To ask why people are so utterly bonkers?

He was a private school boy. I suspect that it never occurred to him that we common folk might possibly have a connection with a cavalry regiment.

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The ones that really get me are people who lie about having cancer or other incurable illnesses and go to extreme lengths to do so. Often to raise money but also they love the attention. I guess it must stem from insecurity combined with extreme narcisissm - thinking you're so clever by getting 'one up' on the stupid masses who believe your sob story.

The psychology is so interesting, I'd love to have 5 minutes inside the head of someone who does this!

Maybe the guy really wanted to be a naval officer and this was the closest he could get to his dream? Maybe his circumstances prevented him from becoming one.
Was anyone hurt while he pretended?

Why did they prosecute the people with Brigette Macron? Who cares if she is or isn't a man?

No idea who would do a thing like this. Do you know someone who would? ;-)

many years ago you could pretend to be anyone ( mostly)
Much harder these days isn’t it .,

Oh, it definitely increases the appeal - assuming we're talking about someone who has appeal 😊

@TheCopyist fortunately I haven't met any of those in real life

when people lie about something status related, like example given by @veryannoyedtbh I can at least see what they're going for. They don't have the status so they're going to pretend that they do.

But with people who just target others with really nasty accusations ... I can't see what they want. It just seems to me that they are incredibly unpleasant people and probably have a lot wrong with them. And if they want attention, they do tend to get that.

There are things that I won't discuss here or in real life for exactly that reason.

Has anyone ever slept with a bloke because he said he was in the SAS?

I think we need a poll.

This is the lot who caught the fake Rear Admiral.
https://thewaltermittyhuntersclubhq.co.uk/

A friend of DH's has been passing himself off on Facebook as a former 'Airborne Ranger' (as in 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite fighting force). In actuality he was in an Airborne Reg, just not the 75th. He was some sort of an admin assistant.

I know i read half of it and then scrolled omg.

The said potatoes (buttery boiled potatoes), were served along side the lasagna with cheese sauce.

It's always the elite regiments isn't it @WearyAuldWumman (Guards/Paras/SAS) and they just don't get what very small worlds they are.

Well that or being an Admiral with an unknown to humanity medal award!

I didn't think I had an opinion on lasagne until I read the other thread!

The Meghan fake babies people are also wild

I haven't read the whole thread because people seem to be talking about lasagne

I have nothing against lasagne, but it's not really a discussion point for me 😂

@veryannoyedtbh yeah I am increasingly weirded out by how weird people are. And the strange things that they genuinely believe. And it's not long ago that I was considered a conspiracy theorist on here.

I agree with the theory that the Internet has made it easier for people to back up their crazy theories. In real life, the main people I've heard saying crazy stuff are men who spend a lot of time online. The only exception to this that I've known was a lady who had a very full life, but then dropped doing a lot of things so she could go home after work and be online straight away. Then she got in trouble at work for constantly browsing on her phone.... I lost touch with her but it's entirely possible that she's worse now. Which is a scary thought.

I think it's really unfortunate that Brigitte Macron felt she had to indulge any of this crazy!

I remember in the 2010s, I was on a bus and two women maybe in their 20s or 30s were talking about a boy band member whose wife had just had a baby and they thought the baby wasn't real. I think there's probably a few actors and singers who have had this experience.

is it just that people are so bored they have to invent more and more outrageous theories? It's creepy.

I find myself thinking that they must be trolling their real life contacts - but again, the question there would be - why?

My favourite bonkers conspiracy theory is the one that says Australia doesn't exist. I mean, where do you even start with that one?

People do seem to have become madder in recent years though. Less pleasant, more paranoid, more fearful...its not a good combination.

Did you see the mum rage one -" I can't serve you actually I will" ? Major melt down at the pizza counter. That did my head in yesterday.

Our Walt actually blu-tacked a photo of himself and his 'comrades-in-arms' onto the corner of his computer screen.

Upon closer inspection, I realised that he'd printed out and cut out the regimental crest and had glued it onto a photo of him and his mates dressed up for paintballing.

Every village had it's idiot in the past, but no one outside that village really heard of them. Now the idiots are beamed around the world.

The first give-away with the Walt in my department was that he could "not remember" the three-word regimental motto... (My husband's regiment had amalgamated with another, so he asked me to ask the Walt whether the regimental motto had survived post-amalgamation. It had.)

I did once meet a proper Walter Mitty character and his background was rather sad. He came from a fairly well-off family but was clearly considered the runt of the litter, the family failure. He was very convincing about all the spectacularly unusual/impressive jobs he'd had in his lifetime, so much so that I never really paused to consider how unlikely it all was (I am quite gullible). Among his friends he was known for this, but he did once move in a partner and she invited everyone round for dinner despite his protestations. She'd been living with him for a few weeks by then, and her face was a picture when it became very apparent during the course of the meal that everyone except her knew he was making everything up. I really feel for her, because I believe everything I'm told and have been in similar weird relationships. We all just wished he could let go of these delusions/aspirations, because then you'd just be left with a nice guy who hadn't done much with his life, but it was too deeply ingrained in him to let go of.

Having had some crazy relationships with oddballs over the years, if I could go back in time the advice I'd give to my younger self would be: People are much, much madder than you can even begin to imagine. Assume they are bonkers and let them gain your trust, rather than starting from a place of trust and then working backwards...

There have always been people who fake military service, Walts they are usually called, as in Walter Mitty.
It's usually easy enough to weed out the fakers, just ask for their forces number, any genuine ex/serviceman/woman never needs to pause to think about it 😁😁

Actually I just remembered a guy I worked with would tell people he was a rally driver at the weekends and had a team around him and sponsorship etc. one day he said he didn't have a co driver for the weekend, one of the other guys said he'd do it, which should have flagged given the skills you need, but they agreed... strangely it was called off on Friday night. Monday someone asked the driver how they got on. He said they came 3rd
He went on to steal lots of important valuable documents and computers from the office and was only caught when he sold a stolen motorbike...using his own name. The police found his flat filled with the documents and computers. He'd clearly never sold them or stolen them for any reason.