We’re all phonies. Friends are phony: “Yeah, she’s totally into you dude. It’s so obvious.”

Girlfriends and boyfriends are phony: “No, I don’t find them attractive. You are the only person I even look at that way.”

Professors are phony: “There is no such thing as a stupid question,” or, “I want this class to be open to class discussion — not just my lecture.”

Even parents are phony. I mean how proud of you can they really be, right?It’s all phony: The way people speak and act. The way people dress. Even the music people listen to.

It’s pretty weird if you think about it. I mean, we spend most of our lives being someone we’re not and saying things we don’t mean. We’ve been trained by our parents and teachers, among others, to act with certain decorum when dealing with others.

We’re all such damned liars.

This is especially true when we first meet people. We amuse one another with extraneous small talk for a bit, only to conclude our wasted time with a friendly “Nice to meet you.”

Instead, what if we just simply told these new acquaintances flat out: “Look, you’re probably an ‘OK’ person, but I just don’t have the time to waste B.S.-ing with one more person.” Then, poke them real hard in the chest or something.

Of course we would never act this way. Mainly because we waste our time trying to impress others who could care less about what we are telling them, because they are trying just as hard to impress us. It becomes a battle of who can impress whom more and no one ever wins.

Girls have it the worst. Guys are by far the phoniest bunch out there — especially college dudes. Guys are capable of coming up with some of the most ridiculous crap if they think it will earn them the opportunity to try and fool this girl again in the near future.

Guys will tell a girl whatever she wants to hear: “Oh, you’re into art? Yeah, I used to do some painting back in the day… I actually aced art class back in the eighth grade. I stopped to pursue some other passions (like the realization of the ‘masturbatory arts’), but I’ve thought about pickin’ up the brush again.” Oh, we’re so suave.

Girls can be just as phony though. There is nothing worse than the girl who pretends to know about sports just to drag on a boring, brainless conversation with a male. I mean, shut up already.

Other phonies, however, can be spotted without having to say a single word.

Exhibit A: Mr. Suburban Gangsta, representin’ his thug game straight out of the hood that is Granite Bay. I think it’s called a “wanksta” within the rap game. The guys who model their wardrobes and vocabularies after the latest BET music video they watched on Dad’s 56-inch flat-screen TV while finishing off the bowl of Lucky Charms their mothers poured for them.

Then there’s a new up-and-coming group — truly the biggest phonies of them all. The one’s who are trying to make it look as if they are not trying. These loopy bastards absolutely kill me: The goofs who spend an hour in the morning styling their hair to perfect that “just-rolled-out-of-bed” look. The same brand of genius that searches the racks of department stores for those T-shirts that look and feel … old? The ones who wear the trucker-style hats tilted to perfection in front of a mirror to make it seem like it was just tossed on.

These people are actually going out of their way to make it look like they don’t care. What the hell is happening here?

We spend so much time trying to pull something over on others, we hardly even get to know the other person — or at least the fake representation they’re throwing at us.

Everyone is looking to trick people into thinking they are something special, but no one leaves a conversation thinking, “Man, this person really has things together. Perhaps I will make a donation to their cause.”

So why do we do it? Why do we continue to try and be something we are not when our true selves will eventually emerge anyways? Think back to the first impressions of your closest friends, how your initial perspective has changed over the time you’ve got to really know them.

Perhaps it stems from the natural insecurities and fears that people won’t like the real us. It is possible people have trouble finding out who they really are. Or maybe it’s something simpler, like the fact that people love making ridiculous idiots out of themselves time and time again.

Whatever the case may be, there is a simple solution: Next time you catch somebody acting like a phony, just shake your head in disgust and mutter, “Everybody hates you, dude,” as you turn and walk away.

I mean, that’s just not something you can tell somebody to their face, you know?