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Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Marketing is all about lying. Making up fake reviews, customer testimonials.

Exaggerating (which is lying) about the product.

Explaining how good it will make you feel, or better yet, showing photos of people very happy, using the products.

Acting = lying, photshopped photos = lying, fictitious scenarios of use = lying.

Lying is required to write a story (when you read a fiction book, you want the lie about reality, for it is fun to imagine.)

This is a lie all parties engage in willingly.

But marketing types have a sole purpose. To lie, but make it look like truth.

So they don't care one iota about really updating an article or not.

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Movie with CGI such as Star Wars = lying?

Fiction is lies only when you want to pass them off as the truth:

"That's right -- and when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You'll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. Do you know what you and your kind are called there?"

"No," Atreyu whispered.

"Lies!" Gmork barked

― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

There's in the same dialog this warning about advertising and politics:

“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts

... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.”

need a revisit, that seems appropriate and deep

It is! Ende was raised under the esoteric Anthroposophy philosophy, and I suspect much of his works are dedicated to debunk its nonsensical beliefs. The second half of The Neverending Story is a philosophical treaty on itself (it hurts the book as an action story, but gives you a lot to ponder about).

His child books certainly have a deep second reading as adults.

All fiction is a lie, by its very definition.

After all, it claims the unreal as real. Fiction, lies.

The difference with things like fiction in books and movies, for entertainment, is that the listener of the lie, knows it is a lie, and listens for entertainment.

It is not a lie, pretending to be true.

I would argue that a lie involves deliberate deception, not just untruth. Fiction, then, is not a lie, as by definition it is something imagined or invented, and therefore not created to deceive.

I think deceive was created to explain the difference in intent.

Yep, the whole thing is made up!

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