QotD: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

We tell white lies every day, but have you ever told a big lie, and if so, why did you do it? Confess!
Submitted by Sophie.

Well, what the hell.  I guess I can talk about it, though I'm not very proud of it.  I'm a liar.  I lie all the time.  Big ones, small ones.  I lie for no reason at all most of the time.  Although I can somewhat trace the origins of this behavior, I don't really know why I do it.  I don't do it (usually) to keep myself out of trouble.  It's more like a game, like to see if anyone will notice.  Usually, people don't.  Partly, it's because a lifetime of routine practice has made me really good at it.  Partly, it's also that since I have some weird things going on with my affect--I believe I have said here before that my emotional functions are not all optimized, or something like that, and they're not; they malfunction routinely, worse than Windows even--my affect lies with me.  Er...if you see what I mean.  My affect is so good at this by now, too, that I wouldn't be surprised if I could fool Robert DeNiro's character in Meet the Parents.  And a big part of it I've come to realize is that most people won't notice most lies because most people will believe what they want to believe--and even hear what they want to hear--anyway, no matter what comes out of my mouth.

Other than my parents, though, I don't lie to people I love.  Well, sometimes I fail to tell them things which they might or might not consider important.  My mother calls these "lies of omission."  But for the most part, I think I'm pretty good with people I care about.  I try to be.  It's a little bit like breaking a lifetime bad habit, though, as if lying were some kind of narcotic.  I suppose it is, in its way, some kind of archaic defense mechanism that just became a reflex.

I try not to lie to my parents anymore, either, but of course that's where this whole business began, so it's especially hard to break that habit.  Like I said, it's usually not to keep myself out of trouble or anything, though.  It's just all very stupid. 

I don't lie on GinBaby either, for what it's worth.

I suppose I've told some big lies, although most of the lies I can remember telling are inconsequential, unless you buy the Kantian argument that any instance of lying degrades the ultimate truth value of language--which in a post-Derridean world seems a little goofy anyway, no?

Hmmmm...so I think the big confession here is really that I lie habitually and with little rhyme or reason.  Or I used to.  I don't do it so much anymore because when you think about it, it's a rather ridiculous habit.  I don't think there are any really big lies to confess to per se.  Seems like a bit of a letdown, no?