Is being a fantasist a ‘condition’? Or is it just good old fashioned lying?

I've met 2 potentially 3. One someone who worked for me, made up quite upsetting lies about her mum's health and also winning big competitions. One my bils ex. Despite being a very ordinary(worked at British Gas)and not terribly well educated woman she had been headhunted by MI5 and was off to Oxford. Bil was moving with her and she had secured him a high paying office job. Despite him not actually knowing anything about it .
I suspect a relatives newish gf is too. Keeps telling him they are off to exotic places then at last minute there's a close family member's illness.

We do have to be careful not to attribute to pathology what should be properly be attributed to being a dickhead. Or an opportunist.

Someone who’s a ‘fantasist’, ‘fabulist’, ‘bullshitter’ ‘storyteller’ etc etc isn’t the slightest bit unwell but just likes to seek approval or notoriety or comment. They might be embellishers or plain old liars. But there’s nothing mentally unfit about them.

The same goes for frauds. The difference with them is material benefit from the lies.

People who are mentally unsound and truly believe they won an Olympic gold or are married to Brad Pitt or are Marie Antoinette are few and far between. If they commit crimes because of their delusions they are criminally insane.

We ascribe mental illness far too easily these days.

I suspect it's a sign of poor mental health and deep insecurities, rather than a specific condition. People's behaviour boiled down is really just repeating the patterns that have worked for you in the past. If as a kid lying met your emotional needs better than the truth (maybe getting more attention or getting noticed when you wouldn't otherwise, maybe by avoiding trouble or abuse) then why wouldn't a kid go down that path. It's so damaging though imo. If the kid is stuck in a world of their own lies that it actively prevents them forming good healthy relationships in reality, then pushing them further into the need for the lies.

But I guess we all have our crap. Part of being an adult is paying attention to that crap and fixing it as best as possible. So I'd say somewhere in the middle, a bit more towards 'good old fashioned lying'!

There is a condition, Pseudologia Fantastica.

Pathological lying - Wikipedia

What Is Pseudologia Fantastica? Pathological Lying Explained - ScienceInsights

I in my experience it often starts at a very young age. Although I’m sure a lot of people grow out of it. I mean little kids often have a vivid imagination, read and watch books and tv with a fully developed fantasy world etc and like to dress up or say they are spider man or whatever. But then for others it subtly changes. Maybe it originally comes from day dreaming? There were definitely a few kids that always lied I came across as a kid.

Maybe some people who imagine that they will do whatever job, live in whatever way when they grow up find it hard to work out how to achieve it practically when it comes to the crunch about their lives and just carry on with the fantasy? There are plenty of people who dabble in different business ideas to make money but none of it comes together. And their, you might describe, grandiose ideas are just ideas.

I don’t know if that is likely.

I guess the impacts are the same whether they’re fanatalists or plain old liars.

i had a friend who lied alll the time, it was sort of endearing but she’s def got something going on. It was more a fantasy life than harmful lies

If it's say something that happened in their private life you can't know, however. If they're lying about something at work, well, you may have the headache of having to do something.

I had a colleague who quickly picked up a reputation for being a fabulist. Someone did eventually call him out on something but he produced an online article that corroborated what he said happened to him. But eventually it turned it he was a massive bullshitter. Just not about that!!

My DDad told me he was a habitual liar when he was young. He just got into the habit and found it an easy way to get what he wanted. This caused great consternation to my painfully honest grandparents. Dad got to his twenties, realised it was immature, and stopped...

...or so he said. But I think he did as he was very reliable, just a bit emotionally distant.

Arday reminds me of Jeffrey Archer who, I recall, lied his way into his first job by saying he had a masters degree, and that took him on a trajectory all the way into Cabinet until he was caught for perjury. I suppose, unlike my father, they never grew out of it.

Obviously you wouldn’t be able to check anything if a stranger was telling you daft lies but I would with a colleague and definitely challenge them, HR or not.

Because generally it's more trouble than it's worth. Imagine your work colleague is telling you some story and and you feel it's embellished. Are you going to call them out and risk an HR visitation or just nod politely? Or you get chatting to a stranger who you'll never see again. What's the point?

I think you get lots of different reasons.

My dd when younger used to get herself so tangled up in reality and make believe she really could struggle with separating them.
So that's one level: Where they genuinely believe them. It's really hard to tell because to them they're telling the truth. If she had seen fairies in the garden then she would have a full story.

I've known others who tell fantastic stories about how wonderful they are and how everyone thinks they're wonderful and what they do is totally amazing. When they flew Concorde, having never flown before, to save the rainforests from being chopped down and the glaciers from melting in one day and arrived back, with a failed engine having to do the best crash landing ever seen as the head of the RAF said, and the entire of Heathrow staff on their knees worshiping them.... and even the moon did a twirl in excitement.
I'm not sure if they believe it but even when it's totally ridiculous, people hold back from challenging them, so they keep telling it. My observation is they think they deserve the admiration so it's only getting them what they deserve.

Similar, you get the people who know it isn't true but are using the fact that people won't dare challenge them to boost themselves up and push others down. There's a lot of cross-over with the people above.

Then a milder version of the above. People who like to tell a good story. Often more for laughs than admiration. They know it's not totally true - there's normally some truth in it, but they're just embellishing to make a nice story. I guess a lot of us do that to a certain extent.
I mean, "I caught the wrong bus, and when I was running for the next I fell" is boring but "I caught the number three bus and realised I'd got on the one going the wrong way. The driver told me if he dropped me at the Beachhead roundabout then I could cross over and be just in time for the one coming the other way. I was in such a hurry I slipped down the steps and fell down them and bumped down one by one with my skirt over my head and showing my pants to the world" makes a better story, even if you were wearing shorts that day.

And lastly you get the people who get tangled up. "Oh what a web we weave, when we try to deceive" as my granny would say. So one lie leads to another.
I remember once at Brownies playing a game. Leader would call out a question (eg "who has a birthday in April" and if that applied to you, you tried to get the ball, and the one who got the ball won a point. Well I'd had loads and loads where I couldn't try to get the ball, and decided that I'd go for the next one whatever the question, because I was slow and wouldn't get it anyway, but it would be more fun to try and get it.
"Who did some shopping for someone else today?"
And I ran towards the ball with half the pack... whereupon the ball hit someone's foot and ended up right in my hands. I couldn't have not taken it without being obvious. So I then made up a story about how I'd gone to buy a toy car for my brother, and he wanted a blue one and I could only get green or red and....

And that's what I was suspecting the Cambridge chap was. He'd got more and more tangled in it, and couldn't back down without the whole lot crashing down with him in the centre.
However with the digging in, I think he's more likely one of the knowing it's true and making use of people not challenging.

If I did know someone like this I would have no qualms in calling them out for it. Why don’t people confront them?

I worked with a woman who seemed to want to test how much we would believe! Her tales started fairly run of the mill but then got more and more wild and peculiar. All the famous people she had in her family and the amazing and powerful jobs she had done, yet now working part time in an admin role in a very boring office.

I think some people just have a weaker grasp of reality, get caught up in the moment and say something that's rubbish. Obviously it's dishonest if they know what they're doing and gain by it but I've known people say all manner of odd things and it hasn't felt dishonest at all.

I know several, all from the same family. Very weird, especially once you realise when it's happening in real time. I used to believe everything they told me. No idea if it's a symptom of a condition.

I can think of 3 people I’ve known who are fantasists. Of course, at first I believed their stories, then I started wondering how both x & y could be true - as the stories started contradicting each other. Eventually I realised it was extremely unlikely that each person had lived through all the drama they purported to have experienced. I then stopped believing anything they said and distanced myself from them. Have you seen/read Billy Liar?