A little white lie, a fib, a fat lie, a whopper, a humdinger

I want you to know that I’ve had the following excerpt in my email since Dec. 23, and I’ve just been waiting for the right blogging mood to hit me before I discussed the issue.

 

People Lie More Through Texts

Texting appears to be more likely to bring out the liar in people.

A new study shows people are more likely to lie via text message than through most other types of communication. Researchers found people lied more often while texting than they did in face-to-face conversations, video chats or audio chats.

Meanwhile, the fallout from duplicitous texting appears to be steep. Researchers found people were more enraged when they were lied to via text than they were when people lied to their face.

The study was conducted at the University of British Columbia. It’s due to appear in the “Journal of Business Ethics” next year.

 

I find that article disturbing in oh so many ways. You see, honesty is one of the things I value the most. It’s actually kind-of funny (not ha ha funny, but hhmmm funny) because I have a friend now (okay, I’m still on the fence about our friendship honestly) who once told me when he was in a funny mood that he would “lie to whoever he needed to in order to save his ass.”

Literally said that. Not verbatim, but you get the point.

I also have another friend – from college – who used to pride himself in saying that he could lie to my face and I would never know it.

First of all, dude, I’m gullible. It’s not that hard.

Second of all, that is NOT something to be proud of OR tell someone you were dating. By the way, the “dating” part of our relationship was VERY short-lived. Do I look like a woman who likes to be lied to?  Hell no.

I just don’t get it. Why would you be proud to be able to lie to someone?  Why would you want to?  That destroys trust – as if it isn’t hard enough to garner and keep as it is.

I’ll be the first to admit I have trust issues. I trust people wholeheartedly when they’ve earned it and deserved it, but once that’s destroyed, it’s very hard for me to let myself be fooled again. I’m not a big fan of being a fool – in case you never caught onto that about me.

Anyway, back to the article. I just find it disturbing. I talk to so many of my friends via text now because we’re all so busy. Sometimes that is the easiest way for us to catch up, and I love that we can stay in contact that way. It just bothers me to think that some people choose to use it to lie because it’s a medium that is so impersonal. BTW, I’m not calling my friends liars. My friends rock – except for the two guys mentioned above. They’re kind of questionable really. BOY can I sure pick em

By the way, I love that it includes that people are more enraged when they find they’ve been lied to via text. You know why?  Because you trust that someone won’t use the impersonality of a text message to betray your trust. That’s why. You trust people to be honest – and sometimes they aren’t, and it hurts.

So what do you do? Do you stopping trusting people altogether?  No. Because that’s crazy, and if you do that, you’ll become one of those crazy paranoid people. What you do is….

Well I don’t know.

I guess you trust people and hope they’re not the people mentioned in this article.

Now I’m not sure that’s where I meant to go with this post or where you thought it would go, but I think the overall idea was to get you thinking….

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post a funny picture of a cat. Who knows?  Crazy stuff just happens in my world.