In the end, there's nothing especially interesting to me about this particular lie, and nothing especially smart about it. It's true that people in this game -- like people in most games -- tend to leave an inch of space to allow them to accommodate the fact that the game is not the only thing in life, and I think that if asked, they'd readily admit that they do. It's true that that inch of space can be exploited, and it's true that nobody ever promised not to exploit it, and that's why it's not cheating or even, really, a genuine betrayal on any personal level. And if you want to be the guy who exploits that space, then it's further true that the other people only have themselves to blame for leaving it there. But when you make that choice, you've made it, and you're going to be rung up for it, and nobody is under any obligation to read high intelligence into what's actually just you doing what comes naturally -- being a selfish jackass. Jon may have gotten himself on television, but he's pretty pedestrian when you come right down to it. There's a Jon in every college dorm in America -- cheating on tests, conning people into giving him money, bragging to his friends about how much he can drink, and otherwise sucking up the last moments of his youth before his devilish persona finishes morphing into pathos. In a couple of years, when he's desperately making the Fairplay Fingers at some oblivious girl five stools down from him at Belly, Jon's going to figure it out: A reality show, with incredibly rare exceptions, does not give you a long career in television. It gives you a very short career in television, followed by a very long career as someone who used to be on television. The long career is the one you don't want to fuck up.