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We’ve all had that friend—the one who embellishes. A fish story here, an exaggeration there. Is it a lie? Sure. But the thinking goes: the ends justify the means. No harm, no foul. The lie smooths over social friction, makes the story flow, makes you more likable. That’s the funny thing about lying—it’s not always nefarious. We often do it in service of belonging.
Chris Rock has a bit about this. “Men lie the most,” he says, “women tell the biggest lies.”
Which means we all do it.
Rock explains, “A man’s lie is like, ‘I was at Tony’s house. I mean, I’m at Kenny’s house.’ A woman’s lie is like, ‘It’s your baby.’”
He calls women “masters of the visual lie.”
“You got on heels, you ain’t that tall. You got on makeup, your face don’t look like that. You got a weave, your hair ain’t that long. You got a wonder bra on, your t**ties ain’t that big. Everything about you is a lie, and you expect me to tell the truth?”
That bit killed. And with the next-level stardom Rock earned after the 1999 release of Bigger & Blacker, he got to make the transition every comedian secretly wants: he got himself on a rap album. Specifically, Ice Cube’s You Ain’t Gotta Lie Ta Kick It.
Here’s the irony: Rock, the truth-teller who built his career exposing social lies, couldn’t resist playing sidekick to Ice Cube—one of hip-hop’s most masterful image crafters.
Ice Cube, the gangsta rapper, founding member of N.W.A., was a voice for the streets. Except Cube, or should I say O’Shea Jackson, took the bus forty miles each day from South Central to Taft High School in Woodland Hills, an affluent suburb of L.A. The menacing persona? Constructed. The street credibility? Manufactured.
Rock wanted a piece of that rap game and I don’t blame him.
Even our most authentic voices get seduced, and if the truth-tellers are performing, where does that leave the rest of us?
The track is reflective. It’s self aware. Cube does the rapping and Rock plays the sidekick, calling out those harmless social lies we all recognize. A decade after O’Shea turned into Ice Cube, he enlists the biggest comedian on the planet to poke some fun at the personas people create.
“Yo Cube, I got the new Benz 9000
(You ain’t got to lie ta kick it)
Yo Cube, check out this ring, 69 karats
(You ain’t got to lie ta kick it)
Tell your mama, tell your daddy, tell your auntie
(You ain’t got to lie ta kick it)
Tell your cousin, tell your sister, if she want me
You ain’t got to lie ta kick it”
It’s funny because it’s familiar. We all know someone like this. Hell, we’ve probably all been that person—puffing up a story, rounding up accomplishments, editing out the embarrassing bits. We want to fit in, avoid judgment. Psychologists call it impression management—the instinct to shape how we’re perceived. Part social glue, part self-preservation. We all have our own PR department.
This is why everyone who goes to the casino says they “broke even.” It’s why we tell people we got “one hell of a deal” on every small indulgence. We’re carefully crafting the narrative to avoid scrutiny.
Edward E. Jones and Thane S. Pittman wrote Toward a General Theory of Strategic Self-Presentation, where they identified five common strategies of impression management: ingratiation, self-promotion, exemplification, supplication, and intimidation.
They wrote, “We believe strongly that a theory of strategic self-presentation must be anchored in identifiable social motives.”
In other words, our lies serve one of five motivations: to be liked, admired, respected, pitied, or feared. We don’t just perform—we perform strategically. And that strategy changes depending on our audience.
My old roommate used to say, “Come on man, you lie to girls you don’t know—you don’t lie to your friends.” That was his moral code: truth for the tribe, performance for the public.
Erving Goffman, the sociologist, would’ve recognized what my roommate was describing. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman argued we’re all actors managing impressions as if on stage. Front stage, we perform—the jokes, the compliments, the small fibs that keep interactions smooth. Backstage, we let our masks slip and show who we really are.
The lie isn’t always malicious. Sometimes it’s just wardrobe. We adjust, edit, rehearse—to seem interesting, competent, attractive, or just normal. To keep the show running smoothly.
Guilty as Charged
Having laid out this framework—how even our truth-tellers get seduced by performance—I’m about to tell you about my own struggles with authenticity. Fair warning: by the time we’re done, you might not trust anything I’ve said, including this warning itself.
I’m guilty as charged. And I’m someone who takes pride in telling it like it is. I try to own it, but some of these little lies still slip through.
If you ask me how the blog is going, how the book is doing, I’ll tell you it’s great.
“Biggest year yet. More readers every month.”
All true. Statistically. But is it really going well? Nah—not by my standards. Growth is glacial. And despite telling everyone this is just a “retirement gig,” I absolutely dream of selling thousands of books. See, I just did it again. Hundreds of thousands of books.
And because I haven’t, I shift the focus. A little sleight of hand. Talk about how I’m improving, how I’m focused on the craft.
“I don’t really look at the numbers,” I’ll say. “It’s not good for my mental health.”
And while that sentiment is true, the story is a lie. I look. I look all the time. I can’t help it. And what I see doesn’t feel good. So I present a version of myself who’s unbothered, who’s in it for the art.
Front stage: confident writer.
Backstage: wondering if what I write reaches anyone. Anyone at all.
Now, is this confession authentic vulnerability or just another strategic presentation? Your guess is as good as mine. Lucky you’re not rattling around in my head, second-guessing every motive.
What I do know is this: I’d love for this work to make an impact on others the way it’s impacting me. As a kid, if you’d asked me one of my life goals, I’d say it was to have a quote. I collect quotes—I have a long list of my favorites I scroll through them all the time. A short, memorable bit that resonates through time. Serves a purpose. How cool is that?
I want someone else, someone like me, who collects quotes, to find that one of mine rings true and fills a need.
Mark Twain can’t have all the fun, right?
Two Books
It’s why I love Vicky Ball. At least, I think I do.
On December 3, 2024, she posted from the Galleywood Heritage Centre in Chelmsford, UK:
“Sold two books.”
Her post went nuts. And so did her book—at least for a little while.
Was that authentic humility, or the most sophisticated performance of all?
She probably was being honest. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also strategy.
Impression management theory suggests most of our social tactics run on autopilot—scripts we’ve refined through trial and error. Vicky could be using supplication (strategy number four from Jones and Pittman’s list) without even knowing it. Or she could be genuinely sharing her experience and strategically managing impressions at the same time.
Authenticity and performance aren’t opposites—they’re dance partners.
What I know is this: in a world of carefully curated success stories on social media, someone saying “sold two books” feels like relief. Whether it was calculated or not.
She goes to these book events around England, her parents tagging along—her father, apparently, is quite the book marketer (call me!). She’ll post about selling a few copies. About the other authors, the conversations, even the cake. She’s decided to embrace the whole damn thing—win, lose, or draw.
Lovely.
At least, that’s how it appears. And if it is a presentation, the difference might be impossible to detect.
Powerless is a great read. And although young adult fiction isn’t my usual cup of tea, Vicky sure is.
Breathtaking
This is the problem with becoming aware of performance strategies—once you start seeing them, you can’t unsee them. You begin questioning the obvious lies and the everyday interactions. Compliments, politeness, small talk—what’s genuine and what’s just smooth social functioning?
That’s the real cost of living in a world of managed impressions: you start to lose faith in what anyone actually means.
Which brings us to one of the most perfectly crafted examples of this dynamic…
Remember the “shrinkage” episode of Seinfeld ? It’s season 5, “The Hamptons”, but there’s another storyline at play. Jerry and the gang visit friends who can’t wait to show off their newborn baby. The parents beam with pride while everyone else struggles to hide their true reaction.
It’s the ugliest damn baby they’ve ever seen.
Later, when a handsome doctor arrives to check on the baby, Elaine is immediately smitten. He seems interested too—he says she’s “breathtaking.” But then he shifts his attention to examining the newborn, picks the child up, and pronounces that same ugly baby is… “breathtaking?”
Elaine freezes. The same word used for her, now used for the baby. Is he lying now, or was he lying then? Was one compliment genuine and the other just politeness? And if so, which is which?
Nobody wants to say the quiet part out loud, so everyone hides behind polite, well-intentioned lies. And Elaine is left wondering what’s real.
That confusion is the price of admission to this performance. You start to lose your sense of what anyone really means.
Which brings us to Jian Feng.
Your Face Don’t Look Like That
The story of the Fengs goes like this: Jian Feng married a beautiful woman and built a beautiful life. Until the baby arrived. Suddenly, he started to wonder how two good-looking people could produce a child that… wasn’t. At first, he suspected infidelity. But the truth was stranger.
His wife hadn’t cheated on him—she’d cheated him in a different way. Before they ever met, she had undergone extensive plastic surgery, completely reinventing her appearance. The woman he married wasn’t the woman she once was. And in his mind, that meant she’d deceived him. Lied about who she really was—right down to the genetic level.
So he sued her for fraud. And allegedly won—£75,000, with a judge ruling she had tricked him into marriage by misrepresenting herself.
Now, full disclosure: this story might be fake. Snopes says it is, and they’re pretty reliable. But that’s not what’s important. The baby in Seinfeld was fake too!
What matters is how believable it sounds. We all recognize the instinct behind it—to fake, to polish, to present a slightly edited version of reality. The story resonates not because it’s verified, but because it feels true. This is how people operate.
It’s Chris Rock’s “visual lie” taken to its extreme. And whether Feng’s story happened or not, it highlights what happens when the performance goes too far.
Most of our lies aren’t malicious. They’re maintenance—small gestures that keep the social machinery running.
A Benz 9000 that doesn’t exist. A story about where we were Friday night. A book post that’s both honest and strategic.
These are the lies Ice Cube and Chris Rock laugh about—the ones that don’t really hurt anybody. But they do reveal something: how hard it is to live without performing.
“You ain’t gotta lie to kick it” is more aspirational than anything. An ideal. A reminder that maybe we can loosen the mask a little, even if we can’t take it off entirely.
The truth is, we might never know what’s real—not even in ourselves. But maybe we can notice the performance for what it is, name it when we see it, and stay curious about what might be underneath—even if we never find it.
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