“Fake” People

Society has a set idea of what is honest and good, and what is dishonest and bad. Each person within a society has their own individual ideas on what they believe to be truthful and genuine, and they judge others based on those ideas. These ideas are contrasted against other people’s actions and ideas, and through this they (sometimes) can classify others as fake. But someone who appears to be fake, they either may not actually be deceitful; they may be trying to accommodate someone else. Someone who is being deceitful to others disguises his own self to appeal to someone else, and must lie to himself and others to justify his own feelings or actions. But when someone is trying to accommodate someone else, he is simply expanding a part of his personality to meet their wants and needs, and sometimes his own. This is not being deceitful in any way, but taking something that is already there and ‘blowing it up’ to a more prevalent level. These two are commonly mistaken for each other, but they are two different things that should be taken into consideration when someone classifies someone as ‘fake.’

An example of someone being deceitful would be a teenage boy having little sexual activity in his life; feeling negative about himself because he believes girls his age do not see him as sexually attractive. One day, this boy goes to class and decides to boast about his sexual activities with multiple teenage girls in the class. The praise he gets from the other teenage boys in the class provides him with encouragement and positive feelings, though he knows the actual truth and so do the girls. He must now continue to lie to avoid being ostracized by his male peer, who will likely become suspicious if the girls voice any objections.

An example of someone accommodating someone else by expanding one of their traits is a teenage girl has a crush on a teenage boy in her school. She has known this boy for quite some time, but her feelings grew more for him than his did for her. The boy has primarily has interest in girls that wear black clothing, but the girl does not wear normally, so she has little chance of catching the eye of the boy. Over time the girl notices the boy’s interest in girls with a darker appearance, and decides to purchase some black clothing to improve her chances of attracting her crush. She wears the newly bought clothing to school the following day, and the boy notices her change of appearance and it sparks a conversation among them; which later on sprouts a closer relationship between the two. She is not being deceitful but simply accommodating someone else, primarily for herself and secondarily for the crush. There is nothing ‘fake’ about this girl, because she is the still same girl from before the change; just in a different style of clothing.

A group of people were to only hear about the teenage boy’s claims they would think he was being genuine, since none of the teenage girls claimed different. However, if they knew the truth behind the boy’s claim they would classify him as fake and a liar. If those same people saw the change of appearance of the teenage girl; they would not think much of it, because the girl simply changed her clothing from the day before. If they knew the reasons behind that, they would not think of the girl as being fake, because it is just a wardrobe change; no more deceitful than fabric. Their motives are clear: the boy to boost his self-esteem through falsified claims; the girl to heighten her chances with her crush. The motives are easily differentiated and to see who is truly a fake or genuine person.