Lots of people lie online. It's sort of a key component of internet communication, lying! People do it for many different reasons and to varying extents. I think it's very interesting; I've never been good at lying outright, and I'm so generally incompetent in communication situations that I struggle to remember how to talk at all let alone think to lie. Even when I ought to and want to lie I tend to have a hard time thinking of something to say. Talking is not a strong suit of mine. So I find people who can and do do it very interesting!

Reasons people lie online, broadly speaking:

These overlap and usually people have multiple things going on. Compulsive liars often are also lying for money and clout; people who lie for fun often find it turning into a compulsive behavior; an occupational liar is always doing it for either social or monetary gain; clout almost always factors in in some way. Etc.

I've noticed that different places tend to have somewhat different lying cultures! That's neat!

Reddit

Lying on Reddit is primarily for clout and for fun, with a secondary compulsive flavor that isn't too overpowering. Reddit liars typically also lie with an agenda and angle for clout with specific demographics. Most commonly this is misogyny and racism - "women are bad, here's a story about a bad woman" type of things, you know? Reddit lies are like fables and usually contain a specific moral/lesson that the reader is meant to take away. This kneecaps the entertainment value considerably, as Reddit lies tend to try to stick to boring samey lies.

Reddit users' interest in Reddit clout is notable given the lack of monetary incentive and the fact that there's no such thing as "Reddit influencers." It's very reminiscent of Neopets's clout culture. Status symbols only meaningful on-site are highly valued and sought-after, to the extent that people are willing to pay real money in order to acquire them. Clout-chasing on Reddit is all about the status symbols - upvotes - rather than gaining a following. Unusual, as every other major social media site places significantly more value on gaining followers and building a brand!

Classic Reddit-style fib:

I found out my (35m) fiancee (22F) was cheating on me while I was working 3 jobs to pay for her $100,000 engagement ring. I sacrificed everything for her but she was just a gold-digger who left me for an underwear model and she took the ring. She said she only wanted my money and then said, "mua ha ha! this is feminism!" and kicked the beautiful purebred golden retriever puppy I bought for her.

Tumblr

Tumblr meanwhile is mostly an even combo of lying-for-fun, compulsive liars, and clout-chasing, with a much more extravagant sensibility than Reddit lying and a powerful double-whammy of mentally ill people existing alongside malicious trolls. Tumblr is less focused on posting selfies than Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok, but still has the motivation of building a persona and a brand, so catfishing is much easier - it's not that unusual to not post pictures of yourself at all on Tumblr, or only post one once in a while, so it's pretty easy to pretend to be someone you're not.

Tumblr skews youngish and gullible, so it's a great environment for people who lie for fun. Tumblr liars prioritize impact over realism, so you get some pretty outrageous tall tales. It's very easy for dis/misinformation to spread because people reblog things they think are funny just as much as they reblog things they think are true, and sometimes Tumblr lies are very funny, so the outrageous tall tales can get quite a bit of reach. And reach = clout, of course.

Classic Tumblr-style fib:

ok so my great-great-grandpa invented books and when i was a baby in the womb (i have a rare condition where i can remember things from then it's called hypermemoria) he used to talk thru his process to my mom while he worked on making books... and when i was born i LOVED books. i just asked my mom what my first words were and she told me it wasit was "A room without books is like a body without a soul." which is something my great-great-grandpa said all the time......... crazy

Facebook

Facebook is a major home of occupational and accidental liars; the Facebook userbase seems to have a particularly low standard of evidence and use it to get their news, and the platform is essentially a soft power warzone. Things don't tend to break containment on Facebook the way they do on some other social media sites; the site's algorithm tends to have a pretty narrow focus, and boosted ads and posts are typically quite deliberate and targeted.

Facebook is chock full of commercial lying, but it's not a top pick for individual scammers and grifters. It's a lie factory, and any individual liar is just going to be a cog in the industrial lie machinery rather than a standout. There's very little Facebook-first original content, too; most of the lies and information you see that isn't churned out by legions of robots is just reposts from other social media sites by aggregator accounts.

Classic Facebook-style fib:

DO NOT SCROLL PAST THIS!! **IMPORTANT**! The government of California is voting on a law this week to make BAKE SALES ILLEGAL! This is crazy but it's true. The government of California announced it yesterday at 11:13PM - Leviticus 11:13 says "YEA AND THUS THE DEVIL SAID HE HATETH THOSE WHO PEDDLE THAT WHICH IS RISEN" risen = jesus = dough = bread. COINCIDENCE? No. The government of California has been taken over by THE DEVIL. PLEASE like and share this post and click the link below to PROTECT our KIDS from the DEVIL. You won't take my brownies!! If this post gets 10,000 reposts then the governor HAS to veto the bill so share share share!!!!!!!!!!! #devil #mybrownies #awareness #protectthekids #handsoff #californiaevil #democrats

Twitter

Twitter has the most diversity in liar types out of the big social media platforms; in my experience there's a pretty even distribution. Plenty of industrial-grade spam and actual corporations and politicians as well as influencers. Up until recently you could leverage Twitter clout into some kind of cash - it seems like Twitter was especially good for networking and getting your foot in the door in a variety of industries, notably comedy and art.

Twitter was - for a while - so broad that it was essentially synonymous with "the internet" or "social media", so it's hard to pin down a particular Twitter style. Everybody had a Twitter by default, and all complaints about "the internet" or "social media" were complaints about Twitter. Twitter was news for a while - a main source for reporting on current events.

We're right on the tail end of Twitter's reign now, and it seems primed to follow in Facebook's footsteps and become the domain of industrial-grade spam first and foremost. It's not quite there yet, though.

The classic Twitter fib would probably be lying about breaking news - making something up about an ongoing disaster, falsely accusing somebody of a crime, that sort of thing.

Instagram

Instagram is the clout website, first and foremost. Lying on Instagram for clout is a full-time job that a bunch of people have and even more people aspire to. If you're sexy or know how to use photoshop and are really lucky, you can hit it big on Insta. Instagram is the gold standard for turning clout into money; they're basically the same thing on there.

Instagram is also oddly homogenous, though, so Instagram lies are very samey. It's dominated by general lifestyle lying - pretending to be rich, pretending to be sexy, etc. Everyone on Instagram considers themselves onstage, so while the language or presentation tends to lean grandiose its cultural focus on very specific ideal lifestyles means that the contents of the lies are generally quite bland. There's also not a ton of accidental liars on Instagram; it tends to encourage people to adopt a fairly calculated and deliberate approach to Maximizing Engagement and Building Your Brand, and you find that even #smallbusiness #indie #artists start writing in a particular Instagrammy cadence.

Where Tumblr liars get outrageous in terms of the things they say, Instagram liars get outrageous in terms of scale. Instagram catfishing is high-effort and requires quite a bit of dedication. As far as I can tell, there's not much "going viral" or breaking containment on Instagram; you have to build up your platform deliberately over time. Low-commitment liars don't get a lot of rewards; you have to really work at it.

Classic Instagram-style fib:

shoutout to my haters ❤️️ Jealousy is a bad look babes I WORKED for everything I have!! I don't have time to waste with online hating because I work hard every single day to earn my millions of dollars ❤️️ Bought my fifth lamborghini this week oh and by the way I have NEVER had work done (no shame to my girlies who have ❤️️ it's just not me ❤️️) and I've NEVER photoshopped these looks are from, again, HARD WORK #hardwork #neversatisfied #girlboss

Tiktok

Oh, Tiktok! People love to trust a human face, and Tiktok is all faces!

From the perspective of someone who doesn't use Tiktok but hears a lot about it, as far as I can tell Tiktok is for liars more than it is for anybody else. Making shit up is so foundational to Tiktok culture that one of its biggest exports - the evolving censorship of ""algorithm-unfriendly"" language (unalive, grape, seggs) - is based on made-up shit. Its other big exports are misinformation, scammers, ads, and ragebait. Notable Tiktok lie-based trends I've heard of include: setting your house on fire, getting grievously wounded, accusing people of crimes for no particular reason, and pretending to have magic powers.

Tiktok lies draw heavily from a mixture of influences; they have the audacity of Tumblr, the hustle of Instagram, the forced brevity of Twitter, and the obsession with "authenticity" of Youtube. It's a potent mixture. Tiktok is good for building a platform and for one-off viral sensations, so it's friendly to a variety of types of online lying. A very flexible platform, if you like lying!

Classic Tiktok-style fib:

PSA: my dad is a doctor and he was just FIRED for telling the truth... you can make your own sunscreen out of handsoap and toothpicks! commercial sunscreen that you buy in stores is full of toxins and has been found to cause mesotheleoma, blindness, and even hair loss 😱 , but this handmade sunscreen is 100% HEALTHY! just take two pumps of soap, 2-3 toothpicks, and a scoop of chickpeas, and put it in your blender for 15 minutes... and voila. put this on your whole body and enjoy your beach day safe from cancer! how this works is the vibrations of the blender are stored in the wood pulp (trees have memories) and so the sun rays get knocked away by the vibrating atoms. science is awesome!

I haven't experienced enough Fediverse or Bluesky to get a good sense of what their lying cultures look like yet; it seems like most of what people post on the Fediverse is computer nerd bullshit and furry drama, and Bluesky is still pretty volatile as it's new and people migrate to it in big waves.