Tag Archives: learn to lie

Learn to Lie #10: True or False

After all this time, I’ve been teaching you how to step away from the truth. But here I am in this post, teaching you that lying does not necessarily oppose truth.

Sure, you’re not telling the truth, but all believable lies are in some way rooted in truths.

If you told an outrageous lie like you won $50 million from the lottery, you would need some sort of evidence to back up your claim. You can’t just say you won all this money and not have proof to show your friends or family that it’s real. They would want things from you, they would ask you why you’re not spending your money on travelling, or buying a new house, new car, new clothes.

Whereas if you told a lie that was in someway rooted to a truth, something related to something that actually happened in real life, it would be more believable.

Sometimes it can be difficult to separate fiction from truth. Sometimes we choke up and accidentally tell a lie when we meant to tell the truth, or vice versa, we tell the truth when we meant to tell a lie.

It can become confusing when we tell so many lies over so many years that it becomes hard to differentiate what’s true and what’s false.

Sometimes we get caught up in all these lies that we’ve told that truth becomes a lie and lies become true.

Reality is a fickle thing and everything that we do or say gets jumbled in our head when we try to recall something from the past that will inform us of our present.

To this, I say remember the most fundamental rule of any life lesson: KISS

Keep it simple, stupid.

If we get caught up in a bunch of lies that don’t connect to each other and come around to bite us in the ass, we’re screwed, and our reputation is over. Everything we’ve worked for has been for nothing and no one will ever believe you again.

They’ll remember that one time they caught you in a lie and they’ll keep their distance; not wanting to get close to you, not wanting to share anything with you, not wanting to trust you.

Your life will be over.

So let’s prevent this from happening and face up to your consequences of telling the truth. You don’t want to be that person. Tell the truth when it matters.

Learn to Lie #9: Retail Experience

If you’ve worked in retail before or know the ins and outs of shopping, then you must know that everything has been fabricated to make you believe this or that.

All advertisements have been carefully crafted and honed by marketing experts in order to attract your attention to sell you something, whether it’s the latest trend in jeans or the best tasting juice in the market. Companies want you to buy their product, and in order for them to do this, they need to lie to you.

Have you ever seen a fast food commercial that showed you the most perfect, juicy, delicious, voluptuous, colourful hamburger in existence? Did you crave that burger later on when you were out hungry? Did you go to that fast food joint and buy that burger only to find that it wasn’t anything like it looked in the commercials, instead it was a sad, greasy lump of meat and bread?

Take this infomercial for the FABU-FIT-ME for example:

There’s nothing remotely true about this infomercial, in fact it’s not a real product you can buy.

This is what I’m talking about when I say companies lie to you. It’s nothing new, and you’ve probably %100 knew about it before I even began to think about including it as a learn to lie post, but I’m here to make you aware of what you’re already experiencing in your life.

In retail, they do the same thing:

When you walk into a store, browsing for an update in your shirt collection, a sales person comes up to you and asks if you need any help.

You’re in the midst of feeling the material of a shirt that caught your eye but weren’t too committed to, she takes note of this and then says the following:

“I love that shirt! I bought one just the other day and I’ve been wearing it almost everyday since! I even bought one in another colour! I feel like it’s one of those items that will never go out of style, you know?”

You probably get this all the time if you go shopping often. Sales associates pump out the bullshit at any opportunity they get. I work in retail and I know for a fact I do this.

I get a lot of customers asking if I’ve tried a product or if I know if this is good. If I know it’s an absolute shitty product, I will tell them the truth to spare them the hardship of wasting the money they could’ve spent on something better. However, I’m only human and I don’t try every product in the store and so I can only guess at how great something is judging by the price and the brand.

I will straight up tell my customers that the product they’re holding is a very popular product and is wonderful and it has never been brought back for a refund.

If you want to start learning to lie, retail is a great way to start.

Even if you don’t want to work in retail, being an aware customer is also a good way to start. Simply by asking “where can I find jackets?” when you’re not really looking for jackets at all.

The lesson here is lying happens everywhere, people lie to you to get you to spend money. And if you don’t start lying back, you’ll inevitably end up in this endless cycle of buying into the lies these big corporations are feeding you.

Learn to Lie #8: Keeping your Distance

Over the years of trying to avoid people I don’t like, I’ve learned some techniques about how to avoid people. I think these techniques will be helpful towards our goal of learning how to lie even if it doesn’t necessarily teach us about lying.

In order to keep up a truthful appearance, it’s best if we keep our distance and not let people get too close to us so that they don’t know our true personalities.

  • Don’t make eye contact.

If you make eye contact with someone you know in passing that you don’t want to talk to, they will be less likely to notice you and walk over to you to talk to you, making it easier for you to keep up appearances as you will not have to risk getting caught lying.

  • Wear headphones

Wearing headphones in a public space or even in a shared space like school will ensure that people will be less likely to bother you because they will notice that you have closed yourself from talking to people, unless they’re really annoying and they bother you anyways because they see that you’re only listening to music and not preoccupied by anything else, which leads me to my next point:

  • Look busy

Occupying yourself with readings / homework / texting will be a guaranteed way of getting people to stop bothering you. If they see that your mind is elsewhere and you’re too busy to focus on anything else (i.e. stressed out), they will note this and turn the other way.*

*This does not guarantee those really bothersome people will not stop coming up to you, but for the majority of people, it will %100 work.

Learn to Lie #7: Sharing is Caring

In teaching you how to lie to people, I need to teach you how to know what to say and what not to say.

When you are speaking to someone you don’t know very well, they key to starting off is to not share so much about yourself at the beginning of the relationship. Not only does this help keep the mystery but it also entices people to want to know more about you.

Sharing too much all at once can lead to revealing too much about your personal life and leading people to know more about yourself than you intended (or perhaps that’s what you intended). Coming from personal experience, I have always been turned off by people who like to share every little detail about their morning commute or their boring day at work. It’s okay if you tell your best friends about these things, but to an acquaintance, less is best.

However, sharing too little can lead to coming across as cold, hostile, and unwelcoming.

We need to find the middle ground here, share not too much, so that people will get tired of you, but share just enough that people will know you’re still willing to talk about yourself.

This will ensure that your friends will think you’re a normal person capable of sharing things about yourself while still keeping some things to yourself.

Follow this code and you can keep all your secrets hidden, your friends will never be the wiser!

Learn to Lie #6: Stay invisible

Have you ever wanted to crawl into a hole when you’re in class and your professor is waiting in silence for someone to answer the impossibly complicated question she just asked and you’re praying to all the gods that she doesn’t start calling on people to answer?

Same.

It’s like a battlefield in your chest when their eyes scan the room and she makes eye contact with you for a split second.

There are many tips and tricks to avoid this.

  1. Wear dark clothing – Dark clothing is the key to blending in. If you wear bright colours in class, you are more visible. You will catch people’s eyes and you will attract attention. This is a mistake. Dark clothing will make you invisible.
  2. Pretend to be occupied – If you pretend you’re busy writing notes or copying down the lecture slides the professor will believe you’re engaged with the content of the class and will avoid calling on you. They’re looking for people who are clearly avoiding getting called on.
  3. Look confused – But not too confused. You don’t want to come across as wanting to get clarification as to prompt the professor to call on you. You want to look the right amount of confused to make the professor believe you’re still trying to work out the question in your head, but that you will get there eventually.

These short tips will help you avoid getting called on in class and will hopefully calm your anxieties about school. I know it has worked for me!

Happy avoiding your scary prof!