The quick answer?
Deceptology means "the study of deception."
"Deception" is the art and science of deliberately misleading somebody to believe things that are not true. So this site will attempt to tell you many things about deception.
Deception doesn't exist in a vacuum. We all have moral judgments about it. Deception can be good, or it can be evil; it all depends on the intent of the deceivers. There is a difference between the type of deception that entertains an audience for fun, and the type that gets people killed.
(The underlying principles might be the same, however.)
The posts in Deceptology may seem to arrange themselves in odd patterns, or sometimes stray far away from their misleading subject matter, but you will find they all ultimately cluster around deception.
You'll find liars, and cheaters, and con artists. You'll read about fraud and deceits, with many involving money and strong egos. Of course you'll laugh at hoaxes and pranks that ensnare the gullible (and be very smug because you know they'd never ensnare you...)
You'll discover how some are resisting being deceived, and how others are countering their resistance, and then countering the counter...
You'll peek behind the curtains at magicians, who honestly tell you they're going to lie to you, and then lie, and still you're fooled. And you may see things that seem to fool your eyes - which is why they're called "optical illusions" - yet they're really fooling your brain. And you'll find scientists and their experiments that focus only on a limited set of our behaviors, or peer inside our brains with special machines to discover just what's going on.
Other illusions - both complex and simple - will fool your preconceived notions of what things should be... and what things should be believed.
You'll know objects in your physical world which are important, or sacred, or have special values, and you'll find others who exploit that value by creating frauds, forgeries, and imitations.
And you'll encounter pranksters who view all of this and everything else as a joke, and take delight in messing around with all of our boundaries.
"Yes this is true but what are the categories, please? Tell me can you please what specific categories you're going to focus on?"
Okay: (and please don't try and find the parts that are missing, but if you must, and do find the parts that are missing, send me an email and I'll stick yours in right away.)
Security, Locksmiths, Internet Fraud, Identity Theft, Skeptics and Skepticism, Sports and Sport Hoaxes, Tricksters - meaning those like Bugs Bunny and the Fox and the Raven, Games and Puzzles, Hypocrites, Music about Deception - because there just might be a few little songs about being deceived in love, Spying, the Military - "all warfare being based on deception," the Police - who use deceit to catch criminals, and sometimes to avoid capture themselves, the Legal System - and the old trick of equivocation, Cheating - such as, say, cheating on tests, "Cheating on" or "Being Cheated on" - such as cheating on your spouse or in your relationship, whichever part you play in that (most likely) triangular shape, Sexual Deceptions in the lower and higher animal kingdoms - flowers that trap insects, "Hey Babies!" that bug females in bars (see Gary Larson cartoon), Money - too many potentials to list, Pranks (and the difference between a good prank and a bad prank), Religion - no not to define God but to examine what is possible to know, and what can't we know, Myths and Fairy Tales - which may tell us truths or warn us about what is not true, TV - and how it entertains us be fooling us, while it may also be rotting our brains and amusing other deadly, How to Deceive Others - because we all love how-to guides, Politics - but a special note here about politics, because if every single instance of political malfeasance was listed, or even if only 10% of every malfeasance was noted briefly, that's all this blog would be about, and there are many many more blogs that are the top visited sites on the Internet that have combined millions of posts about how the other guys are crappy liars, and our side is not so much crappy liars, and those sites already exist so we won't go there very often, Scams and Hoaxes - for fun, for money, Technology - how it detects deception and how it's used to deceive other, Products you can buy that help you trick someone or avoid being tricked, Movies - some very good films out there warn you about con artists, or make you wish you were a con artist because the con artists are conning the bad guys and so they are good con artists, or an entire genre of films called film noir, or thrillers, or murder mysteries... well, you get the idea, Critical Thinking - to discover where the deceptions are and how to resist being deceived, which is hard, because what we want to do is feel but our feelings are so easily swayed by our emotions, Magic and Magicians - who entertain by lying to you, Psychology and all the ways your brain works to not tell you all the way the world works, Frauds, Entertainment - because after all much of this is entertaining, Funny things that make you laugh, Advertising Deceptions and Deceptive Advertising (there is a legal difference) and the idea that smart people say "Advertising doesn't sway me at all" to which advertisers and marketers only smile, Optical Illusions both flat and three-dimensional, including impossible objects that cannot exist in the real world but there they are, Science and Scientific Investigations that use hypotheses and experiments and repetition and having "peers" peering over your shoulder, Art that explores the leading, bleeding, avant garde edge, Crime and Criminals who do their best work in the dark and don't like telling the truth, and finally Lying - we all do it to some degree, and some are white lies and some are dangerous lies, and everybody would love for there to be a foolproof lie detector so liars couldn't get away with lying, and we would all live in a truthful, more just and honest world.
Oh, and my name is Bob, and I'll be your host.
