You know what I love? When people I used to date do awesome things—like, for example, launching a local citizen journalism site that then gets bought out for a tidy sum by the incumbent newspaper in the city it covers. Not, mind you, because I am a big-hearted person who takes intrinsic joy in their success—though hey, sure, that too—but because I figure this has to at least marginally make me more attractive through no effort or merit of my own. Girls who a year ago barely recalled dumping Zach Condon back in high school are now busy hunting for casual ways to drop into conversations their old fling with the guy from Beirut. They will do this for the same reason George Costanza carried around a glossy of Jerry’s model ex (claiming her as his own) in that one Seinfeld episode: Because if people know that someone who now exhibits unambiguous public evidence of awesomeness used to be attracted to you, they will assume there must be something correspondingly awesome about you. And it’s not even a barrier if said awesomeness is utterly undetectable, since this only shows (a-la The Emperor’s New Clothes) that you must have a subtle sort of awesomeness that requires special discernment to perceive. So anyone who doesn’t find you deeply personally magnetic had best at least fake it a little. So Jarah, for taking off some of the pressure to actually develop some sort of intrinsic virtues, I thank you.