Online dating, wha?

Putting yourself out there online is never easy, especially because you have no way of telling whether the person you're chatting to is being genuine. That's a two-way street though and makes bending the truth (if you need to) when you're messaging someone pretty handy. The lies we tell online are numerous but, maybe surprisingly, we lie most not to try and hook up with people but rather to get out of conversations. According to a new study, we're most guilty of telling what researchers have termed 'butler lies'. These are polite white lies that we use to get out of messaging someone, according to Jeffrey Hancock, a professor of communication in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and a lead researcher on the study. The lies are like butler who saves you from a situation you don't want to be in, politely interrupting the conversation with a lie to bring it to an end. They're polite enough that they don't have to close the door fully on a chat, though, just in case you do want to see that person in the future. Some of us even use them to play hard to get, according to the researchers. "Being always available might also come across as being desperate," said co-author David Markowitz. "Therefore, people will lie about their availability or their current activities." The team at Stanford University examined over 3,000 messages sent from 200 participants in the 'discovery phase', or the time before people meet up in real life.