I read Claer Barrett’s article “A dating app with credit scores — what’s not to love?” (Opinion, FT Weekend, February 10) and immediately thought of the late philosopher and counterculture blogger Mark Fisher. His work helps explain how we’ve reached a point where capital and passion can intersect so seamlessly.
What does a good credit score say about a person? Ultimately that they are a “good consumer”. To be this good consumer, they must literally “buy in” to the idea of a kind of scarcity. This in turn says that what they have will never be enough, and they will be both permanently desirous and permanently discontented. Attractive?
Joining a world where you gate-keep pleasure and love, partly by credit score, suggests something else about you too — deep-seated fear. It says you worry about what will happen if your purpose is diverted from consumption to other ends (pleasure without purchase, stillness, political action etc).
The existence of this app shows how it is sadly easier for us to love inside — and love those who live inside — the ever-expanding territory of capital.
Does this mean only the brave will date someone who hardly registers a credit score because they choose to live outside the “cul-de-sac of passivity”, as Fisher called it in one of his final lectures, where capital dictates your plans, desires and compulsions?
Thankfully, I am already married.
Felicity Hawksley
York, North Yorkshire, UK
