Bashir: But the point [of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"] is, if you lie all the time, nobody's going to believe you, even when you're telling the truth. Garak: Are you sure that's the point, doctor? Bashir: Of course, what else could it be? Garak: That you should never tell the same lie twice.
The thing about truth and deceptions is that they are always of a certain kind.
If only you could recognize them before they arrive... Here are a few hints.
First, recognize honest intent, whether expressed as the plain truth or a technical falsehood. Possibilities include:
- Cassandra Truth: A truth that ought to be believed, but isn't.
- Metaphoric Truth: 'I am a child at heart', 'The Earth is our mother', 'All men are brothers' -- all are knowing falsehoods spoken without intent to deceive. My father is not my brother, and my mother does not weigh 6.5 hexillion tons, but no one would take such statements literally -- well, almost no one.
Sub tropes of Truth:
Second, learn the myriad shades of deception, purely for self-defense, of course.
O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to ...
do the stuff we're talking about here.
- False Reassurance, a lie that is the truth in its Exact Words.
- Outright Lie: 'I am trustworthy', 'The Earth is mine to sell', 'All men can be immortal, if they drink my special tonic' -- all are falsehoods knowingly spoken with intent to deceive. This is the trademark of the Con Man and the schemer, resorted to by anyone covering up a Big Secret. However subtle they may be, Pull The Thread and they collapse.
- The Big Lie: Repeating a colossal (and frequently blatant) untruth, as loud and as often as you can, will make it easier to believe -- because no one would conceive that anyone would distort the truth so boldly and outrageously. First stated by Lenin as "a lie repeated often enough becomes truth"; named by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, popularized by and associated with Joseph Goebbels, and famously codified in English by the WWII Office of Strategic Services when compiling Hitler's psychological profile.
- Spin: 'I may look human, but looks are only skin-deep', 'The Earth is doomed', 'No one who has drunk my tonic has ever died' -- all carefully selected truths, intended to deceive, the hallmark of advertisers and politicians. Expect anyone unable to lie (due to magic, Applied Phlebotinum, etc.) to be good at this.
- Sarcastic Confession: A truth that will not be believed. Often used to support the Masquerade, this both deflects attention from the truth now and makes one less willing to accept the truth later.
- You Said You Would Let Them Go: A villain lies to someone to get them to go along with a plan that will ultimately hurt those that they care about, or otherwise makes a promise that he has no intention of keeping.
Subtropes of Lies:
Finally, remember this is just the start. Deception can be layered on deception, true lies cloaking misleading truths, until not even the trickster can tell which way up his.
