“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking” - Air Traffic Controller Steve McCroskey, Airplane, 1980.
I was recently a contestant on The Traitors NZ, a show all about deception. A few days before filming, I read Lying, a book by American neuroscientist and podcaster Sam Harris. In it he argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others lie. It’s a compelling read. So much so I decided to cut lying from my life completely. An untimely, decision that would make my time on The Traitors extremely challenging. Fun. But complex.
The Traitors NZ is based on the Dutch series De Verraders. A group of strangers arrive at a scary location. The host secretly selects three of them to be traitors. Their job is to ‘murder’ the others one by one. The Traitors keep killing, until they are discovered and banished or win. If the Faithful eliminate all the Traitors, they share the prize money, but if any Traitors make it to the end, they win and get the cash instead. It’s a great format.
On day one, we sit around a spooky table masked up. We can’t see anything. After what seems like an hour, a secret tap on the shoulder from host Paul Henry assigns me the role of traitor. An exciting turn of events. I would much rather don the hooded cloak, creep around in the dark and order hits on my new friends than sit in a room by myself waiting to die. The nights are fun. The day time is more complex. It’s a lot easier to succeed as a traitor if you lie. For a start, you can tell people you are not one, and they will be inclined to believe you. If you’re not lying, it starts to seem like you are one. Which, of course, I was. The only way to survive is to constantly change the subject. Any time conversation turned toward something that may rumble me, I’d bring up a new topic. “Matt, where were you last night?”, “Last night?… um… why do you think they asked us to bring pyjamas?. I like pyjamas, I bought new ones for the show. Blue ones. Did you bring pyjamas? Do you like pyjamas?. Shall we all wear our PJs to breakfast tomorrow?’…. “Ok Matt, I’m just going to stand over here on the other side of the room for a bit”. As a result, I was dubbed the “absent-minded Professor” by other contestants.
