This is the magic of some lies, and some of the liars who tell them. We willingly conspire in our own deception because of the way it makes us feel, and the comfort it brings. It’s even used as the inspirational finale of the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street. “Which is worse: a lie that draws a smile or a truth that draws a tear?”. In the last decade, we’ve decided, quite firmly, to choose the lie. After all, who wants what Al Gore described as “inconvenient truth” when you can willingly suspend your disbelief and go along with promises of the moon and the stars, delivered yesterday and paid for by someone else? [...]
This trend for unreliable narrators feels like part of the same phenomenon that enables people who play this game to make it to the top. We are now caught in a permanent twilight where every fact can be questioned, every truth undermined. Photos and videos can be faked. Every anecdote is questioned with the accusation that it “didn’t happen”. Social media has been a powerful force for the democratising of information but it’s also made it harder to tell what’s true and what’s false.[...]
We love being sucked into the dramatic aura of an Amy or a Boris: into a vortex where we are released from the gravitational pull of the truth. We never really believe them. But we suspend our disbelief because it is convenient and comfortable. It offers us a chance to play out the fantasy of being able to shape our own reality: to say that this is so simply because I say it is. We get to be Gods for a moment. How can uncomfortable truths ever compete?
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