You've Got Mail!

I am flabbergasted. Not at the news that people tend to lie on line, but that some professor actually researched the issue and published a paper about his findings.

Stunning revelation, that people are more likely to lie or, shall we say, stretch the truth a bit, the more removed they are from face to face conversation. No shit! Here's another hypothesis (although I'm not a respected sociologist, so take it with a grain of salt): it's a lot easier to say all kinds of ridiculous things when you're instant messaging someone or when you're emailing someone than when you're looking that person in the eye. Yep, I bet if I conducted a really scientific study with a statistically relevant sample I'd prove that to be true. Too bad I am not up for tenure anywhere; I could publish a rockin' paper, add another line or two to my resume.

We've all done it. Settled scores via email. Told soon to be ex friends what we really think of them in a text. Expressed deep love or irrepressible hatred in a faceless chat. Then there are the more subtle deceptions. The Facebook pictures that suggest we are forever smiling, forever surrounded by loving friends, always raising our red Solo cups in a perpetual toast to our happy lives. Our profiles are carefully tailored to reveal only what we want people to know. Where we've worked, the charities we support, the schools we've attended (even though many of us spent so much of our time there in a drug induced haze -- or, in my case, a bulimic stupor -- we barely remember what our major was). Nobody would ever guess that their deliriously happy looking and well-credentialed Facebook pals really spend most of their time feeling lonely and lost and pissed off at everybody and sprawled on the couch watching bad television.

Sounds a bit negative, I know. Maybe we should just accept the bullshit and be thankful that all this electronic communication at least keeps us social and connected. We live in a world where nobody really needs to leave home. Hook us up to the Internet and we can work and shop and find out what's going on in the world without ever getting out of our pj's. And the little white lies? Well they make us all sound a bit more interesting, and what's so bad about that? It's not as if we're completely distorting the truth (except, that is, if we're on a dating site, but it still beats spending evenings in a bar).

So, to the professor who took some precious grant money and wasted it on proving the obvious, I despise you, I think you're a fraud, I refuse to read your stupid research paper. (But if I run into you in Starbucks, I will tell you how brilliant you are and ask you for an autographed copy of your work.)