Men lie about having watched particular TV shows a lot more than women, according to Hulu
UniversalMindy KalingPeople frequently lie about having watched a particular TV show, and men are much bigger culprits than women, according to new research by Hulu.
Hulu surveyed about 1,000 TV-watching Americans, aged 18-49, and 46% admitted to lying about having watched a TV show.
That's a lot already, but among men, the number was much higher. A whopping 62% of men said they'd lied, whereas only 32% of women said the same.
Millennials also lied slightly more often than the general population, at 55% overall.
So why are people lying?
"We are humans," Hulu CMO Jenny Wall told Business Insider, laughing. People don't want to feel left out when their friends are gabbing about the latest show, so they just go along with it. "I've lied about watching 'Breaking Bad,'" Wall admitted.
Wall explained that the Hulu team was discussing this phenomenon among themselves, and decided to look into the data and find out if it was true for TV watchers at large. And it certainly was. 44% of the liars even said they'd fibbed in the past week.
And Wall thinks this practice will only grow if TV continues to ramp up at an insane pace. It's simply not possible to keep up with the 409 (!) scripted shows that came out in 2015. So people will turn to a little white lie to feel like they're still part of the cultural conversation.
Here is a clip of Hulu star Mindy Kaling Hulu thinks expresses how this type of lying would go down in everyday life: