How do you know somebody is lying to you?
In short, you don’t. You’ll only be certain once you are certain. Jumping into the “I believe nobody” is very short-sighted, as grouping people into liars and truth tellers based on their social status, job, or nationality will not help you spot the liars. Politicians are not liars, even if some politicians lie. Women are not liars, even though some women lie. Everybody lies at times, but that doesn’t make everybody “a liar.”
Gut instinct should make you cautious and suspicious of an INDIVIDUAL, not a group of people. Even just because one person is lying, doesn’t mean their best friend is. They might have been lied to, too… And they may be too loyal and gullible to notice even big holes in their friend’s story.
What does a person feel is justified in general?
Even truth-tellers lie or hide some truths, but their motivation for lying is “this is not your business” rather than the attempt to deceive you. That said… Everyone who lies does so because they find it justified. People never do anything they don’t think is justified, and you’ll have to know what they find to be justified. That conversation might be much more revealing than what they actually lie to you about.
Is it OK to lie to make friends? Is it OK to lie to collect a welfare check, and if so, under what conditions? Is it OK to lie about getting a job or a promotion or keeping a job, and if so, under what conditions? Is it OK to lie on a date to make yourself a little more interesting? Is it OK to lie to your parents so you can sneak away to drink and have sex? Is it OK to lie to save another guy from a conviction, maybe even the death penalty, if you’re opposed to capital punishment by principle?
First: learn about narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.
Once you learn the basics of narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders, you’ll be lot harder to lie to. You’ll notice things; how they have to lie to get attention; they can make themselves a victim or a winner, depending on which works better. They can act entirely pathetic just to force you to help them. Whatever they need to do to make you work for them – for free, of course. To do their dirty work for them and to protect them from whatever they may be afraid of… Such as looking “unprotected and vulnerable” to strangers. You’ll learn to notice how the help only ever goes one way or comes back in some weird, bizarre format you may not even recognize as “being helpful.”
Know that some of these people are giving a performance of a lifetime to an audience of one; themselves, and the fact nothing makes sense to anyone else watching is because they “edit out” the “preparation bits” and “stage sets” from the “final cut” in their brain. They have the ability to ignore “the ugly bits” of their lives, and that makes these people quite easy to spot: they lie all the time, but you’re usually more than capable of noticing it. You just wonder who do they think they’re fooling – they’re fooling themselves.
You’ll notice they remember your previous conversations very differently to you. “You said” things you know you’d never actually say. (For your own benefit, NEVER again delete an email written by a human, IM, chat logs, nothing. Keep them all to the day you die.)
Not all untruths are lies.
There are people who are spreading things that are not true, but they believe that stuff to be true. As they don’t know they’re lying, they’re hard to spot without scrutinizing the contents of the message. Just because someone is well-intentioned doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth. They may have swallowed an entire ball of yarn spun by someone else and are now repeating lies they, themselves, believed to be true.
“Figure me out”
There is one, rather cute lie that some people tell; it’s not in the purpose of deceiving, really, but an invitation for another person to figure them out. They’re telling funny, cute little lies, at least what they consider funny cute little lies, that seem like obvious lies to them. Still, considering that there are people who live those stories every day, saying “I’m an actress in Hollywood,” to them sounds like “yeah ok, so are half my friends,” and they don’t even think of it as a possible “cute little lie.” That, to them, sounds like a full blown utter lie, and an attempt to scoop in under false pretences, right?
The person fibbing might think it’s obvious she’s not glamorous like all those other Hollywood actresses but if you’re used to Hollywood actresses, you know that off screen they maybe perfectly ordinary looking, and in no way remarkable, so they buy the lie as “Mkay, what have I seen you in?” She thinks he’s still playing, and says they were in “Game of Thrones” because they don’t remember the names of any smaller movies or series, and then say they were one of the extras or something. Again, that makes sense to someone who has a lot of friends in the business and they’ll just go: “Ok, I don’t think I remember you, but maybe we’ll see it one day.” The fibber thinks they’re toying and cheerfully replies: “Absolutely!”
Therefore, not all “figure me out” lies land quite right, but it can be intended as a come-on and find out my cutsie lies.
Parody turning to a role model
On the Internet, it is entirely possible for something starting to snowball from a parody to reality and back again. Imagine someone doing a parody of transwomen. Then, someone who wants to think of themselves as a woman, but looks nothing like one, takes that as a genuine role model and transitions… Then another guy picks it up, creates a parody on that one… And eventually we found ourselves in a situation where it is impossible to tell parody from reality.
Fake judgment
There is one lie that is very important for content creators to be aware of; false criticism. Whenever someone gains prominence there are people who want to gain that person’s attention and then force them to react. It maybe to “call them out” in public, to gain followers from that interaction, or to force that person to react to what they are saying by contacting them in private to “clear it out.” This interaction is designed to make a friend out of a prominent person, as they will be forced to a friendship that proves they are not vindictive or unforgiving. Once they get a person to this position, they will always be able to control that person by accusing them of “still being sore about that thing…”
The best way to react to fake judgment is to ignore it as much as possible, or to address the accusations in generic terms, NEVER naming any specific individual making claims. Do not react to anything only one person is saying about you, unless that one person is heard… Like Amber Heard. If their false accusations are made widely public, then react, but do not call out the person making the claims, but the people repeating the stories without proof or so much as a phone call to you. NEVER address the person making false claims directly, but address people whose opinion of you matter to you… And a liar’s opinion should never matter to you.
Bad people making frenemies.
There are people who “perform pranks” on new members of a group. When someone is rising in status, they maybe keen on testing their fortitude and ability to be a member of a group. If you’re feeling that someone you wanted friendship or a job with or similar is treating you like dog shit, the likelihood that it’s going to change is 0 to none.
There’s a culture in certain circles where “friends” are your biggest enemy. It’s just that they protect each other from “the outsiders” as they fear nothing as much as “a stranger.” Ironically, these same people will completely trust whomever they consider a friend, and an stranger can turn into a “friend” in one sitting, even if there’s absolutely no reason to trust them.
A group like this will lie to every outsider while protecting anything that happens on the inside of the ring… Abuse, rape, murders, you name it. A group like this will hide what they know and handle things internally, so to speak. Being a member of such group – especially an aspiring member, is a life-threatening thing to be.
A person being silenced could be telling the truth… Or lies.
Let me ask you a question: Someone is spreading lies about you on a channel you have the power to shut down. Will you do it? Yes. Someone is spreading your secrets – the truth about you – on a channel you have the power to shut down. Will you do it? Perhaps not, because you don’t want to appear suspicious, but you might… You would at least want to.
Therefore, if someone is trying to silence another person, there’s two possible reasons for it: They’re lying, or they’re revealing lies. Trying to shut someone up is NOT a good indicator of whether someone is being lied about or told the truth about. You need proof, and if you are being lied about, the wise, yet not very pleasant thing, is to provide evidence that proves your innocence.
Seeking attention.
One very common motivation for a person to lie is attention seeking. They want to be seen as a victim or a hero, one or the other, and the show surrounding the victimhood or the heroism can be either mostly true or completely fake. For instance, consensual sex not leading to marriage can be painted in new colours by a disgruntled girlfriend. This might be a past life strategy: “He has to make an honest woman out of me; I’ll say he had sex with me, and he has to marry me.” But modernized, “he raped me, you’ll have to forgive me for being a slut.”
Pay attention to extreme emotional display. Truth tellers rarely emote a lot when they are going through a traumatic event for instance. They don’t really wish to relive it. They tell you the facts, what happened, but they’ll try to avoid the emotions linked to the event. Liars are all emotion. Nothing that dramatic has never happened to anyone else before – or if it has, that person is notably famous or legendary and thus “directly comparable” to the liar.
Speaking of emotion: Preparedness to lie.
When a person is prepared to answer questions about what they’ve done, they expect to be arrested or caught and they’ll have to have an explanation to everything. They may, thus, appear very calm in a stressful situation they’ve prepared for for a long time. Also, someone who has never done anything illegal or against the rules may also appear calm, because they believe it will all be sorted out in the end.
A person who does not trust authority will react with stress even when innocent, and a person who has no idea what they’re being accused of may react with an utter panic, when they’re being pulled aside to be accused of something they have no knowledge of. How can you even prove you don’t know something that you simply don’t know about?
Is there another reason, other than the assumed, that someone might be lying?
While in custody, Jodi Arias was told that if she doesn’t start co-operating, she’d get the electric chair. So she spun a ridiculous story about how she killed Travis Alexander. People were screaming laughter; “She’s lying.” No shit! She tried to avoid the death penalty. Who wouldn’t lie in a situation like that? (I have a much better suspect for the murder; I’d take a look at his other girl friend and her friends; all too happy to point a finger at Jodi-the-outsider directly after the murder. It wouldn’t be the first thing a normal person does on a mere hunch or personal dislike to accuse another person of murder, unless they’re clearly being framed for that murder.)
When you suspect someone of a lie, let them keep going.
Spotting a liar isn’t a game show. You don’t have to pin anyone down at the first dubious thing they say. Just let them keep lying and see where the lies lead them. Eventually, they’re going to slip up and reveal the truth. The more suspicious you act, the more carefully they’re going to keep hiding their lies. Just pretend to believe everything they say, and even give them the benefit of the doubt, while making sure you don’t put yourself in a bad situation on the basis of those lies.
Evidence is the king.
OK, you find a camera with pictures of the accused followed by the dead body of the victim right at a murder scene that someone also tried to clean up. A bit too convenient, don’t you think? Why would anyone start cleaning up a place and then leave a camera full of incriminating photos laying about… Even if you were planning to come back later and found the place swarming with police and you needed to run, you’d still take care of the most obvious pieces of evidence, a camera with photos full of you naked (alone) and the victim dead, wouldn’t you?
Having said that, good evidence is good evidence. It’s just that you can’t brush things aside and just say “this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in real life.” Ooh yes it does. And because people believe things like this don’t happen in real life, not in your town anyway, it’s relatively easy to fake evidence without police looking too deep into even the most glaringly obvious fake evidence.
Don’t talk your hunch down.
If you are usually a trusting person, and you get a bad vibe about something, it’s not wise to talk yourself out of whatever your instinct is saying. Follow up on it. Dig a little.
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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.
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