When the next interview came around, Grace lied. She admitted to having stolen sweets and was punished. The worthiness interviews are a means of determining this, and in her first ever one she slipped up. Grace grew up in a Mormon community in midwest America, a religion in which “you’re either totally good or totally bad”, she tells me. But I want to believe her, after finding her online, anxiously seeking advice from strangers about how best to untangle the many lies she’d told. It doesn’t go unconsidered that I have no way of confirming whether anything Grace tells me is the truth. ![]() "I can craft my persona into anything I want, and that's exciting," she tells me over the phone, six years on from that worthiness interview. At 18, lying as regular part of who she is. She leaves behind her plain, blue bedroom, her friendless existence, and becomes the thing she most desires: popular. When Grace opens her laptop, she becomes someone new. So, what does make a person lie to the extreme? And with technology to enable it now at our fingertips, is it suddenly becoming easier than ever before? Using a digital disguise Studies have proved that people are better at lying online than face to face, so with 65 billion WhatsApp messages sent every day, how many lies are being batted back and forth daily? We all lie, but there’s a difference between diplomatically telling a friend her new haircut looks great and fabricating your entire existence. Not all deception hits the headlines, and only a fraction of it is ever uncovered. These stories of famous tale-tellers may be large-scale, but they’re not unique. At the same time, the Belle Gibsons, Anna Delveys and Tinder Swindler's Simon Leviev of this world continue to go viral a new scammer seems to hit our feeds every week, each spinning a web of lies more intricate than the last. In an age where our lives are viewed through the prism of social media, Love Island is adored by millions and we've survived an actual US President who cried “fake news” at the first sniff of criticism, the lines between fiction and reality are more blurred than ever. ![]() It was in this “worthiness” interview, a common practice for young people in the Mormon faith, that Grace first learned to lie. “Do you smoke or drink alcohol, coffee or tea?” probed the Bishop. ![]() “Do you have faith in and a testimony of God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost?” he began. The Bishop smiled, deep-set creases eroding the plains of his face. But she wasn’t going to let that deter her. The Bishop, a man in his mid-forties in a dark suit, gazed across the table between them and into what felt like her soul. The lamp above her felt like a spotlight. As she sat before the man, her legs dangling below the armchair – not yet long enough to reach the floor – Grace’s* heart began to pound.
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