Cybertruth

I was just thinking about issues of truth and falsehood when lo and behold, the paper today turned up a story that tracked my thoughts.

The following assertion was made by Clive Thompson of NYT fame in the Times (I’m paraphrasing): even though one would think that internet communications would breed a large number of falsehoods (after all, who could ever track down a fabricated life?), it seems that people are more likely to lie face-to-face than they are in email or blogs (read about it here).

The cited study would throw any self-respecting survey analyst into a tizzy, but I think the conclusions are credible nonetheless. I can tell on my own survey of an n = one: the other day I told someone that I was really happy to have run into them and that I was hoping to get together very soon. I meant none of it. I would have never said that in an email. At most, I would have sent them best regards or wishes or some such nonsense and then moved on.

It’s not only a question of POLITENESS. In part, it is the act of writing things down – once written, the statement takes on extra potency and irreversibility. And, it also has to do with your own (my own) sense of what this particular forum is meant to accomplish. Why blog or write emails based on lies? If you don’t want to be truthful, you needn’t write much of anything. You can omit, mislead, you can diffuse – you have a wide variety of tools at your disposal. Whereas in conversation, you have no time to ponder, to select the best strategy to get away from an irksome topic. You just lie to high heaven to get yourself out of the hot spot.

I like the fact that Clive Thompson admitted to a blogging fanaticism of sorts (he writes: “I spend about an hour every day [I’m sure he’s not honest here—multiplier of at least two needed] visiting blogs, those lippy [great word!] websites where everyone wants to be a pundit and a memoirist. Then I spend an hour writing my own blog and adding to the cacophony.” Me too [who cares if this is an overstatement or an understatement; it is, for the most part, true].