I'm not sure how you're relating anything there to commentary on cheating...
My complaint is with interviewers and their wasteful, unfair hidden criteria. You could phrase it as a complaint that interviewers make use of filtering mechanisms that are impossible to know about without the ability to read minds. There's not necessarily anything wrong with certain filters per se, but it's important the candidate be aware what they are, as early as possible -- if it's in the job description this allows for candidate self-filtering, even.
My advice to interviewees who nevertheless have to deal with such hidden criteria isn't "just always be honest!" but "since you can't mind-read, you have to guess at the hidden criteria, sorry."
I'd suggest being honest as the default, especially if you have no good guess what the real criteria is, or if you're not even presented with anything that gives you a whiff of a hidden criteria being present. But you can be honest without also going into details about grandpa's barn incident. Sometimes you do have a good guess into the interviewer's mind, though, or at least a sense of "reading the atmosphere". (Some interviewers explicitly use hidden criteria but drop more and more hints throughout the interview to eventually reveal it, hoping the candidate notices on their own first.) It might indicate that you should answer the question with a silly meme that came to mind, instead of directly. Or hey, maybe now you realize those details about the barn would be helpful to elaborate on after all. You might also want to adjust your posture if you're getting the sense that they don't appreciate slouchers here, which would be a hidden criteria applied to the interaction itself rather than a particular question.
I wouldn't advocate misrepresenting yourself, but it's standard advice to represent yourself in the best light you can.
My complaint is with interviewers and their wasteful, unfair hidden criteria. You could phrase it as a complaint that interviewers make use of filtering mechanisms that are impossible to know about without the ability to read minds. There's not necessarily anything wrong with certain filters per se, but it's important the candidate be aware what they are, as early as possible -- if it's in the job description this allows for candidate self-filtering, even.
My advice to interviewees who nevertheless have to deal with such hidden criteria isn't "just always be honest!" but "since you can't mind-read, you have to guess at the hidden criteria, sorry."
I'd suggest being honest as the default, especially if you have no good guess what the real criteria is, or if you're not even presented with anything that gives you a whiff of a hidden criteria being present. But you can be honest without also going into details about grandpa's barn incident. Sometimes you do have a good guess into the interviewer's mind, though, or at least a sense of "reading the atmosphere". (Some interviewers explicitly use hidden criteria but drop more and more hints throughout the interview to eventually reveal it, hoping the candidate notices on their own first.) It might indicate that you should answer the question with a silly meme that came to mind, instead of directly. Or hey, maybe now you realize those details about the barn would be helpful to elaborate on after all. You might also want to adjust your posture if you're getting the sense that they don't appreciate slouchers here, which would be a hidden criteria applied to the interaction itself rather than a particular question.
I wouldn't advocate misrepresenting yourself, but it's standard advice to represent yourself in the best light you can.