I honesty can not forsee any future reality in which some kind of weird tattoo / symbol gets permanently imprinted upon your forehead, and people are totally fine with that en masse. It’s a preposterous concept

Surprising no one, since people have been calling this for months

This seems to me a protection + masking habit that simply gained momentum by right of its effectiveness.

My father is on the narcissist spectrum, combined with a hefty dose of religious antagonism. Growing up I also found myself in a lying pattern about the most inane, meaningless things: because I knew that certain true answers, no matter how equally meaningless, would inspire his ridicule, judgment, or scorn.

Lies became commonplace, a form of storytelling to try and push the narrative; not towards any place in particular, just away from topics or zones where responses could grow fraught. That’s me anyways, not sure how much you might feel any overlap