Lying on Facebook

Argument: My profile picture shows that I am a “Good Jew” and regularly practice Judaism.

Claim 1: The picture shows that I enjoy going to Jewish events and recently went to one, however I actually haven’t done anything Jewish in over a year.

Support:

From first glance at this photo and the caption, one would infer that all three of the people in the picture are Jewish and are attending an event, possibly a recent holiday such as Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. The caption, “pretending to be good Jews” implies that we don’t usually go to a lot of Jewish events, but we decided to go to this one because it was important. We are all smiling, have our arms around each other and appear to be having a great time.  However, the truth of the picture is that my parents wanted us to go to services but none of us wanted to go. Instead of just not going, we went to Hillel on Rosh Hashanah and had the lobby receptionist take a picture of us, hence the caption “pretending to be good Jews.”

Claim 2: The picture implies that my friend on the right is Jewish even though he is actually Catholic

Support:

My friend Zach on the right is the only person in the picture wearing a Kippah, which is usually the tell-tale sign of a Jewish person. Ironically, he is the only person in the picture who is not Jewish. He simply just happened to be with us when we went to go take the picture. Even though you can’t tell, I am actually wearing a Kippah in the picture too, however because of the color of the Kippah and the angle of the photo, the Kippah isn’t visible.

So you’re probably wondering, “Why go through all this trouble for a stupid picture?” My answer is simple: “Lying is the most fun [you] can have without taking [your] clothes off” (Casanova, Facebook full of facades and lies). I wanted to make my mother happy that I went to services, so we thought of this funny idea and decided to go for it. The lie ended up turning the picture into a great story.