If you're looking for a quick ego boost, play the bizarre 'compliment game' taking over Facebook
I first noticed "Truth is" when one of my friends on Facebook posted this status.
Perplexed as to why such an apparently meaningless status would garner over 60 likes, I did a little Facebook stalking and soon discovered that the status was a game.
For every person who liked her status, my friend posted a comment on each of their timelines that began with the phrase "Truth is." Each comment revealed my friend's memories or opinions of the people who originally liked her status.
Translation: People liking my friend's status were essentially asking her to publicly share what she thought of them on Facebook.
While most of the posts included personal information or inside jokes, all of my friend's "Truth is" responses were positive.
Here are some of her responses. Keep in mind, these are not private messages and are visible to anyone on Facebook who is friends with either.
The game started circulating among users, mostly teenagers, after Facebook introduced the "like" feature in 2009. In 2010, people were turning to in an attempt to understand the rules for the strange Facebook game. That same year, a definition for "Truth is" was added to Urban Dictionary.
Here's the definition:
The game continued to grow. "I promised to periodically share things I'm learning from my teenagers," wrote a blogger for The Time Union in 2012. "The latest is the "Truth is" status update on Facebook."
Today, "Truth is" is still popular on the social media platform, and not just with my friend and her classmates. A quick Facebook search for "Truth is LMS" (LMS stands for "like my status" in the language of "teen") yields hundreds of publicly shared results.
Many of the responses are nice, almost too nice when you consider the bullying that has become a hallmark of social-media. It seems like "Truth is" has become less about telling the actual truth and more about giving fake compliments in the hope of getting them in return.
