I recall a family in my neighborhood that that always told these exaggerated lies about the success of their furniture store. The father seem to lie about anything he did. He was always the best and most successful at everything he tried or touched. He passed that annoying trait down to his kids.
We sometimes had them over for dinner and cards. After they left we’d dissect the stories and speculate which were lies. Kind of sad really that these people think they are fooling the world. They are often so transparent.
Any of your friends or coworkers like this? Ladies claiming their husbands make gobs of money. Men claiming they fought in Viet Nam in 1980 (the war ended in the early 70’s :rolleyes: ). Or I got this $3,000 Flat screen tv at a great deal for $900, “Let me hook you up too”.
Is it a friendship breaker for you? Or do you let the bullcrap slide off your back?
Why do people feel a need to lie or boast like this?
I had a friend in HS that lied about everything. She was actually one of my best friends AND I had a monster crush on her. It was actually was about a year or so after I met her before I realized it. And by everything, I mean everything. Things that she had no reason whatsoever to lie about, she lied about. It was frustrating, but since it was stuff that she had no reason to lie about, it was more annoying then anything. We had a falling out about 10 years ago and reconnected a few years back. I’m not close enough with her now to know if she still lies, but she’s still the same drama queen she was then. Looking back, I think the lies where just part of the drama. I have to assume she wanted to get caught.
For example, she might tell me she couldn’t do anything because her and her boyfriend were going to a movie tonight, but she would tell another friend they couldn’t do anything with them tonight because her and her boyfriend were going skiing. Just little stuff like that, but it was incessant. I’d guess there’s was 10 or 15 little things like that a day. Every couple of months she’d get tangled up in the lies and have a big falling out with one group of friends or another. Eventually (for reasons other then lying, just drama in general) I was one of those friends and decided to excuse myself from the mess.
Many years later I reconnected with her on Myspace/Facebook. We talk online here and there, go out for drinks but I keep my distance. I have mutual friends tell me now that I’m divorced I should ask her out (based on the giant crush I had on her in HS). I just tell them I’m not interested in her that way anymore (and please don’t ask her out for me). In reality I’m not going to get myself involved with someone that publicly drags her not yet ex-husband though the mud all over facebook purely for the attention, just to take him back a week later (publicly) just to do it all over again next month.
That’s the only person I’ve known really well that’s lied like that.
There was one other person. I was out with a good friend at a bar and he invited one of his friends. Before his friend got there, my friend warned me “By the way, Mark tends to lie, he’ll make up all kinds of bizarre stories, usually about how drunk he was and what he did while he was drunk” I sort of rolled my eyes and forgot about it. Then I met Mark. Mark won the first game of pool and couldn’t believe it since he was so drunk. Yup, he had entire bottle of jack before he left for the bar and drank three beers since he got there.
One time, Mark tells us, he went around [a sharp curve in the Milwaukee freeway system] at NINTEY MILES PER HOUR, after drinking a bottle of jack, 3 shots of tequila and a 12 pack of bud light an hour earlier.
These stories went on all night. And considering I was warned I have to assume Mark talks like this pretty much non-stop. Personally, I don’t think I’d be able to hang out with Mark long enough to consider myself one of his friends.
Yep, my dad. I take almost everything he says with a grain of salt. Last time he visited, he told me that during a blizzard when I was younger, a client wanted to close a deal so badly they had a helicopter land in our back yard, pick him up, fly him to the client and drop him off that same day. He told this outlandish tale of wading through waist-deep snow in our back yard to get to it.
When I asked my mom about it (they’re divorced), she said, “Oh, God! He told you that story, too? He’s been telling people that for years. It never happened.” Given dad’s propensity for exaggeration I’d believe her over him.
He also tries to tell me that he’s friend with General Petraus (sp?) and that he knows people in the mob who’ve offered to “fix” things for him. The latter I’d believe more than the former.
I have no idea why he feels the need to tell these stories. He’s a really successful businessman. (I’ve actually seen articles about him in various publications, so at least he has the proof to substantiate that.)
Yes, a friend in junior high. He had a mental problem, and was a pathological liar. He didn’t make it to even ninth grade without having to leave the school.
And I’m using “friend” loosely here. If you can’t guess, I’m the type of guy who would hang out with people who had problems. Even if I wasn’t looking for them, they’d always find me, and as long as they didn’t hurt me, they were my “friend.”
I know more people like this than anybody else. Literally millions of them. I don’t if they make up their lies because they’re jealous that I have so many better things than everyone else, or if they simply feel inadequate because I am better looking, smarter, richer, faster, and in every conceivable way, better than all of them. I don’t like to brag, which is why I haven’t mentioned my Nobel Prizes or talked about my experiences as a Navy SEAL.
I have known a couple of people like this. I have always assumed they are unable to gauge other peoples knowledge or intelligence levels. It seems like they just have an inability to identify when something is obvious bullshit. They also seem to be the type that is full of themselves so maybe they just have a really low opinion of anyone other than themselves.
Its a deal breaker in a friendship for me and the people I know like this I only know because they are friends of friends or in one case married into the family. I actually find it insulting to be told such obvious bullshit with the teller expecting me to believe it so the likelihood of me choosing to hang out with such a person is pretty slim.
I had a school friend who used to come up with the most fantastic bullshit- my favourite story was the bee sting excuse for not coming in to school the previous day- she claimed her arm had swelled up, and was still almost twice its normal size, and came in with it bandaged. I pointed out that even with the bandages on it wasn’t noticably bigger than normal, to which she told me it was bandaged really tight.
She also used to invent friends, who were always from Ireland, where she had not at that point, even visited, and even went to the lengths of sending us emails ‘from them’. She got very inventive, but unfortunately had a tendency to ignore things like legality, likelihood, and occasionally law of physics . Call me cynical, but personally, I think the Irish Government is somewhat unlikely to grant custody of a 12-year-old orphaned boy to his likewise orphaned 16-year-old gay lover, forget the other 4 underage (orphaned) teenage gay boys who also lived in the single bedroom council flat, all of whom unaccountably changed ages and names apparently depending on what their ‘best friend’ who lives in another country has read lately. She kept that bizzare story up for at least 2 years.
It was a bit sad really, she was otherwise quite a nice girl, but could get really angry and even aggressive if anyone called her out on the clear insanity of some of the stuff she said. I think she’s stopped doing it now she’s actually done a bit more interesting stuff with her life. Hope so.
I dated a guy briefly many years ago that, I later found out, lied about everything. Even the most mundane details of his life and past were fabrications. We stopped dating and a few months later I ran into an acquaintance of mine, a girl I’d hung out with a few times, and I said hello and she just glared at me. Strange, I thought. Later I learned that the liar was now dating this girl, and had been telling her that I was stalking him, calling him all the time, trying to get back together. It is to laugh.
This guy I knew at law school used to lie like that about everything. He was pathetic. he was actually pretty smart - we were on a law journal together. However, everyone loathed him. Aside from the hilarious and excessive lying, He shirk his work leaving others to pick up the slack so we didn’t ALL look like assholes. Then he would boast about it. I don’t know one person from the journal who would piss on him if he were on fire.
I had a friend like this many years ago that was a nice enough guy and normal for the most part but had a few whoppers that he’d never back down from. It cam to the point where me and his other close friends just ignored him when he’d bring them up but it was really embarassing when he’d bring them up in front of new aquaintances.
We both (as well as our group of friends) all worked in retail at the same place so we all knew roughly how much eachother made. But he was always going on about how he was independantly wealthy and only had this job for fun. His grandmother did have a bit of money and had a pretty nice condo where he also lived. He claimed it was one of many properties that HE owned and he was just letting grandma live there.
Apparently he was also a male model and that’s where he made his fortune. If we didn’t see him for a couple days he’d say he had been called off to NY or Paris for a photo shoot. When asked to see his portfolio of work or even an ad that he had been in he said it was considered pretentious to keep pictures of yourself around.
Oh yeah, he also said he was great friends with Johnny Depp and talked to him weekly on the phone but he was supposed to keep it on the down-low. He claimed he didn’t like how “Johnny” always referred to his son as “the kid”.
I have a family member that doesn’t exactly lie per se, but always embellishes her stories for dramatic effect. Sometimes significantly embellishing. I’ve heard her tell a story to other people involving me (i.e., I was there for the story she’s relating) and sometimes the details become so exaggerated and melodramatic that it’s almost unrecognizable. I’ve seen people call her out on it before, i.e. “Wait, I was there and I didn’t say that at all” but usually she just gets really defensive about it. So most of the people around her have just learned that if she’s telling a story about some friends or her kids or whatever, it’s 50-75% completely made up, minimum.
When I was in music school I was asked to play in a band that was going to do some studio work. I think there were about 6 of us, including Lester and 2 girls. Lester and the girls were all songwriters who decided to collaborate and release a record together. (This was in the days of vinyl.) The girls were a little green, but Lester had been around. He had already released a record a couple of years before. We were all excited to be working with him.
We had several studio sessions, recording some songs by all 3 songwriters. And they sounded good!
As it turns out, Lester was a complete fraud. The record that he made was actually someone else’s, and he had a label professionally made up and glued to it. All of his songs were ripped off from lesser know artists. Apparently he did all of this to impress one of the girls, because he liked her.
A former boss always had stories. Some related to his time in the Marines (which always had the other former Marines on our team rolling their eyes).
My favorite was when he was explaining how sea piracy worked in the China Sea. He knew because a friend of his was on a ship that got attacked. As he was explaining how the pirates boarded the container ships and killed all of the crew, it apparently occured to him that his source for the story should be dead, and he wandered off.
He claimed to have flown on a transport with Colin Powell during Vietnam also - plausible, I guess.
I’ve known a couple of pathological liars. Both were very good at getting people to buy their bullshit; both seemingly lied more for the purpose of making their lives more dramatic, than for any gain. Both used the “big lie” technique - that is, to lie so dramatically and outrageously, that the victims/listeners believe it is true, because who would lie about that?
In both cases they were eventually “outed” and moved on to a new circle of friends/victims.
I remember when my wife came across this other woman who was clearly a pathological liar, who wanted to befriend my wife and was attempting to dazzle her with bullshit - I was able to point out what this person was, and so saving my wife some grief down the road (“you know, a “real” undercover Mountie working a big drug sting isn’t going to tell you, a complete stranger, all about it, right?”)
My sister would look you in the eye and tell bald faced lies. Then when you would show her proof that you knew she was lying she’d blame you for letting her.
Her boyfriend Ron (of Ron Thread) fame was quite apt to exaggerate also.
I’ve known plenty of bullshitters, but only one person who was a genuine pathological liar. This person was (and no doubt still is) an evil genius of lies. Not just a liar, but someone who constructed astonishingly elaborate worlds of malevolent bullshit that eventually caused great harm to a number of innocent people.
I won’t go into any more detail as the situation still gives me the creeps a decade later. Thinking about this person makes my skin crawl.
