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Tell Me Lies is a Hulu series that follows a group of college students whose lives are slowly overtaken by the charming, exploitative behavior of one person among them. On the surface, it’s a story about young love, toxic obsession, and dysfunctional social relationships. But it’s also a painfully accurate portrayal of complex and nuanced themes like psychological manipulation, self-abandonment, and surrendering authenticity to belong. The show is slow at times, and sometimes plays like softcore porn. It’s definitely not for everyone. But if you can move past that, the series offers a fascinating look at deeper human vulnerabilities that make us susceptible to harm.
What the show captures so well is the price we’re willing to pay to stay comfortable, especially inside relationships that feel like oxygen. The college campus, where most of the show’s drama plays out, is a particular kind of pressure cooker. In a certain small world, with certain people, during a certain window of time, the need to make things work can override almost everything else. Under certain circumstances, it’s easier to let yourself be manipulated than to risk losing what feels essential.
Same Darkness, Different Disguises
This isn’t unique to college. Dysfunctional families, exploitative industries, and high-control cults all operate in the same logical frame and prey on the same vulnerabilities. When our survival (physical or reputational) depends on belonging, and our options feel limited, we become willing to tolerate what would otherwise be intolerable. We silence our own knowing, handing over our authority, our truth, and our self-respect to hold on to what feels most stabilizing. As social creatures, most humans find the threat of defamation and expulsion from the social system to be deeply destabilizing. This is precisely the leverage that Stephen, the narcissistic, sociopathic center of the friend group, uses to perpetuate innumerable abuses that go unchecked and unchallenged.
This is how cult leaders are able to take everything from their followers—many of whom are seeking a substitute for the nuclear family, drawing stability and hope from belonging and belief. This is how antisocial gatekeepers lure the people who are hungriest for inclusion, access, and opportunity into their traps. People in narcissistic, sociopathic territory aren’t only harmful in their direct impact on individuals; they’re harmful in their capacity to charm, attract, and collect. That’s what makes their violent effects ripple so far and wide.
As concerning and discouraging it can be to acknowledge that sociopaths live among us, the response shouldn’t be cynicism, isolation, or a refusal to trust or need other people. We are hardwired to be in relationship. Wanting to belong and connect reflects a deep need, not a weakness.
How the Harm Stops Spreading
But there is power and freedom in being clear about what you’re depending on, and asking yourself honestly whether it’s costing you your truth. Your authenticity. Your freedom.
Some dependencies are healthy. A relationship that supports and stretches you, a community that holds you, a belief system that grounds you—these are safe, reliable sources of stability. But when belonging requires you to abandon yourself, silence your own knowing, and compromise your self-respect or safety, the price is too high. If your throat is blocked with the truths you’re stifling, and you’re choking on secrets and lies, it’s important to pay attention. Because the harm won’t stop on its own.
Staying rooted in yourself doesn’t guarantee you’ll never be fooled. But it gives you something to recognize and return to when the pain overwhelms the pleasure and the spell wears off. It means you will recognize harm, even if it takes you a while to act on it. That recognition, that refusal to look away—when the harm is hitting you, or when it’s hitting another—is how ripples of violence stop spreading.
The Logic Is Everywhere
Not all of us will date a narcissist or be in a cult, but our lives will nonetheless be impacted by their logic. People who seek to control and dominate, who are absent of empathy and incapable of caring about the consequences of their actions, heavily influence all our social, cultural, and economic systems. Many of those with the most influence—the ones who are running the world as we know it—have access to that much power because their lack of scruples and moral conscience made it easy for them to succeed in systems built on competition rather than cooperation. The insidious impact of these individuals and these systems of harm runs deep and wide.
You don’t need to have dated a Stephen for Tell Me Lies to resonate with you. You just need to be a human being in the world, and to consider when you’ve chosen comfort over what’s right, when you’ve surrendered your agency to someone else, and when you’ve seen harm and haven’t spoken up about it.
It’s human and natural to need connection and want comfort. But unchecked, these drives can lead us to overlook real harm. If we listen to ourselves, trust our intuition and body, and stay honest about the price we’re paying to feel good and stay comfortable, we can do something to stop the harm.
