Phony Definition Essay

A renowned playwright who went by the name William Shakespeare once said “God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.” In short, people will deceive. Many people prefer to call this behavior; “phony.” In high school, everybody’s a phony in some way or another. How everybody chooses to express it is what stands out. Some people might do it to take advantage of others while some might just be doing it to save face. Anybody who shows some sort of deceit, which is everybody, fits into the category of a phony. Now this includes me. About a few months ago, my math class got assigned a project. The teacher, a strict but well versed instructor, heavily emphasized its importance, telling us of the great impact it will have on our grade.
It provides people with the means for themselves to “make yourself another.” In the beginning of my freshman year, I personally experienced this idea at work. As school began, I met many new interesting people from the other feeder school to BVW, Lakewood middle school. One particular person stood out to me. He acted noticeably quiet, but seemed really nice. I didn’t talk to him much, and I rarely saw him talk to other students. Then one day, I received an Instagram follow request from one username that I didn’t recognize. A number of my friends also followed the account, so I accepted the request and followed them back. When the user accepted, I checked out some of their posts in an attempt to find out who I just followed. Upon opening, I witnessed random memes, sports posts with intense language, and heavy emoji usage envelop the page. I concluded it was most likely a meme account or someone’s “finsta” and continued with my life. A few days later, the thought arose and I asked one of my friends whether he knew who ran the account. To my shock, it was the student I had met earlier. One would never imagine someone who acted more introverted in life to be so much more extroverted on social media. Their deceiving appearance in daily life qualifies him as a phony.
As these examples illustrate, individuals will change their perception of others for reasons such as preserving their own dignity. These two anecdotes represent only a tiny fraction of the methods phoniness can be expressed by the various people around them. With endless possibilities, there are endless ways for things to be phony in the life of a high school