“When you meet a woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished, befriend her. Surrounding yourself with the best people doesn’t make you look worse by comparison. It makes you better.”
Yes, sure, intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished women are all lonely and in constant need of friends. People should totally be encouraged to befriend them because, unlike all those dull, boring, plain and unsuccessful women whose social calendars are totally overflowing, they are spending their lives in sad loneliness. Let’s all feel sorry for the beautiful, witty and successful.
Rather than saying something trivial, maybe one should not say anything at all.
Clarissa's Blog 
“they are spending their lives in sad loneliness’
I think what the author is saying is actually saying is worse than your interpretation. She’s saying: If you’re friends with losers, people will think you’re a loser to, so pick your friends among the winners!
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Hmm, it says “befriend”, not “follow her around everywhere”. If that woman actually is as awesome as described, she’ll quickly cut out someone dull, boring, plain and unsuccessful out of her life, so if one tries to befriend her rather than just be an acquaintaince one will quickly need to develop wit, style and accomplishment to match. This reads to me as a subtle call for self-improvement by ensuring one doesn’t compare oneself with people one knows are inferior in the qualities compared. I really think the key word in that paragraph is “intimidatingly”.
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I agree that the goal of the text was probably to say “Don’t be intimidated by successful people.” But the cutesy wording turned it into something else.
Does it show that I started the day by reading student essays from 6 to 10 am?
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I think it qualifies as mental masturbation.
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At my first grad school, we had this game where we labeled many of the things we encountered as mental masturbation. That was fun! 🙂
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