pathological lying definition — an explainer, sort of

the self-checkout asks if i brought my own bags. i lie. it does not flinch. that, i submit, is the practical pathological lying definition: a small untruth spoken to a screen that has no stake in the answer, and no way to check, and no reason to care, and yet you say it anyway, smoothly, like a man who has been rehearsing for a part he did not audition for.

a vendor demo three desks over just ended badly. somebody apologized to the projector. i have, by my reading of the calendar, until eleven before anybody comes looking. that is enough time, probably, for a definitional post and a refill.

i have been thinking about this since friday. the kiosk asked. i answered. i answered incorrectly. the receipt printed. i added it to the wallet, which is now a leather brick. and the question of why i lied — to a screen, about bags — is what we attempt to settle below, in the form of a working pathological lying definition by a man who is, in his own quiet way, qualified.

pathological lying definition: the habit of telling small, unprovoked, low-stakes untruths to people, machines, or screens that did not ask for the truth and would not have benefited from it. the lies are not strategic. they are not protective. they are reflex. that is what makes them pathological. that is also what makes them, frankly, embarrassing to admit at a desk.

I. LIED. TO. A. KIOSK.

the working pathological lying definition, drafted in seventeen minutes

here is the version i would tape to the inside of a microwave i no longer use. pathological lying, in the form i am defining today, has four moving parts. one, the lie is small. two, the lie is unprompted. three, the audience is incapable of caring. four, the liar does it anyway and remembers it later, on a friday, while loading a single bag of groceries into a car the bank owns more of than he does.

this is distinct from the bigger question of whether somebody is, clinically, a person who lies pathologically — heavier territory, and i will not answer it here. for the heavier version i point you at my pillar on the word liar, which is where the cluster lives, and which i wrote in a state of more conviction than i currently have.

the friday scene, as i remember it

i had eleven items. i walked past the cashier line because the cashier line is for people who can have small conversations, and on friday i could not. i scanned. the screen lit up in that bright neighborly way screens light up when they are about to ask something they already know. did you bring your own bags? three small bags glowed at the bottom, blue and confident.

i pressed yes. the bags were in the trunk of my car, twenty meters away, and might as well have been in another country. the screen issued me a small discount. the receipt printed in two parts because the kiosk printed two receipts, which is a separate rant. i added both to the receipt wallet on the way out. the wallet, cultivated since 2021, is thick enough to prop a door. it has not propped one yet. but it could.

why i did it, by someone who has theorized about himself before

i have a theory. the lie was not, strictly, about the bags. the lie was about the moment in which a screen asks a yes-or-no question and the only socially acceptable answer is yes, because no leads to a follow-up screen asking if i would like to buy bags for fifteen cents each, and the buying-of-bags-on-a-friday is a small failure i did not budget for. so i pressed yes. the lie was the path of least resistance for a man whose path is already, by most accounts, on a slight downhill.

i have read about this — by which i mean i opened a tab in 2023, read two paragraphs of a book chapter that was not paywalled but was visibly trying to be, and closed the tab when the writer used the word etiology twice in one sentence. that brushing-up-against told me what i needed: small lies, told to systems with no skin in the game, are common, are studied by people who care, and are distinct from the deeper kind that ruins a thursday.

the receipt wallet, exhibit A

i mention the wallet because it is the evidence. every friday lie i have told a kiosk is in there, in the form of a receipt with the small word “discount” applied to a discount i did not earn. there are, by my last count, possibly forty. proper counting requires emptying the wallet onto a kitchen table, a project for a man with more sundays than i currently possess.

at home the wallet sits in a stack near the desk, because the desk is occupied by the unopened mail pile. the pile is leaning. there are, i estimate, six red envelopes in there. red envelopes are not invitations. they are, traditionally, the next step. the receipts are exhibit A. the red envelopes are exhibit B. i am, in this metaphor, both lawyers and the defendant. budget cuts.

what this isn’t, and where it stops being funny

i want to be careful. there is a real, heavy version of this thing — the kind that costs a friendship or a marriage — and that version is not what i did at the supermarket on friday. for the heavier reading you can sit with a sit-down attempt to define a pathological liar, with my earlier pass at the pathological liar definition, or, for a different angle, the compulsive-liar definition and the verb form, define compulsive lying. those are deeper waters. this post is the kiddie pool, with discount bags.

the kiddie pool still has water. small lies, told reflexively, to systems that don’t care, are still lies. they are not nothing. they are also, importantly, not everything. anybody who tells you the kiosk lie and the relationship lie are the same lie is doing the kind of moral arithmetic that gets you a podcast deal and a bad reputation in the staff room.

the take, the cited one, and what it has to do with bags

my take, as long-time readers know, is pineapple on pizza is fine. the rest of pizza is the problem. i bring this up because the kiosk lie is the same operation. the kiosk lie is the pineapple — the small visible thing everybody points at. the rest of the supermarket — the impulse aisles, the music, the carts that won’t go straight, the lighting tuned for a different species, the parking lot — is the pizza. the lie is not the problem. the situation that produces the lie is the problem. and yet the discourse is always about the pineapple. for further pineapple-shaped reasoning, see my pillar on the word stupid.

so. pathological lying definition, in the form i can defend: small reflexive untruths spoken to disinterested audiences for reasons the speaker has not bothered to interrogate. is it a clinical phrase? not in this form. is it a useful working pathological lying definition for a man on a wednesday at his desk? yes. it was assembled in seventeen minutes by someone who lied to a screen on friday and four days later decided to publish about it.

somebody from procurement just walked past with a coffee and a face. i look busy. i am busy. this is busy.

i’m not going to wrap this with a bow. i don’t have a bow. i have a wallet that is too thick, a pile of mail that is leaning, six red envelopes i can name in my sleep, and a working pathological lying definition drafted between a vendor demo and whatever happens at eleven.

↑