@Lissa Lysik'an made a really awesome and interesting post on tumblr about the meme that autistic folks can't lie, and it started a bunch of conversation about who lies and when and why or why not, and how it feels when you do. I didn't want to jump in there because a) tumblr and b) not officially diagnosed and i didnt want to step where i shouldnt. BUT! Im personally interested in both ND and NT perspectives on the subject, so. Please let me pick your brains! 1) For reference, do you consider yourself NT, ND, or something else? 2) Do you ever lie? Under what circumstances? Why or why not? 3)How does it feel when/if you do lie? NINJA EDIT! 4) How do you define lying?
1. Just got a diagnosis of autism this month, so. 2. I can lie, but if I think about it then people can tell. If I say it automatically, no one can tell. There is not predicting the situation that either will happen in. I do what makes sense to me logically - sometimes this is truth, sometimes lying. It's usually automatic. 3. I don't get any bad feelings, but I do prefer to tell the truth.
1) I am not autistic, I am not diagnosed with anything except ADD 2) I'm trying to make a point lately of lying less. I frequently lie automatically, in a way that makes me look back later and go, "Wait, that's not true, why did I say that?" As far as I can describe it, sometimes a lie is closer to the surface of my brain than the truth, and so is easier to say. So, I say it. 3) I do not feel any particular way about lying.
My answers: 1) For reference, do you consider yourself NT, ND, or something else? Probably somewhere on the spectrum? Certainly brainweird of several varieties. 2) Do you ever lie? Under what circumstances? Why or why not? I do. Usually either because a) im just giving the 'right' answer to a social formula. Like answering "good! :)" when asked how im doing even if its a shitty day just so people will stop talking to me. Or else b) Im giving an approximately true statement because the actual truth is hella complicated and i am totally shit at getting all that down to few enough words to still be socially appropriate. For example, I often refer to my niece and nephew when talking to people, but they're actually the children of mine and my husband's good friends who live with us. We eat together and help them with homework and do each other's laundry; we're a family. But we aren't technically actually related. Just. To explain the actual technical relationship I'd have to explain our whole family structure and frankly most people don't need to know or honestly even care, so. @jacktrash had an example, c) like if an abusive ex comes looking for someone, he'll lie then. I...would, if I were really pressed? But most likely I'd just tell them to get fucked and refuse to tell them anything. I strongly prefer to avoid subjects rather than outright lie about them, and am not always above being hellaciously rude to do so. 3)How does it feel when/if you do lie? Its annoying. I often do A without even processing it and then maybe i wanted to tell them the real truth and now its weird? This morning i crossed coffee-pot paths with my ashenbro and he asked how i slept. I said "great! :)" and then sorta doubletaked and corrected "no, actually kinda shitty the baby was up all night and i slept in half hour chunks, im rekt today." It sounded really dumb and awkward. B just feels like giving up, like when you just sigh and agree that yes your name is definately actually john or whatever so you don't have to spell your weird name for the barista and hold up the whole line. Its a little degrading and again annoying. C feels like getting backed into a corner and actually makes me angry. The truth matters. People who don't care whether what they believe is true as long as it makes them feel good are baffling and somewhat infuriating to me. Basically i can and will lie to avoid something unpleasant, but it sucks and its always a 'lesser of two evils' thing for me.
1) nd 2) i think i lie most often when there's a question i don't wanna answer and i can't just evade it entirely. and when it's a social situation in which a certain lie is considered the polite answer. 3) when i lie, i think i'm generally like, "can i evade this question? no. goddammit. guess i have to lie. fine." or "no big deal. just gonna give the socially-acceptable line and get out as soon as possible." though were/are times when i felt really smug about lying.
1. my brains not normal but if you mean autistic, idk about that 2. I lie all the time, mostly to make other people feel better, like "I'm fine just tired" and stuff. I also lie to get out of doing stuff I don't want to do, like going out when I'm not feeling social (this hasn't happened in forever) or taking food from others. also I think the thing that "autistic people don't lie" is stupid 3. feels batman. I don't like lying and in general i'll avoid it unless some other principle outweighs it
Might be interesting for people to explain how they define "lying," too. I suspect autistic people would have a more strict, literal definition than allistic people.
1) No formal diagnoses but kind of a poster child for ADD, so. :P 2) As my wife is fond of saying, I lie like a faerie. That is to say, I tend to do my best to say things that are truthful but leave room for inaccurate interpretation when it is inconvenient or counterproductive to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If need be, I will say something that is patently untrue, but it offends my sense of... neatness, I guess? 3) Feels ...Like talking, with a touch more wordcrafting? So sometimes, honestly, a bit of pride at a particularly well-designed turn of phrase, or perhaps some extra focus to make sure my presentation is consistent with what I'm saying, and some extra focus on the person I'm speaking to to gauge their reaction. Related to lying-feelings, as well: it is humiliating to be caught in a lie (I didn't do it well enough and now EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR SHAAAAME), so it is a significant part of why I opt for the technically-true variety of lying. I generally value honesty and forthrightness; I just disagree with the proverb that Honesty Is Always The Best Policy.
Oh, yeah, I love manipulating the truth like that. I don't consider it lying, but I understand why other people might. It is fun and makes me feel clever.
For me lying is saying anything that i dont have a good reason to consider objectively true or that i don't believe myself. So if I haven't confirmed with my mom that she's at temple, but its temple time and i know she usually goes, then "she's at temple" is a lie; the true thing is "she's probably at temple" or "i expect she's at temple," something like that. Because she might have decided fukkit Im going to chill on the beach instead, or something else. Or like, saying I like some food that I don't. "I've never had ____ before; thanks for letting me try it!" gets a lot of use in my neck of the woods. Or if a topic someone wants to talk about is boring, I might say "wow you know a lot about that, please tell me more about (x thing im not going to listen to)" rather than "thats really interesting, what about (x)?" I get that its functionally the same a lot of the time, but. One's annoying and the other is misdirecting someone.
Very much that. And I don't personally consider it a Real Lie, but I understand that that doesn't make the people I do it to feel less lied to if they work it out, so I feel that it's fair to include it. Sort of an acknowledgement of the line about "telling the truth in such a way that it would be more sporting to just lie". And, oddly enough, I have a pretty intense sense of Fair Play, so that matters.
...that one tends to ping me as "if you weren't paying attention to what i actually said thats your fault." But I don't do it to people that i like either so idk. Its not wrong imo but it can be a little mean.
Somehow my definition of "lying" includes the expectations of the person being lied to. I don't consider social niceties, like saying you're doing fine when you're actually not because the person asking is only asking to be polite, lying. I'd say there needs to be an intention to deceive, but that precludes my earlier referenced automatic lies, which don't necessarily have any intent behind them. [shrug] I need to think more on this.
1) For reference, do you consider yourself NT, ND, or something else? ADHD diagnosis, if I'm on the spectrum it's "right on the edge where we're not really sure but w/ enough traits to identify with certain things" 2) Do you ever lie? Under what circumstances? Why or why not? I have lied if I felt the truth was too complicated to explain, or a pain in the ass. For example, being in bed and telling my mom I have brushed my teeth so I wouldn't have to get back up when I was a teenager. Also I have lied about stuff like getting tasks done because I couldn't handle them. (thanks, executive dysfunction.) 3)How does it feel when/if you do lie? It makes me feel incredibly nervous, and I don't like it, but if I think the consequences of telling the truth will be more unpleasant, I will do it. Less so now than when I was a teenager. There's also the fact that I'm TERRIBLE at lying, which people who know me irl can attest too. Too many physical tells and I'm bad at remembering who I've told what. So that alone is a deterrent. But I honestly dislike lying and do it as little as possible. NINJA EDIT! 4) How do you define lying? Saying something you know isn't true as if it were, and not as a joke. I have this problem with job interviews and such, actually. And I have hurt people's feelings by being too blunt before.
Yeah, that used to be the way I looked at it. My view has just shifted over the years. And, to be honest, part of that has been slowly realizing that most people don't really have the same odds of catching me out that, say, my mom did, with the kind of surveillance she kept on all of her kids, so it wasn't really fair to say 'well, you should've been paying attention!' because I'm apparently really good at faking people out that haven't literally known me since I was born, and holding everyone else to the same standards doesn't really make sense. But yeah, turns out a lot of my learned survival skills aren't common to the general population, who knew. >.> It just seemed more and more like an unfair standard to hold people to, or a way of falsely claiming moral high ground when I was intending to deceive and just being clever about not saying anything technically untrue, so I decided to count it as lying still, since that was my intention. And, well, I was raised Catholic, so intentions matter almost as much as if not more than actions.
1) For reference, do you consider yourself NT, ND, or something else? - I'm an epileptic with OCD which falls into the category of neurodivergent. 2) Do you ever lie? Under what circumstances? Why or why not? - Yes, I lie at times. A lot of times it's out of stress and anxiety. Panic lies basically. I occasionally lie to get people out of things or otherwise avoid someone being hurt. Or to avoid conflict I just see no point in engaging. The latter two kinds of lies I find permissible and fine. The panic lying I do not. I've also at times lied specifically to get shit. That I don't find ok at all. This isn't counting when I do it unintentionally and don't notice. Which I'm sure I do a lot. I try to avoid lying under circumstances where I feel it would avoid pain. Because lying to me creates pain in many cases. 3)How does it feel when/if you do lie? - Usually awful. Depending on the type of lie or how I felt prior to it I may feel even worse for it. Guilty and shameful, also fearful that people will discover that I'm lying. NINJA EDIT! 4) How do you define lying? - Saying something you know isn't true for reasons other than a joke. I am generally a very honesty is the best policy person. Generally. There are situations where lying is preferable due to being able to avoid suffering that way or prevent it for others. I do not have any fucking patience for being lied to by others. At all.
Forgot to mention: misgendering and deadnaming people is to me a worse form of lying and I can get visibly more agitated if I have to do those things.
1: might be mildly sociopathic? 2: I lie mostly for entertainment. I'd say that I mostly try to lie only when there's no chance that the listener would believe me, but not to deceive someone. On the other hand, I am fine with deceiving people either through Exact Words or by tone or by saying things that no normal person would bother to say unless they were lying. E.g. "Don't worry, Simon didn't take any of your stuff while you were gone. Nothing at all." I guess there is the lying in the form of pretending I understand when people are explaining things to me that I don't have the background for. That's mostly "oh, okay. Huh." Repeated until they finish talking. I am not sure if I consider this lying per se, but the person explaining often does get the mistaken impression that I know what's going on. 3: Since I don't lie to deceive, I feel pretty comfortable lying. Don't have to pay attention to what you've claimed if no one believes you. The deceiving via truth I am also happy with, because I enjoy the confusion of others and again they don't believe me, but this time I am not even lying. The pretending to understand is going to get me in trouble some day. 4: I divide the situation into saying things that the speaker believes to be false and deceiving the listener. I would call the first one lying, and think that the second one is the more problematic, but also the more difficult to control.
1. I'm not on the spectrum, but I am brainweird so I wouldn't consider myself NT 2. I used to do it a lot more compulsively when I was younger, about pretty much anything and everything because paranoia would trip my "they can't know anything about you" switch when people asked questions. these days when I do it, it's usually because I forgot a task or don't want to be upfront about flat not doing, or if I'm online and creating a new identity whole cloth*. without a reason (usually a person who I can't really lie about my connection to) to be truthful, I tend to lie like hell about myself online, especially if there's no one there who knows me from a prior identity. since I mostly join stuff with Mendacity now, it's cut down a little but the urge is still there. 3. it's anxiety inducing if I feel like someone might be getting close to digging up the truth, but otherwise it doesn't feel like anything. I've gotten so comfortable doing it that it gets about as much emotion from me as doing a menial chore that doesn't take much effort. 4. I define it as "intentionally and explicitly misleading someone, without general social benefits attached." white lies to service people about how my day was don't count (to me) because it's fulfilling a social contract that makes everyone's lives easier in the moment. I don't usually count lying by omission unless it's a pretty drastic change to the intent of the message, so not mentioning that you know where someone is isn't really a lie, while refusing to admit that by "dated a child" you meant "dated someone who was, at one point in their lives, a child" is a pretty hefty lie. *I feel like I should clarify here that I mean "create a new identity" to the lengths of manufacturing age, gender, socioeconomic standing, childhood, sibling status, and location. when I was younger, I used to manufacture whole sibling groups online, and I still pick up ticks from that like firmly establishing a typing style or tone so that deviations from it are believably another person. I don't maintain anything that requires real names/photos for pretty much that exact reason, because I vastly prefer the ability to cut and run with no strings over everything else. it was something my mom encouraged when I was younger, and if she was a little more internet savvy, she'd be doing the same thing instead of engaging in social media through her husband's accounts.
