Samuel Fishwick
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd)I love a good lie. I love fibs, cheats, porkies and flubs. I love your hoaxes and your pranks. We all lie. What bores me is the pearl-clutching in the rush to call out every faker. Of course, a good lie is distinct from a bad one. I don’t mean world-ending whoppers like ‘Russia will not invade Ukraine’. I mean vast and silly lies in which no one gets hurt. My rules for lying are as follows 1) never hurt anyone 2) make it funny 3) never complain, never explain; unless rules one and two have been breached.
Clearly, no one should get harmed — the case of Elizabeth Holmes, who’s dodgy blood-testing kits misdiagnosed millions of Americans, is an example of a bad lie. No one should take a hit in the pocket, either, unless their gold Rolex keeps falling off.
If no one lied, we’d have nothing to talk about. Besides, liars are fascinating. Anna Delvey, far right, the society swindler of New York’s glitterati and subject of Inventing Anna, is currently top of Netflix’s ‘most watched’ charts. Partygate, the sloshing suitcase of rolling drama at No 10, kept us going throughout winter. Without lies, we’d never get on. “Yes, I remembered to do the shopping.” “Sam, you look amazing in that orange jumper.” “Howling!!!”, you WhatsApp a colleague, your lips pursed.
I have nothing but admiration this week for Jason Lee, the turtle necked chief executive of US pop culture tabloid Hollywood Unlocked. After the Queen tested positive for with Covid on Tuesday, he exclusively revealed “Socialites, it is with our deepest regret” that “Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has died”, going as far as to cite a “source close to the Palace” (she did not, the Palace clarified).
Artful liars deserve our respect. It’s fiendishly difficult to tell a good one. Brain-imaging studies have contributed to the view that lying generally requires more effort than telling the truth and involves the prefrontal cortex. Lying requires far more cognitive resources. Lying in young children, which starts aged four or five, is a sign that they have mastered some important cognitive skills. In a pioneering 2001 study, the late neuroscientist Sean Spence tested this idea, placing patients in an MRI brain scanner and asking them to answer yes or no questions. The brain worked far harder when lying. Think of lying as brain training, like your daily Wordle.
Why do we censor casual lies? Again, not the whoppers. The better we understand lying, the easier we find it to spot those who would willingly deceive us. A lie can be a delight. My late grandfather wooed my granny on long walks in South Africa, pointing out the exotic plumage of the Canton Booby and the Jumping Tit. It was only years later, when she was pointing out the unfortunate bird to an ornithologist, that the prank became clear. A dupe can delight beyond the grave. We all love liars, if we’re honest.
Learning to lie, and to spot them, is how we grow. The trick is knowing when to lie. The other nice thing about lying? You can tell yourself everything is going to be fine. And everything will. Trust me. Would I lie to you?
