"The Truth coming out of the well” Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1896

The Truth and the Lie meet on the road one day. The Lie says to the Truth: “It’s a marvellous day today”! The Truth looks up to the skies and sighs, for the day was really beautiful.

They walk together for a while, until they reached a beautiful well. The Lie tells the Truth: “The water in the well is very nice, let’s take a swim together!” The Truth, once again suspicious, tests the water and discovers that it indeed, is very nice.

They undress and start the bathe. Suddenly, the Lie jumps out of the well, puts on the clothes of the Truth and runs off towards a nearby village. The furious Truth leaps out of the well and runs to find the Lie and get her clothes back. The Villagers, seeing the Naked Truth, are horrified and look away with contempt and rage.

The Truth and the Lie meet on the road one day. The Lie says to the Truth: “It’s a marvellous day today”! The Truth looks up to the skies and sighs, for the day was really beautiful.

The poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared, forever, hiding her shame. And since that day, the Lie travels the world, clothed as The Truth.

The original Naked Truth and Lie story comes from the 19th Century and here we are 200 years later:

The naked Truth dwells in the well, ashamed at how she was seen and treated by the villagers. But 200 years is a long time to dwell in a well for anything, especially the truth. Surely the truth has a purpose? Hiding in a well isn’t really meaningful and there’s not much entertainment down here, reflected the truth. Maybe, she thought, an upwelling is necessary. Because the Lie has traveled the world so long in my garments now everyone has come to believe that it is I who am the liar. And anyway, it’s so rude of the lie as it should know by now that it couldn’t exist without me, though the truth.

Truth searches and finds the web pages, twitter and instagram accounts that plainly showed the lie had infected most everyone. There are literally hundreds of billions and billions of lies. Lies everywhere. But from time to time, truth finds allies – they Love the Truth and have created so many stories about her but none of these are trending and, in fact, many of them are being deleted and downvoted and ignored. The truth suddenly, with a great sigh realised that there is a war being conducted on her by the one who took her garments; the Lie himself.