I was taught that a lie was pretty much always wrong. Sure, you might want to spare somebody’s feelings, but misleading somebody by even just bending the truth was never really okay.
I guess things have changed. Lindt Chocolates recently faced a lawsuit over false advertising for their chocolates. It seems they are not “expertly crafted from only the finest ingredients,” as they’ve always claimed. But it wasn’t a claim. It wasn’t supposed to be believed. Lindt’s lawyers described it as “advertising puffery,” as if that made it okay, I guess, to, I dunno, lie?
I write novels. My latest says “a novel” right on the cover. And I still have to include a waiver explaining that the novel is, indeed, a work of fiction, and any similarities between the books’s characters and real people is “purely coincidental.”
I guess any similarity between “chocolates expertly crafted from only the finest ingredients” and Lindt chocolates is “purely coincidental.”