In the past, I've said that Jon is dishonest. Well, I'll have to amend that, now. Jon Sweet doesn't merely obscure or duck around the truth.
Jon Sweet is a liar, and "The System" is the biggest horse apple he's picked up and gleefully chewed on.
I used to think that his idiotic "That's how they taught us ... in The System" was nothing more than the typical, catchphrase-styled nonsense you'd usually hear coming out of an autistic bumblebrain who didn't understand how to communicate with adults of functional intelligence, but then I realized today that it is that phrase in particular that puts the lie to Jon's statements about ASU, and his life since.
Key words of the catchphrase (#3 before the seemingly retired "Hmm?") that shows his mendacious behavior are "we," "taught," and, of course, "The System." The concepts represented in these four words alone betray Jon for the liar that he is, as they illustrate perfectly that he is talking about a conspiracy that not only is unprovable, but one he knows to be false.
Let's start with "we." This is one of the first, most damning elements of Jon's statements about "The System," has he has yet to show any evidence at all that this alleged conspiracy affected anyone else but him. He cannot bring forward any other male that had a girlfriend assigned to him, nor any female who had been assigned to a male. He cannot provide any conversations he's had with other guys in the dorms who had even seen "Ashleigh," let alone had any experiences on the chinaphone. He has not maintained contact with a single one of his former coworkers at The Herald, who could've admitted or denied participation in the conspiracy. There are absolutely no witnesses to this massive, campus-wide monstrosity that controlled Jon's life, so when he talks about it, he's only talking about himself alone. Implying that anyone else was affected by "The System" is a lie.
Then we move on to "taught." "Taught" is, of course, the past tense of "teach," which, according to Oxford Dictionary, means "
Impart knowledge to or
instruct (someone) as to how to do something
." The use of this word in referring to his revelations of life at ASU is a lie. In order to be taught, someone would've had to sat Jon down and instructed him on how things worked. Certainly, while one can learn through experience, according to Jon, that didn't happen. He has painted a picture, multiple times, of a plucky college kid, blissfully unaware that anything bad was going on. Jon didn't start talking about "The System" until after he'd been kicked out of college, to my understanding. This means that he wasn't "taught" anything at all; rather, Jon had
inferred the existence of "The System" after the fact. In other words, he just made it up in reaction to his only sense of agency (mistaken as it may have been) having been revoked.
Finally, we come to "The System" itself. This is the ultimate lie, the big one. You may be wondering how it is that any of this is a 'lie' to begin with, as opposed to the result of poor reasoning skills. I say that Jon is lying because there have been far too many times where he has admitted to his actions, and even implied that his behavior was bad. Whether this was a result of his memory being too poor for him to maintain his defense, or if he was being genuinely honest (shyah, right!), Jon realizes that his behavior was unacceptable. No fictional "System" would be necessary for him to get the boot; the rules and bylaws of the university would be enough. Jon, however, being a pile of skin-sheathed gelatin and insecurity, could not tolerate the fact that, once again, someone had easily kicked his ass. After all, this wasn't like when Jon normally got his face rearranged - this one had consequences. All of those wonderful perks were ripped away from him, and he had to return to the sad nightmare that was his life.
Thus, "The System" was born. It was a means of Jon coming up with a villain in order to make himself look better, true, but it also gave him a peak to try and climb to. If ASU simply kicked him out, then it was done and he was out, that's that. But if there was some terrible evil for him to battle, then he was done wrong and could overcome that evil, escaping the Sweet household and getting back to those life-affirming perks that a bottom-feeder like himself would crave so much.
The problem is that Jon isn't smart. He isn't creative or rational, either. So, when he talks about "The System", he does so in very vague terms. When describing it, he's never given us any real specifics about how it works, who's running it, or why. When put to the test, it simply falls apart. Not only are there no other witnesses or victims, as mentioned above, but now that he has admitted that "Ashleigh" was a troll, he has essentially torpedoed the whole "System-provided girl" lunacy. When he asks why no one told him about what was truly going on, the simplest explanation is the most likely: The perpetually friendless man who nobody likes and actively beats up, ignores, or makes fun of to this very day, wasn't very likable back when he was a college student. Nobody talked to him because nobody wanted anything to do with him other than to poke fun.
"The System," as Jon has described it, is ambiguous, amorphous, and completely without any logical roots in reality. It is nothing more than a falsehood Jon uses to cover up his terrible behavior in the past, and to explain his social and intellectual uselessness to this day, saying that he was "taught" how to be a feckless cretin in college, as if grown adults can't get past what they learn in university.
So, there you have it. Jon is a liar, and "The System" is one of the biggest fibs of all.
In closing, let me just state that, one day, Jon Sweet's welfare is going to be cancelled. He'll have to eat the corpses of his pets just to keep from starving.
