Am I The Only One Who Hates This?

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LocksAndLiqueur
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27 May 2016, 12:51 am

Am I the only one who's bothered when someone deliberately implies something that they know is false in order to be deceptive in such a way that when you call them out on it they can say that technically they weren't lying? For example, let's say a business put out some promotional coupons that gave customers up to 25% off their purchase of some specific product. Of course, "up to 25%" is a range of numbers which happens to include zero. So, what if every coupon except for one gave absolutely no discount? Wouldn't that be dishonest simply by virtue of the fact that it's deliberately misleading?

Alternatively, let's say somebody says that something has been going on "for years" when in fact it's been happening for exactly 366 days. It hasn't even been going on for two years. You call them out on it but they say that because it's more than one (if only by a small fraction) that makes it plural. This may make sense grammatically (after all, people say things like "one and a half years" fairly commonly) but it still doesn't seem entirely right to me.

The second example actually happened to me today. I tried explaining why I think this sort of thing is dishonest to an acquaintance of mine earlier today and she didn't seem to have any issue with it at all. Are any other people here bothered by this sort of thing?



auntblabby
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27 May 2016, 6:29 pm

that is called legalism of convenience, and we all have our moments.



AnaHitori
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27 May 2016, 6:35 pm

I actually do that a lot, because I find it difficult to lie, but difficult to tell the truth sometimes.

Honestly I don't mind it if other people do it either, because at least they're not "technically" lying to me.


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