Assignment #4: Option 1

There I was all ready to throw both a lie and a truth at someone through the lean media of instant messaging. Fortunately, my target did not respond for quite some time, giving me a chance to impeccably formulate my lie. I decided to choose someone that has been a friend since last semester but doesn’t really know that much depth about me, especially what I did this summer. When he finally responded to my “hey there” 13 minutes later, I was ready. We made small chat for a while until the discussion rolled into what we did in our summers. I told him that I had a traveled to three countries in Europe, one being France, with my mother for 10 days. I then added that since I was in the French Alps region, I had to partake in two of their most well-known activities, paragliding and downhill snow skiing. To make an uncommon activity sound more believable, I made sure to explain that paragliding is when you run off a mountain with a parachute and that I specifically flew over Lake Annecy. Then I hastily stated that I went skiing at Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France.

I then asked him which activity he believed. Just as I had planned, he thought that I had gone skiing in the Alps since it is a “legit” and a “more common” activity that people partake in when visiting the Alps. Additionally, he said that I could have searched for paragliding online to make it sound more believable when I did not expand on skiing in the Alps. Thus, I was trying too hard to lie about paragliding versus the way I mentioned skiing sounded very “matter-of-factly” and more realistic. I had successfully deceived my friend in this lean media because I actually did go paragliding over Lake Annecy but never skied in the Alps, I only took a self-guided tour of Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France.

I chose instant messaging because I have always had a hard time lying to others, thus aligning with the Social Distance Theory—people choose the most “socially distant” media to deceive others when lying is uncomfortable. The synchronicity (simultaneously exchanging messages in real-time) of instant messaging allowed me the chance to thoroughly think out both activities and then type them in the same entry so I would not show any hesitation with separate entries. Had this interaction been face to face, my inability to successfully lie would have been apparent because of my tendency to display “faulty” nonverbal cues when I lie, such as hesitating, stumbling on my words, or speeding up my speech.

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