“No One To This Day Believes Me”: 30 Bizarre Things People Swear To Seeing

Some of the entries and stories you'll read here are sardonic and humorous. But other people really shared some personal stories – some so crazy that their friends or loved ones refused to believe them. But if people don't believe you in real life, they're even less likely to believe you on the Internet, right?

Face-to-face interaction is different from communication online, and it impacts lying as well. Even in 2004, researchers studied the effect of technology on the ways we communicate and lie when socializing through different mediums. Interestingly, back then, they found that people lied most when talking on the phone and the least through email. Instant messaging and real-life conversations had similar rates of lying.

David M. Markowitz revisited this study recently in 2021. With many more ways of digital communication at people's disposal nowadays, it's certainly interesting to see if the patterns have changed. Interestingly, the researchers found that people still lied the most through "synchronous media" – the phone and video chat.

When people interacted face-to-face, it was considerably high, too. Communication using the slower and non-recorded media had the lowest rates of the participants lying. Such forms of communication include texting, email, and social media.

All in all, the tendencies remained similar. People still say they lie more when having a real-life conversation and that they lie the least when their communication is recorded (e.g., email, text messaging.)

But there are a few things to keep in mind when talking about this research. We have to consider the type of interactions that happen in different media. Email, for example, is most often reserved for work correspondence. Naturally, people have more incentive to be truthful and transparent here.

We're generally less likely to believe people nowadays, especially on social media. At least, that's what most of us think, right? Markowitz also writes that the common misconception that people lie on the Internet like there's no tomorrow is simply not true. There is no sufficient data to support that claim, he says. 

However, a study in 2016 explored the stereotype that "everyone lies on the internet." They found that people lie on social media in order to present themselves better. "They wanted to be cooler. They wanted to be more beautiful. They wanted to be sexier," one of the authors, Professor Michelle Drouin, told CBC.

"They wanted to give an appearance of a life that was better than the life that they were leading." However, many people also lie just because that's the standard – "everyone on the internet lies."