---
title: "On the veracity of truth"
description: "I was on a website to buy a backpack I took note of all those super well curated photos of the product. This sort of thing always makes me wonder. How true is this image that they’re selling me? Because Most of the…"
author: "Ghaith Ayadi"
site: "Verbatim"
collection: "Hokum"
url: "https://verbatim.ayadighaith.com/hokum/on-the-veracity-of-truth"
date: 2022-12-05
updated: 2026-09-16
---
# On the veracity of truth

I was on a website to buy a backpack I took note of all those super well curated photos of the product. This sort of thing always makes me wonder.  How true is this image that they’re selling me? Because Most of the image is not about the product. To have a very attractive person, with thousands of dollars worth of clothes you don’t have and styling you’re incapable of, and in settings that you only dream of. How far did we depart from the truth?

Lies are sharp and clear. The truth is foggy, fuzzy, complicated, evasive, and confusing. When you lie, you know it’s a lie. But when you want to tell the truth, it’s much more difficult that than. Where do you draw the line? I encounter this problem every day.

Put yourself in the shoes of the art director trying to arrange a photoshoot for the backpack, what do you do? Are you supposed to get the average, McDonald-eating shmuck with the dadbod, the reseeding hairline, the H&M hoodie and poorly fitting jeans? Do you show the backpack the way it’s really going to be used: On a Toyota ride to a neon-lit office on a boring desk where a boring person does a boring job? Or do you show it on the back of the perfect specimen on his way to surf a bunch of waves in Cape-town with the rest of the Greek gods? 

Well, one might say: why don’t you just show the product itself, because that’s precisely what you’re selling. Why do you have to add all these lies to it to make it seem more valuable? As a creative, I hear this brief and I know exactly how to work around it: Macro-lens showing details of the product that are so pleasing to the eye yet will not be part of the daily experience, Light so flattering that will make even yo mama look nice, lens choices, angles, slo-mo shots, burst shots and so on, things that will never happen in real life… We know how to do this stuff. 

But then you might say: None of that. Show the product with no shenanigans. Ok. Can I fill the bag so it’s not drooping? Can I use a brand new bag out of inventory as apposed to one that has lost its brand-new shine after that first week of use ? Can I demonstrate the different pockets using well-curated items that show the best use of each of the compartments? I’m reaching the end of the line here. I hope that you get where this is going…

You can very easily talk your way out of all of these practices in search of the truth: I want to tell the truth, therefor, I will not Trim, prop, polish, buff or otherwise furbish**, **embellish or adorn the product. But still, is that the truth?

I would argue that it isn’t. If I’m selling something to people, it means that I genuinely believe that the thing is going to improve their lives. Or at least that’s how I think most interaction should go. Wouldn’t it be fair that I put effort to persuade them to buy since they’re going to be better off with than without it? 

 When I show this backpack on the back of this adventurer guy traveling to the steppes of Mongolia, isn’t that likely to inspire the customer to be that guy? Drawing this association between the product and values like adventure, freedom, organization, culture, hard work etc… forget the backpack. This is the reality of every product. It’s not just the thing itself. It’s what the thing inspires you to do. People who don’t understand marketing and how human beings work think that this is a convenient lie that marketers tell themselves to justify their fat margins. I have no struggle with this. I believe wholeheartedly that what’s at offer is not just the object of the transaction, but everything that’s deliberately associated with it.

When you get a new pair of Nike runners, you feel the need to run more. It’s my push back against buying something like a gaming console: everytime I would look at it, it would remind me that I paid for it and the reason why I did so. Isn’t that also true? When you invest in a new home office setup, wouldn’t that make you more likely to work on the projects that you’ve been pushing off for many years? When you finally get a ticket to Bali, doesn’t that make you more likely to pursue your health goals? From personal experience, I think all of these can be true.

## Fairness

How much effort am I allowed to put into getting people to buy something? It’s not just products. I have this issue designing software too. Unlike many less fastidious designers, rarely show the best case scenario for something. If something is user generated, I try to depict it the way it’s likely to look for 80% of users. Mind you, I can curate it to look better, but I don’t because I find that dishonest. Is it? Mind you, the difference can often times be staggering. A few months ago, I did this with a CEO who just wouldn’t listen to reason. This Sob wouldn’t budge a metric inch.  I told the product manager: I’m gonna have to hack you CEO. Guess what: It worked. It always does.

I know this of any sort of presentation, or pitch I do. If I put designer brain behind it, it sells. At this point, I don’t worry about it anymore. On the rare occasions when I halfass something, I don’t worry about it anymore because I know that I will present it myself and I can just dance my way around the truth. Obviously that feels dishonest. but nothing I say feels like the truth. When you’re as verbally gifted as yours truly, nothing you say feels like the truth. Perhaps that’s why I feel the need to include caveats, disclaimers and other forms of self-sabotage. 

A picture of a product in a realistic setting with a “fair” amount of polish may be factual, but what’s factual is certainly not THE truth. Forget THE truth. That image cannot be true because you’re not buying the picture, you’re buying the product and that cannot be boiled down to a PNG. The presentation about the work is not the work. What you say about yourself in a date is not you. We  confuse both because it’s often our only proxy.

This is not some misguided post-modern attack on the existence of objective truth. Objective truths do exist.  This is a rant about the difficulty of finding a fair representation of the truth. Every declaration is an act of editing. When you say something, there’s an underlying decision to not say all the other things that are deemed less worthy of the moment. There’s often some truth to those.

This dance is the essence of so many of my struggles. I’m beginning to develop a new understanding. Although the truth is objective and can sometimes be communicated, trying to do that isn’t practical. It’s not even helpful, generous or desirable. I’m starting to think that the truth is better captured through intention, not the output. That means it’s going to have to be relative and personal. I think we have a much clearer grasp of the purity of our intentions or lack-thereof. One might still get accused with willful deception, but I’m trying to be more comfortable with that. The truth exists but our currency isn’t the truth, it’s these incomplete bits and pieces of communication that hopefully aim at it.