Maybe? It doesn’t square with my personal experience, at least. I went through the usual spiel with someone last night, without knowing whether that was going to be a deal breaker, and I very easily could have avoided that problem, because (1) I’m a good liar, or at least I was back when I let myself do it, and (2) this person and my SO live in totally different cities and run in completely different social circles, so an alternate version of me who’s willing to cheat and lie would have no reason to think that keeping this particular secret would be hard to do.
On the other hand, my father lied a lot and much of who I am today is basically An Attempt At Being Not-Him, so I might have a Weird Reluctance To Lie for reasons other than “am a nerd.”
In support of your argument: I only looked up “Ally McBeal” a few minutes ago, and promptly discovered that I not only lacked all but the most cursory information on Ally McBeal but that what information I did have was almost entirely wrong. The name of the program was not “The Ally McBeal Show,” it was not a talk show or comedy sketch show or anything similar, and Ally McBeal is a wholly fictional character, rather than the name of a living person and that person’s fictionalized persona à la Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond.
I think it would be fair to say that I previously had “no idea who Ally McBeal was.” Despite knowing that the name pointed to something, I was incorrect in just about every respect except for which pronouns to use and it had something to do with a television show.