unfortunately without placing myself in the firing line and signing up it looked like I wasn’t going to get any further information. Why is that? Was there something to hide? My only option was to register for membership as a single on BFDA website and see what happened…

I’m lying, I didn’t sign up. Someone as eligible as me hasn’t got time to be batting away fevered advances from excited to the point of foaming millionaire-esses every ten seconds for the next two weeks because they think their desperate, platinum-plated prayers have been answered. I’ve got a kitchen to decorate and rants to write. I may not be a professional and merely a prole on the social scale but I am a busy prole.

To my mind this agency is no more than a breeding pen for the very well-healed to keep their social circle closed to any interlopers. When two doctors mate it is a statistical fact that their children have a greater chance of becoming a doctor than if a plumber couples with a hairdresser. Some would say that is genetic predisposition in action, others would cite egregious nepotism, the latter being the ones who are right. If mater and pater are already in thick with the shady labyrinth that is the legal system there is every chance their offspring will be left a trail of breadcrumbs to follow straight to the bar and that’s not the one you and I (assuming you’re not a barrister or something) are allowed to stand at drinking beer.

The BFDA is nothing more than another system to give a leg up to those who are already on stilts. I could even tell by the adverts, by the way the people (symmetrically pleasing actors, I assume) looked at me, they were sending out silent messages with their eyes: ‘This is not for you, Sif, this is not for the likes of you at all.’ Okay, so I’m not a doctor or a lawyer and if you dropped to the floor with a medical emergency I might not be able to save your life (I wouldn’t out of spite if you were a member of the BFDA) but then again I doubt Dr Harold Shipman would be on your list of nominated first aiders either would he? Why make what amounts to assertions that all professionals are going to be good people, and therefore make a suitable life partner, when some professionals must be absolute wankers merely through the application of the law of averages?

I’m sick of the upper middle class lording it over us, being all high and mighty and then expecting us to be grateful and adulatory, tugging our forelocks and basking in their smug halos as our taxes pay their over-inflated salaries…actually, I’ve just realised, it’s always been this way. Professionals from the very start of professions have gravitated to each other, paired-up within their own circle. Kept everything in-house. Even cross fertilisation is not unheard of in the World of Alphas, doctors breeding with lawyers, teachers with architects, producing all kinds of monstrous hybrids like bankers and advertising executives. It looks like I have jumped the gun yet again and not highlighted a new problem but merely raked over an old, deeply established one. All the BFDA has done is modernise and digitise an archaic system. Maybe they’ve made it a bit easier for the middle class to meet without ever having to fear they might cross paths with the likes of me because I have managed to stagger into the wrong club while the doormen weren’t watching and I have a feeling they are more than happy with this upgraded situation.

One positive I shall be taking away with me from this rant, and I encourage you to do the same; how sad is it if you’re a millionaire that you still can’t pull someone without a third party agency’s intervention? Do you even have to try that hard when you’re loaded? To try at all in fact? Pull up in a Lambo, look at your gold watch, BOOM, surrounded by the gender of your choice. But no, apparently these loaded fuckers need a dating agency…or are they just showing-the-fuck-off for all the world to see? Yeah, that’s right, this prole has got you completely sussed.

 

DISCLAIMER: Alright, I know, before you start blowing your stacks and calling me Adolf Cupid or something, dating agencies are there for people for many reasons and it is immature of me to make fun of such things. I couldn’t agree more and although I was taking the Mick it was all in fun…or that was the honest intention even if it may come across as otherwise to you. Still, it does strike me as odd that there would be a dating agency that caters for people who think they are good enough to sign up for it in the first place with the knowledge that others ‘below them’ are not and will be black-balled pretty darn quickly. Why not use a normal dating agency and be a little more flexible and a little less bloody marvellous? By excluding non-professionals there has been a deliberate segregation from the vast majority of people in the world and who is to say your soulmate is not amongst them? Some of us in the lower halls aren’t that bad, you know. One or two can even a sentence correctly together string…many not though.