Deception

Deception is prevalent in every aspect of our lives. Deception can come from a vast number of sources in our lives.  Because there are now so many mediums to communicate, there are even more opportunities and tactics to employ deception. Deception has been made an easier art in some ways and a more difficult one in others. It is in human nature to remain wary of deception and stay on alert for signs of it.

 

This got me thinking to just how large of a scale deception actually functions on. The information we receive from our government, the media, teachers, our peers, and even our family are subject to wariness. The simple advertising we observe on a daily basis is the product of mass companies deceiving our eyes and ears. We all know about those photo shopped models and airbrushed images. But then there’s something as basic as a McDonald’s commercial. I have never in my life seen the food advertised by McDonald’s in their actual stores. The images we see never match reality let’s face it. So why do we knowingly permit the government, the news, and massive corporations to doop us? When someone close to us is dishonest with us we take it quite personally. So what’s the difference?

 

When I think of personal deception I think of two specific people. A pretty horrible ex- boyfriend and an even worse ex-best friend. A boyfriend and a best friend—two people you place an immense amount of trust in. These are some of the most central people in your life that you share things with intimately. What you aren’t supposed to share, however, is them with one another. It began as a rumor, as all things do. A rumor I immediately brushed off without even bothering initiating confrontation or question. No, they would never do that to me, not them. But then the rumors continued. Eventually I had to ask. Both my boyfriend and best friend looked me dead in the eye, took my hand, and told me there was no reason to worry and nothing was going on. Months went by. Jokes were made about how ridiculous the concept of the two of them together was. Every single time the topic arose I was reassured with love and compassion. I felt safe with these people, confident in the connection we had built to one another. I probably should have studied the cues of a liar a little more closely. As we discussed in class, one negative side of social media is the permanence of it. We are blessed and cursed to live in an era where what we type out on a screen never actually goes away. These two fine people had shown me their phones and messaging sites to ensure me they could not have collaborated anything without communication. Those messages that were deleted remained in this great thing called an iCloud backup that was created before the deletion of the messages. So when one of them got a new phone that received the information from that back up, those dirty messages were brought back to life. Talk about being crushed. These were the people on my side, on my team, supposedly for any and everything. They lied to protect my feelings, which people often do for people they care about. But what makes it possible for people to lie to each other? Is it a genetic predisposition that allows some people to feel guilt and remorse less? Or is it a learned behavior?

 

To be deceived by people close to you brings shame, hurt, embarrassment, and so many other negative emotions. But when we see those Big Mac ads we feel no sort of resentment. When basically analyzed it would appear to be a double standard. We continue to permit and encourage the internet to feed lies to us (ahem Wikipedia ahem) and we embrace the air brushed beautiful people we see. I think deception needs to be evaluated much more broadly but also secularly. Deception is only getting easier with media use. It is so much easier now to hide things and fool people. Sure, social media also