Dishonest Facade of Importance
Honesty, what a novel idea. Wouldn’t it be great if people really where who and what they said they were? I don’t mean to imply that everyone should immediately air out all of their dirty laundry when meeting a new person. That would be completely irresponsible self-disclosure. But certainly don’t try to be intentionally misleading about who you are or what you do when meeting someone for the first time.
The reasons why someone might rely on dishonesty when describing their persona could range from self-consciousness, to mistrust, to nefariousness. This post isn’t meant as an analysis of these people’s psychosis, I’ll leave that to the professionals. I will say though, if you are insecure about yourself then improve what needs to be improved before you engage in self-disclosure. If you feel that you could invent someone who is more interesting than yourself to gain there admiration, why note engage in interesting things and then disclose them. Eventually your ruse will be unraveled and you will be in worse shape than if you had simple been honest.
Why is this subject on my mind?
There has been this customer that has been coming into the bar every weekend for the past 2 months or so. I am going to call this man Bro, since that seems to be his only other method of communication other than deceit. “Bro, I need…”, “Hey, bro!”, “Bro, let me tell you something…” etc. Bro likes to come to the bar anytime we have a live band. He sits near the band in his French beret and fanny pack trying his best to exude importance. Whoever dressed him before they let him out of the house should have mentioned that neither berets, nor fanny packs, help towards that goal. He passively watches the band, drinking cheap well liquor, while he scopes the patio for his target. Typically anything blond, and for his sake hopefully drunk, stupid, or both. Seeing an opportunity, he strikes. “Hi, I’m bro. I’m a super famous music producer. I’m here to check out this band and maybe sign them. I like to come to this bar because it’s my hideaway from all my screaming fans and all the famous musicians that want things from me. How would you like to go bow hunting with me and Ted Nugent?” Just a steady stream of obvious untruths after disinformation after ludicrousness. Luckily for his “prey” his game is so transparent that no one believes him. And even though he has been trying to sell this story to every employee and every customer he comes in contact with, now when he shows up he gets ignored or worse. But imagine if some person had believed him. How long could he keep up that facade? I imagine not very long. So what are the results of the lies? No one believe what he says, and if one person finally does how long will it be before he’s found out for the liar he is?
I just hope he never has any reason to need someone who distrusts him to believe him. I guess I should have named Bro “the boy who cried wolf”.
