"Live my truth" is a phrase I heard a lot this summer, constantly on the lips of 20-somethings who had been caught in lies or who had found their beliefs of events to be unquestionably incorrect.

Ann (to Bob): Carrie says you called her a gutterslut.

Bob: I would never say something like that.

Dave: I mean, I was there, Bob. you totally called Carrie a gutterslut.

Bob: Look, it is what it is. Carrie can believe that but all I can do is live my truth.

This works for Bob - he doesn't have to acknowledge being caught in a lie, and he doesn't have to acknowledge that he has spoken ill of others that he is pretending to like. It does not work for Carrie - she's been called a gutterslut and Bob won't own up to it. The problem is, it doesn't resolve the problems Ann and Dave have because when they're with Bob, they're subscribing to Bob's truth. When they're with Carrie, they rely on the ethos of Bob vs. the ethos of Carrie.

What's interesting is that the dynamic plays out with people who are willing to subscribe to the same shared hallucination about truth. In a direct confrontation, Carrie and Bob have to battle out who said what when and where and hope they can convince Ann and Dave as to their version of events. What's noteworthy is that these exchanges took place under the watchful eye of dozens of cameras as everything being said was streamed worldwide to the Internet in real time. Objective truth was not a construct - it was a constellation of media files reviewable by all. Nonetheless, there was a collective assent to honor the fiction that there was no objective truth.

"Live my truth" was interchangeable with "live my best truth". A couple times I heard the phrase "the actual truth" as if every now and then, everyone had to acknowledge the game they were playing and the fact that there are verifiable facts in the universe but the more self-centered among our victims were generally dismissive of this verification.

I think it's a comfortable fiction. By subscribing to the same reality, we have affinity despite the fact that we don't really know how to communicate anymore. It runs into dire difficulty when interacting with someone outside of that collective fiction. "You're late." "If you look at it from the perspective of the traffic I had to deal with and the condition of my car, I'm about as close to on time as anyone could reasonably expect." "You're fired."

It's another example where those whose worlds have been bent to suit them are utterly and completely shit outta luck when they interface with the world at large.