It doesn’t matter if you’re saving your polite neighbour from the impediment of home truths by mindlessly answering “I’m good, thanks!” when you pass them in the morning, or whether you claim that, if you ever stumbled upon a winning lottery ticket, you’d instantly give 50% of the winnings to a worthy cause – we are all creatures of little white lies. And rightly so, because we’re sure the neighbours don’t really want to hear that your freezer is on the brink of a meltdown (which is now causing you serious concern over the edibility of the chicken you ate last night), and that you don’t want your peers to think you’re a self-centred realist who really just wants to pay off their 1000-year long London mortgage with their £1m prize money. Sometimes, it is simply just easier to portray a happy façade alongside your giving and noble nature and pass some things off as little white lies.
Though we might not like to admit to them (and if you deny it, you’re probably already lying!) here are some common lies that we all try to kid ourselves with.
#NOFILTER
Half – if not more – of the time people say this, they’re almost definitely lying. Even if you haven’t intentionally tweaked your selfies (good for you!), it may be worth considering that most modern Samsung phone cameras automatically enable a level of airbrushing as default for their front-facing cameras. However, if you really do have so few flaws, we’re secretly envious.
“I’m just having one.” Also: “I’m not that drunk!”
Five doubles later and your erratic Snapchat Story says it all.
“I’ll be five minutes!”
The underestimated prediction we all give for the time it takes us to shower, dress, eat, tidy and slay the dragon on our way to meeting our friends. Five minutes, five hours… same thing, right?!
“Sorry, I just didn’t get your message.”
Gone are the days of pending messages and outboxes. Instead, we live in the days of ‘Last seen’, ‘Read,’ and blue ticks. For the sake of letting someone down gently, sometimes it just feels easier to pretend you never got their message but, unfortunately, the blue ticks speak for themselves.
“I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions.”
Seriously, does anyone have this much time in their lives? We’re pretty sure within these lines there’s some small print telling us we’re signing our lives away, but we’ll never know for definite because we can’t be bothered to actually read them.
“Hmm, yeah, that’s a nice one of us all…”
There’s always time for a group photo before embarking on a night out. Half an hour later – and a gallery clogged up with your latest photo shoot – the stranger holding your iPhone 6S has exhausted all manner of angles for the epitome of portraits. You’ve failed to notice that almost two-thirds of the party are caught mid-blink, but the photo is still worthy to be selected for social media because your bodily angle is on top form and your eyebrows are on fleek.
“I don’t know who they are.”
AKA our general response to office gossip about the green-eyed Greek god who has just walked in to the building. Well, none of us are about to admit to already knowing his education and employment history, his likes and dislikes… oh, and the fact that the Facebook photos of him and his beautiful brunette girlfriend stopped being uploaded (at least publicly) in February 2015, so he may now well be single. “So, who are you guys talking about, then?”
