Falseness

The longer the internet lives, the more inescapable a certain trend becomes: the performance of grief. That is, when someone on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, exhibits a hardship for audience consumption. At The Atlantic, Maytal Eyal has an interesting appraisal:

People post videos of themselves crying (or trying not to). Some of these videos moody music; many rack up hundreds of thousands of views. … Influencers and celebrities strip down to what can seem like the rawest version of themselves, selling the promise of “real” emotional connection—and, not infrequently, products or their personal brand.

The weepy confessions are, ostensibly, gestures toward intimacy. They’re meant to inspire empathy, to reassure viewers that influencers are just like them. But in fact, they’re exercises in what I’ve come to call “McVulnerability,” a synthetic version of vulnerability akin to fast food: mass-produced, sometimes tasty, but lacking in sustenance. True vulnerability can foster emotional closeness. McVulnerability offers only an illusion of it.

In my years as a therapist, I’ve seen a trend among some of my younger clients: They prefer the controlled environment of the internet — the polish of YouTube, the ephemeral nature of TikTok — to the tender awkwardness of making new friends. Instead of reaching out to a peer, they’ll turn to the comfort of their phone and spend time with their preferred influencers.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel touched on this impulse while discussing what she calls “artificial intimacy.” She says that these digital connections risk “lowering our expectations of intimacy between humans” and leave us “unprepared and unable to tolerate the inevitable unpredictabilities of human nature, love, and life.”

Putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. But I also worry that by relying mostly on social media to encounter other humans, they’re forfeiting opportunities to develop the skills that could help them thrive in the flesh-and-blood world.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Fake Job Postings Are Becoming a Real Problem.” The article details how these fake postings are crushing the spirits of job seekers:

It’s a common feeling when looking at a job listing online: the title is perfect, the pay is right, and the company seems like a solid place to work. But you also wonder if that job is real.

Lots of job seekers have a story about the postings that linger online but never seem to get filled. Those so-called ghost jobs—the roles that companies advertise but have no intention of filling—may account for as much as one in five jobs advertised online.

The [fake] listings are dispiriting for workers, leading many to distrust potential employers and make a difficult process feel rigged against them. ‘It’s kind of a horror show,’ said one job site search business. ‘The job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.’

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil can crush our souls with false promises and expectations.

Does this sound familiar? You’ve read rave online reviews about a restaurant or hotel and made a reservation. Then you show up and wonder if you’re even in the same place the reviewers visited. That’s when you know: They were fake reviews.

Phony reviews make up a big percentage of the total out there—anywhere from 16% to 40%, according to some estimates. Some fakes are raves by employees, artificial-intelligence software, or people hired to wax poetic about the place. Others are negative write-ups by disgruntled ex-employees or competitors.

The problem is so widespread that the Federal Trade Commission just created a new rule that will seek civil penalties for violators who pay for fake reviews or testimonials. Meanwhile, review platforms and online travel agencies are stepping up their efforts to weed out fake reviews before they ever show up online.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The article in The Wall Street Journal continued by listing six ways to check the validity of online reviews to distinguish a fake review from a true review (such as, “look for a picture,” or “avoid extremes,” and “check the timing of the review”). But how about us? How do we tell the difference between truth and falsehood, good doctrine from bad doctrine?

When officials saw Dustin Nehl pull up to one of the burned-out areas from the Los Angeles Palisades fire, they were tempted to wave him through. Nehl was driving a full-size red fire truck with California plates and American flag decals, and was wearing bright yellow fire gear.

But a firefighter at the checkpoint noticed something amiss, and urged one of the sheriff deputies to check his identification. A background check quickly revealed Nehl’s criminal history, which included a five-year stint in prison for arson. A check of his truck revealed tools that could potentially be used in a burglary. And according to a source within the department, the truck had since been decommissioned from service from a Northern California fire department 30 years prior.

Nehl, along with his wife Jennifer, were arrested on suspicion of impersonating firefighters and unauthorized entry of an evacuation zone. Nehl was not alone in his attempt to impersonate emergency personnel. The week prior, police arrested a man wearing a yellow firefighter’s outfit and carrying a radio. Prosecutors later announced charges for receiving stolen property, impersonating a firefighter, unlawful use of a badge, and unauthorized entry of a closed disaster area.

LAPD chief Jim McDonnell said, “We have people who will go to all ends to do what they do.”

A recent study by The Washington Post has revealed a startling number of cases where innocent people have been accused or arrested for crimes because they were identified through a faulty deployment of AI-driven facial recognition software.

Katie Kinsey is chief of staff for the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law. According to Kinsey, such software is often used to analyze low-quality, grainy surveillance photos or images, and as a result perform demonstrably worse in real-world situations compared to laboratory tests involving crystal-clear, high-resolution images.

Additionally, police often succumb to a phenomenon known as “automation bias,” where people tend to believe that machines or computers are less biased and more trustworthy. This phenomenon, combined with other identification techniques with limited efficacy like witness testimony, often create scenarios where officers hastily jump to conclusions without doing their due diligence. Sometimes officers fail to account for the possibility that innocent citizens might bear physical similarities to criminal suspects. Other times, they rely on the facial recognition hit without using other forensic evidence for confirmation.

For example, a medical entrepreneur named Jason Vernau spent three days behind bars after being arrested for check fraud after police used facial recognition to ID him as a bank customer. In this case, the software was correct; Vernau had been in the Miami bank where the fraudulent check was deposited, but he was there to deposit a legitimate check. Had officers done even a cursory examination of his financial documents, or the time stamps in the security footage, they would’ve ruled him out as a suspect.

“This is your investigative work?” That’s what Vernau asked the detectives who questioned him. “You have a picture of me at a bank and that’s your proof? I said, ‘where’s my fingerprints on the check? Where’s my signature?’”

After Vernau was released, prosecutors later dropped the case, but Vernau said he is still working to get the charges removed from his record.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This story highlights several themes that resonate with biblical narratives, particularly concerning justice, false accusations, and the dangers of relying on flawed systems or human biases.

On October 31, 2024, thousands of people descended upon O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland, to witness a Halloween parade. They waited, and waited some more. It took a while for the crowd to come to an uncomfortable realization: The parade was a hoax.

It started as a false advertisement on a website called My Spirit Halloween, but quickly gained traction online, spreading like wildfire on social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook. Part of the reason why it took off is that the site,"myspirithalloween.com," advertised multiple events, including some that were real. Its promotion of the fake Dublin parade also referenced the legitimate Irish performance group Macnas. To bolster its credibility, the website also included fake reviews, real photos from previous Macnas Halloween events, fake social media pages on Facebook, and other AI-generated text.

As the advertised start time of 7pm rolled around, thousands of people, some dressed in Halloween costumes, had gathered on O'Connell Street, despite the fact that there were no traditional signs of a parade. No streets had been blocked off, no police escorts, no signage, nothing. Videos and photos of the bewildered crowd flooded social media. The incident even disrupted Dublin's tram lines.

Irish police, in an attempt to disperse the crowd, issued a statement: “Please be advised that contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled to take place in Dublin City Centre this evening or tonight. All those gathered on O’Connell Street in expectation of such a parade are asked to disperse safely.”

Industry analysts believe the My Spirit Halloween website exists purely for the purpose of advertising revenue, and probably relies on AI-generated content to generate timely, relevant content. Just like the Spirit Halloween stores that the site references, this story popped up at just the right time to make an impact, then disappeared just as quickly.

Separating fact from fiction is getting harder. Manipulating images—and creating increasingly convincing deepfakes—is getting easier. As what’s real becomes less clear, authenticity is “something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to and judging more than ever.” This is why Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “authentic,” the company announced in November of 2023.

Editor Peter Sokolowski said, “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore. We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”

According to the announcement from Merriam-Webster, “authentic” is a “high-volume lookup” most years but saw a “substantial increase” in 2023. The dictionary has several definitions for the word, including “not false or imitation,” “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character” and “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact,” among others.

Sokolowski said, “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity. What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”

Other words that saw spikes this year include “deepfake,” “dystopian,” “doppelgänger,” and “deadname,” per Merriam-Webster. This year’s theme of searching for truth seems fitting following last year’s focus on manipulation. The 2022 word of the year was “gaslighting,” a term that originated from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton. In the play, a woman complains that the gas lights in her house are dimming while her husband tries to convince her that it’s all in her head.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As technology’s ability to manipulate reality improves, people are searching for the truth. Only the Word of God contains the absolute truth “your word is truth” (John 17:17), as revealed by Jesus, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

From 2015 through mid-2022, Jeffrey Kriv received 51 tickets, but paid only two. Kriv had become adept at beating his tickets in court by telling a particular story explaining his behavior. An investigation by Pro Publica found three specific recent examples:

• “Well, that morning, I broke up with my girlfriend and she stole my car,” said Kriv in January 2021, after being spotted running a red light.
• “Yeah, I broke up with my girlfriend earlier that morning, had a knock-down, drag-out fight, verbally, of course. She took my car without my knowledge,” he told a different judge when fighting a speeding ticket in August 2021.
• “I broke up with my girlfriend that day and she took my car without my knowledge,” said Kriv again in May 2022 while contesting another speeding ticket. “I didn’t get my car back for like three days. But it was her driving the car.”

Pro Publica found that he told a version of this story on at least 44 different occasions, without letting on that he himself worked as an officer for the Chicago Police Department. Kriv was repeatedly reprimanded for misconduct while on the job, including complaints filed by fellow officers. Prosecutors have charged Kriv with four counts of perjury and five counts of forgery. All counts are felonies and are for allegedly lying to judges under oath and providing fictitious police reports.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we deceive others over a long period, we also deceive ourselves into thinking there will be no consequences for our behavior. But that too is a lie. Deeds done in darkness will eventually be exposed to light.

In April 2023, the social media company Twitter, under the direction of its new owner Elon Musk, eliminated its previous verification standards. Since 2009, a blue check mark next to a Twitter account signified a form of verification meant to guarantee a user’s identity. It was used to weed out charlatans impersonating famous or notable people or organizations, and gave users a reliable indicator of authenticity to counter disinformation on the platform.

But under Musk, blue check marks are now exclusively reserved for users who subscribe to Twitter Blue, a premium service. This change has created a crisis for people who tend to rely on the service for newsgathering purposes. For example, the NY Times reported that within 24 hours, there were eleven different accounts impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.

One researcher tweeted, “This is going to be chaos for emergency services.” Because Twitter is often a source of credible information during national disasters or other forms of local crisis, the change will make it harder for people to receive emergency services.

Podcaster Josh Boerman posted a satirical tweet impersonating New York City Mayor Eric Adams. In it he claimed that the NYPD budget would be slashed by 70%. He said, “Pretty much everybody got that it was a joke immediately—I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone. The point was that this can be both a joke on the state of the network as well as an opportunity to think about the way that media is disseminated.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Without a standard by which sources are verified as being truthful and trustworthy, people are left to their own devices. Similarly, without God's Word, we have no way of arriving at ultimate truth.

After doing an analysis of seven high-profile cases where people died as a result of use of force by police, Washington Post reporters Ashley Parker and Justine McDaniel found a disturbing pattern. They say they found that police consistently gave initial statements that were “misleading, incomplete or wrong, with the first accounts consistently in conflict with the full set of facts once they finally emerged.”

Philip Stinson teaches criminal justice at Bowling Green State University, and says trends like these are not merely coincidental. He said, “The police own the narrative in every interaction they have with the public, because they write up the reports. Sometimes the reports are written to justify the actions the officers have taken, and sometimes to cover up what actually happened.”

In their analysis, Parker and McDaniel found that police accounts “regularly described the victims in terms assuming they were guilty of a crime; and the initial police version frequently used clinical language that seemed to obscure their own role in the incidents.”

According to Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, police often achieve this by employing deliberate use of the passive voice. She said, “When we use passive language in our own lives, usually we’re trying to create some distance from what happened, [as in] it’s ‘the milk fell’ instead of ‘I spilled the milk.’”

According to Stinson, restoring trust with the public will require greater accountability by police departments. “It’s very damaging to the police department because it does damage to their reputation when they put out these press releases and it turns out they’re false.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Effective leadership requires integrity and truth telling; when those in authority lie, obscure, or exaggerate the truth to protect themselves, they erode their credibility and trustworthiness.

Tim Keller used this story to illustrate the “conversion of the heart.”

Many years ago, when I was in college, I was part of a Christian fellowship, and there was a young man who joined up. And it shocked us all. This young man was famous on the campus for being incredibly sexually active, and he had the looks to go with it. He was handsome and charismatic. And then, to our surprise he came into the fellowship where he declared that “He’s a Christian now … and he foreswears his sexual past … and he going to live a chaste, pure life.”

He threw himself into the Christian activities. Everyone said, “Wow! This is a real change.” However, it wasn’t long before we came to realize that this young man, in every group, any committee, any Bible study, whether he was the leader or not, he had to be the leader. He always sought control. There was power struggle after power struggle, and after a while it became clear that when he was sexually active it really wasn’t about sex; it was about power. He would go after some girl until she fell for him, and then he lost all interest. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power.

When he came into the church, he suddenly adopted all the Christian beliefs, the Statements of Faith, and Christian practices. He stopped living in sexual promiscuity. But deep down inside, he still wanted power. Power in relationships.

Keller points out that we all have the need for deeper conversion in our heart. He says, “Deep down inside, every one of our hearts is saying, ‘If I have money, if I have approval, if I have power, if I have comfort, if I have control, if I have romance ….’ Every one of our hearts needs that deeper conversion from our idols to the Living God.”

You can read a free PDF copy of the book here.

Historian, philosopher, and author Richard Reevesis is a senior fellow at the think tank Brookings Institution. He is concerned that most people can’t distinguish between truth and truthfulness. An error and a lie are not the same. He gives the example of the COVID-19 pandemic:

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we all wanted instant, accurate advice on what to do and what not to do. But the virus was novel. Scientists were scrambling to figure out what it was, how it spread, and how to defeat it. The honest answer to many of our most urgent questions was: “We don’t know yet.” The most important question for citizens is not whether public health advice is always right. It’s whether public health officials are consistently trying to get it right and communicating … “the full painful truth,” honestly and clearly. Trust is built on truthfulness rather than truth.

We don’t like the deliberate lie but acknowledge someone may be making an honest mistake. Truth is empirical, but truthfulness is ethical. Truth is the end product; truthfulness a vital element in its production. ... But the real problem is a loss of virtue, specifically the virtue of truthfulness.

No word on his religious beliefs, but Reevesis has a patron saint for his views:

Our patron saint in this effort could be Nathanael. He appears in the Gospel of John and has a good claim to be the patron saint of truthfulness. When told about Jesus, he scoffed: “‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’” But Christ, knowing he had said this, exclaimed: ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!’’ Christ was clearly not applauding Nathanael for the truth of his statement, but for his willingness to speak his mind – for his truthfulness.

Chloe Mrozak apparently wanted to vacation in Hawaii without abiding by the state’s mandatory ten-day quarantine for people from the mainland. To get around this requirement, Mrozak presented a falsified vaccination card upon her arrival.

Because it took time for authorities to investigate her claims, Mrozak was allowed to leave the airport. However, officials were tipped off because the name of the vaccine was misspelled as “Maderna” instead of Moderna. Eventually, officers were informed by National Guard reps in Delaware that there was no record of her vaccination, casting further doubt on the legitimacy of her documentation.

Initially, investigators lost track of Mrozak because they were unable to locate a hotel reservation under her name, but they eventually located a social media account displaying recent exploits and a distinctive, identifying tattoo. Armed with that info, they arrested Mrozak several days later when she returned to the airport to fly home.

When confronted with the evidence of her crime, Mrozak tried to convince the officers that she was actually vaccinated by her own doctor and paid for the shot, despite the fact that COVID vaccinations are free in the United States. Mrozak was charged with misdemeanor suspicion of falsified vaccination documents; bail was set at $2,000.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Some people will use the appearance of proper behavior to mask the dark deeds of their selfish desires. Don't be easily fooled by falsehoods and fakery, but diligently seek the truth wherever it may be found.

The marathon is one of the most strenuous athletic events in sport. The Boston Marathon attracts the best runners in the world. The winner is automatically placed among the great athletes of our time. A few years ago, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line. She had the laurel wreath placed on her head in a blaze of lights and cheering.

She was completely unknown in the world of running. An incredible feat! Her first race a victory in the prestigious Boston Marathon! Then someone noticed her legs—loose flesh, cellulite. Questions were asked. No one had seen her along the 26.2-mile course. The truth came out: she had jumped into the race during the last mile.

There was immediate and widespread interest in Rosie. Why would she do that when it was certain that she would be found out? Athletic performance cannot be faked. But she never admitted her fraud. She repeatedly said that she would run another marathon to validate her ability. Somehow, she never did. People interviewed her, searching for a clue to her personality. She was analyzed as a sociopath. She lied convincingly and naturally with no sense of conscience, no sense of reality in terms of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

In reading about Rosie, we can think of all the people we know who want to get in on the finish but who cleverly arrange not to run the race. They appear in church on Sunday wreathed in smiles, entering into the celebration, but there is no personal life that leads up to it or out from it. They are plausible and convincing. But in the end, they do not run the race, believing through the tough times, praying the lonely, angry, hurt hours. The proper name for such a person is a religiopath.

Author Katy Kelleher reflects on something that is ubiquitous in every home--mirrors. She observes that mirrors are a lot like photographs:

… Like photographs, mirrors have been used to create false realities. We act as though what we see in the mirror is complete — a self fully formed and rendered truly. But the mirror is only capable of showing what others see. Mirrors reinforce the idea that a person’s value lies on the outside of their body, that it’s possible to learn our value by examining (and altering) our appearance.

Mirrors can convey the false idea that our appearance is more important than personality and character. Kelleher knows this yet she is “not exempt from the desire … to be visually appraised by relative strangers and found acceptable, attractive, worthy. I look at my face in a mirror and I don’t see myself — I see how others might see me, how others might know me, want me. Sometimes, I find myself substituting a camera for a mirror. I turn my iPhone toward my face and use its small screen to check my teeth before a meeting. ... I glean information from this image, but I can also get lost in it, or overwhelmed by it.”

Kelleher finds this all claustrophobic:

Everything is visible, but nothing really matters. We know the mirror is a trick and a trap. But we also know it’s a tool to succeed in a system that is broken, a world that assigns value arbitrarily and penalizes those who can’t adequately perform or conform. Perhaps that’s the ugliest thing about mirrors. They reveal more about society than they do about individuals, and what they show isn’t always attractive.

The concept of truth has been dying a slow death for many years and has become more noticeable in the past decade or so. In the early 2000s, comedian Stephen Colbert picked up on this cultural phenomenon by coining the term "truthiness," which went on to become Merriam-Webster's word of the year in 2006. Similarly, in 2016 in the wake of our presidential election, Brexit, and accusations across the political spectrum about "fake news," Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" its word of the year. Shortly thereafter, commenting on the presidential inauguration, Kellyanne Conway famously spoke of "alternative facts." In response, Time blazoned the question "Is Truth Dead?" on its April 3, 2017 cover.

Then in 2018, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed "truth isn't truth" during an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC. Of course let's not forget Bill Clinton splitting hairs over the definition of "sexual relations" and existentially pondering what an attorney's definition of "is" is back in 1998. Truthiness has cut both ways across the aisle in our post-truth age.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Lying, Honesty, Integrity; (2) God's Faithfulness, God's Truthfulness—Despite the death of truth in our culture, God's Word, promises and character are still true and trustworthy.

Everyone lies once in a while, but according to a new study people who tell small, self-serving lies are likely to progress to bigger falsehoods, and over time, the brain appears to adapt to the dishonesty. The finding, the researchers said, provides evidence for the “slippery slope” sometimes described by wayward politicians, corrupt financiers, unfaithful spouses and others in explaining their misconduct.

Participants in the study were asked to advise a partner in another room about how many pennies were in a jar. When the subjects believed that lying about the amount of money was to their benefit, they were more inclined to dishonesty and their lies escalated over time. As lying increased, the response in the brain (amygdala) decreased. And the size of the decline from one trial to another predicted how much bigger a subject’s next lie would be.

The findings suggest that the negative emotional signals ssociated with lying decrease as the brain becomes desensitized. As one of the researchers said, “Think about it like perfume. You buy a new perfume, and it smells strongly. A few days later, it smells less. And a month later, you don’t smell it at all.”

Nothing boosts the prestige of a food or beverage like the perception that it is traditional, hand-picked, fresh, or otherwise limited in production. But in a world full of manipulative marketers, the truffle is the real deal. A type of fungus that grows on tree roots, a few truffle varieties found in France, Spain, and surrounding areas are esteemed as a decadent addition to pasta and steaks. And these fickle cousins of mushrooms have proven impossible to mass produce; they are still dug up individually by dogs that track their scent.

Admirers contend that the truffle begins to lose its flavor as soon as it is pulled from the ground, and fresh truffle season really only lasts a season. The rarity and temporality of truffles has made them the most expensive food in the world. In 2007, a Macau casino owner set a record by paying $330,000 for a 3.3 pound truffle unearthed in Tuscany. The combination of these two trends—the desire for a convenient, ever-ready supply of an ingredient, and a hunger for the traditional, the rare, and "real food"—led to what would seem to be a remarkably successful scam on foodie culture: truffle oil.

But most truffle oil does not contain even trace amounts of truffle; it is olive oil mixed with 2,4-dithiapentane, a compound that makes up part of the smell of truffles and is as associated with a laboratory as Californian food is associated with local and organic ingredients. Essentially, truffle oil is olive oil plus truffles' "disconcerting" smell. Despite truffle oil's poor source, though, it has been used and praised by both average joes and renowned chefs. Truffle oil has been a remarkably successful con.

Possible Preaching Angles: Are we Christians in name only? Jesus warned against wolves in sheep's clothing or a "devotion to God" that involves no obedience to God.