Nancy Drew computer games were my secret obsession from ages 10 to 18. Similar to the book series, these games led you through spooky PG-13 scenarios following the eponymous neighborhood detective. What I loved about the games, though, was the first-person POV as Nancy. I was suddenly Nancy herself, the girl showing up to creepy mansions in disguise as a tourist, talking to local stakeholders with a sly poker face. It was thrilling to discover and analyze clues, but even more, I got to use these analyses to shift my identities, beliefs, and alliances in the world of the game. In most of these games, winning meant some sort of justice was brought to innocent townspeople or loved ones. The price of relief was deception. Quite literally, deception was the key to winning the game.
I’ve always liked deception reality games because they mimic real life in a heightened way. When The Circle first aired, I quickly became obsessed. Friends and family of mine — most of them straight — condemned me for watching “trash” TV. I got accustomed to making my case for the brilliance of this show. Using a structure that parallels our social media, players must navigate real-world social scenarios to gain trust and popularity. Even the players with the most integrity are put in positions where they must betray allies for the greater good. Alternatively, people playing as “catfish” can be the most honest of the bunch. A “catfish” is anyone playing not as themselves. For example, one player came on the show pretending to be his girlfriend. This could be a strategic move because the warm, bubbly, relatable woman he’s playing could gather in more female friends and attract flirtatious men, two advantages he may not have as a straight cis guy. Other players come in trying to prove a point: I can get more social clout as a skinny, conventionally attractive girl than as myself. The face they give their playing persona could significantly impact how their strategy is perceived.
In my post-Circle lull, friends suggested similar shows. The Mole is an adventure-deception game where players complete James Bond-level missions to earn money. Simultaneously, one undercover “mole” is trying to sabotage missions to lower the prize pot for the other contestants. Playing the mole requires 24/7 acting, strategy, and deception disguised as genuine relationship building. As a regular player, it’s in your best interest to act like the mole to lead others off the trail of who you actually believe is the mole. If people think you’re the mole, they’ll vote for you and get eliminated for being wrong. Even the most honest players have to deceive in order to win.
The Traitors is a campy reality show with a similar structure to The Mole, hosted by the fabulously extravagant Alan Cumming. Set in a mysterious Scottish castle, players are designated as either faithfuls or a traitor. Faithfuls try to uncover who the traitor is to banish them from the castle. Traitors must disguise themselves as faithfuls, all while “murdering” a faithful every night. The traitors are hand-selected by Cumming during the show and must learn how to deceive their peers throughout the course of the game. Traitors try to preserve themselves through genuine connection and game talk. Faithfuls must band together to figure out who could be of harm to the community they’re building in real time.
Countless other reality game shows like The Trust, Survivor, Big Brother, Claim to Fame, Squid Game: The Challenge, and Snake in the Grass operate on the psychology of deception. In real life, deception can sometimes be crucial to survival. I’ve come to realize Nancy Drew sought the same reprieve from deception: life and justice, if not for herself, then for her community. Something in my 13-year-old queer brain resonated with this narrative. As an adult, reality TV shows have similarly reflected back to me the connections between deception and survival in real life.
As queer folks, we must deceive to survive.
Often, we have to come out in harsh political climates or unsafe environments. For those of us who decide to come out, it’s often a decision that living publicly as our authentic selves is more important than the potential danger that comes with it. Before this decision, we have to hide. We have to interact with others, make decisions, and question our core beliefs as undercover agents in our own lives. My younger self deceived family and friends by denying any queerness and remaining silent in the face of homophobic chatter in fear of being discovered. Even now, conversations with new friends can require expert-level psychoanalysis to gauge exactly where they stand on queer people. While I’d like to say I’m out and proud everywhere I go at all times, that is hardly ever the case.
As I begin my career as a therapist, I have to hide parts of myself. Most of my socials are private now. I have to be slightly more careful about what I write for Autostraddle. I work in the outskirts of Central Florida, so I don’t always disclose my identities for my own protection and the well-being of the therapeutic relationship. When I pick up shifts at my various other weekend jobs, I avoid telling people I’m a therapist. Actually, I avoid telling most people I’m a therapist because, unless I’m their therapist or good friend, I don’t have the capacity to offer the free guidance they often want. When looking for school-based counseling jobs, I’ve conveniently left out information on my resume, such as writing for Autostraddle, because I know it could lose me the job. While my philosophy is generally to give myself to places that also want me, working as a QPOC therapist in Florida requires meeting these opportunities with a little deception. Deception for a job could very well mean saving a trans child’s life, which is a strategic move I’ll continue to make as long as I live here.
Sometimes concealing my identity is an act of social justice; sometimes, it’s an act of avoiding judgment. Despite living where I live and doing what I do, I enjoy exposing my identities. In fact, I wish they were more present sometimes. In full transparency, I often conceal who I’m dating in fear of being seen as straight. I strategically swerve questions about significant others or preferences. Biphobia is still pervasive, and I don’t want potential friends and community to exclude me because of a pronoun I mention. I’ve even purposely concealed who I’m dating here in my writing at Autostraddle. I want to keep writing here as a queer person because I am a queer person, but I am still afraid of biphobic pushback from potential bad-faith readers. It’s a move of deception to protect and preserve myself.
We hide parts of ourselves to get what we want. Protecting our own vulnerabilities is an instinctual key to survival. The queer community has expert survival skills because so many of us have experienced being isolated, forced to conform to the context around us. And then, finding queer community is the antidote to deception. When we find each other, we find parts of ourselves. We no longer have to be a secret agent in our own lives. We no longer need to play by the rules of a culture we aren’t part of. Our alliances aren’t only survival-based but maintained by mutual empathy. In an ideal world where queerness isn’t marginalized, maybe we wouldn’t have to deceive to get the job or the money or the social experience. But under capitalism, the patriarchy, and white supremacy, deception — ultimately different from assimilation — will always be a survival tool.
I became who I needed to be for the money or the social currency I knew it would take to get me on a level playing field. Working as a therapist for queer youth in Florida, I often have to play as the mole to get my clients the resources I need. In efforts to form my own queer community here, I consistently play a game of The Circle, casting myself as a queer, edgy top who definitely doesn’t have a boyfriend. In family dynamics and work relationships, I attempt to be a faithful for as long as I can until a piece of information more important than my own identity or allegiances means turning over to the traitors’ side.
Deception reality TV gives us a (mostly) harmless guidebook to manipulating your way to the finish line, whether that finish line is a job, a raise, access, or unlocking a more authentic version of you by leading you to the people who actually see you under the disguise. Just like in real life, many winners of these reality shows win through human connection and empathy. Deception is far more complicated than just “lying.” Reality TV reflects the balance of cunning and comfort often necessary to achieve queer excellence and survival.
This piece is part of UNDER COVER, an Autostraddle editorial series releasing in conjunction with For Them’s underwear drop.
What a fantastic read! The way you structure your posts makes them so easy to follow. Looking forward to more! Rummy Game Development Companies
Fascinating, relevant read. I am also in grad school to become a therapist, transitioning from a career where I was very public.
I work psychoanalytically, and the concept of disclosure is much debated in the field.
One question I have pondered quite a bit is how much of me is in the details of my life, and how much is in my personality/how I exist in the world. Obviously, they co-exist, but if a patient/client doesn’t know details about my personal life, does that mean they don’t know me? Am I deceiving them, or am I centering them?
You have an excellent Freudian slip-typo in your essay, which I’m going to read too much into because it very poetically answers the question:
“Working as a therapist for queer youth in Florida, I often have to play as the mole to get my clients the resources I need.”
Are they your needs or your client’s needs? As you know, the therapist’s use of disclosure, awareness of our countertransference, etc. is for the client’s benefit, not for ours.
My thoughts about limiting disclosure online is that it exists outside the therapeutic relationship. Because a client/patient is learning about the therapist on their own, and we may not know. It’s playing with the frame of the therapy, removing the therapy room and the therapeutic relationship from the therapy.
Maintaining a more private presence, especially online, doesn’t feel like deception to me. It feels like privacy. I can absolutely see how it feels like being in the closet, but I think the point of the deception in shows like The Mole or Traitors is to mislead others, so the mole/traitor can take advantage of them and personally benefit from it.
I liked this and related to the commentary biphobia both within and outside the queer community. I have also avoided mentioning who I was dating, particularly if they were men, in order to avoid bi erasure and help find queer community.
I work in a conservative and male dominated field (math academia) and certainly find maintaining some privacy/deception is protective.
Maintaining a more private presence, especially online, doesn’t feel like deception to me. It feels like privacy. I can absolutely see how it feels like being in the closet, but I think the point of the deception in shows like The Mole or Traitors is to mislead others, so the mole/traitor can take advantage of them and personally benefit from it.
Wow wow wow. Thank you. I feel so seen in a lot of this, a d it resonates with my friends as well in being bipoc/queer trans and having to hide parts.