Bullshitters- who do you think you're kidding?

[TooManyAnimals94]

Genuinely confused by this phenomenon. You know the people I'm talking about. They make stuff up that is obviously completely untrue and just expect you to nod along. If you point out their bullshit they backtrack at a billion miles an hour and make up a new story?!
Thread prompted by someone I have to work with sometimes and I left work today with full on bite marks in my tongue so I didn't tell her what I think of her and cause a whole scene.
As an example. I brought in scones for us at tea break. She tells this hugely dramatic story about how she's allergic to cream and she nearly died from having a hot chocolate with cream on 🙄
So, even though I found this story highly unlikely, I made sure we had separate knives for jam and cream. Me being messy, I managed to get cream on the jam knife so I was like wait! Don't use that, I'll get a fresh one. So she says 'Oh, just a bit on the knife is fine, don't worry'.

WHAT? YOU LITERALLY JUST SAID THE TINY AMOUNT OF CREAM ON A HOT CHOCOLATE NEARLY KILLED YOU??

Now I've read that back it seems like I'm being dramatic but it's just constant from the minute she gets there till she leaves, just constant full on lying and elaborate fantasies.

So if you know one (or you are one) why do they do it?

Childhood not children.. although it would be quite miserable having someone like this as a parent

Oh god! Three friends immediately come to mind when I think "bullshit".

First one was a school friend. When we were in sixth form she left to go to a separate college then told the rest of our girl group she had cancer. We were so upset. But no details ever, rejected help, and eventually found out it was a pile of crap when she started dating a new boyfriend and she begged us not to tell him. None of us speak to her anymore.

Second was at uni when I was doing my Masters. She told us she had coeliac disease and we would walk to a further away cafe every lunch time because they did a bigger range of gluten free food. When she met her current boyfriend we all went for a curry and she ate a naan bread and told us she was cured 😵‍💫

Third was another school friend who always told really small pointless lies and it became a bit of a joke in the friendship group. Anyway, she got married then told us her new husband had had a heart attack. Again, wouldn't accept help or give too much away. I met him for the second time (first time was the wedding) I asked about his health and he was like...errr what? Oh, and I've just remembered he had suspected colon cancer for ages too and her dad was terminally ill but was doing shots at said wedding and when I went to speak to him she came running over and ushered me away.

Just, why???

I've known MANY people like this. One guy traced a ferrari and took it into his mechanic college class and said he'd designed a car and should be a millionaire. He was also in the cadets and a helicopter pilot chose him out of everyone to take the helicopter up for 4 hours on his own.......he was 14 at the time. He was also convinced you got 3 sets of teeth 🙄

My parents used to live with someone who's BS was so legendary they have passed on his tales to the next generation

He was a multi instrumentalist, capable of speaking several obscure foreign languages, he had many close celebrity friends and even once cut the pope's hair.

Unfortunately the poor guy was also afflicted with various rare illnesses and had been subjected to multiple near death accidents / attacks too , many while travelling the world during one of his many exciting past careers

Very impressive for a guy in his early 20's struggling to find work and renting a room in a house share

If the cream didn’t kill her then the rest of the hot chocolate would have I imagine?? Bizarre.

Yes, definitely met/known/worked with absolute bullshitters. No time for them. They can live in their delusional world but I won’t.

Blimey, I thought this was going to be a thread about Boris Johnson and his gang of idiots. 😂

I wonder if we know the same person!! Got a friend who is a self-diagnosed 'coeliac' and one time her food got contaminated with breadcrumbs, she was so bloated and ill that she 'nearly died' but then just last week she helped herself to a 'teeny slice' of cake which was definitely not gluten free (I know because I bought it).

For some people, it can just be that they enjoy a good dramatic reaction from others but sometimes it can also be part of a personality disorder.

I used to work in a company (luckily not the same building very often) as a woman in the 90's who swore she was David Ginola's girlfriend at the height of his fame.

She was in her late 40's, not awfully attractive, constantly working overtime shifts but somehow 'David' was flying in and whisking her off to fabulous places and parties all the time. Honestly, she could have been him Mum. It was so embarrassing but she went on and on and was adamant it was true.

I had to do a shift with her one day and another colleague had left a magazine out on purpose that had him and his real girlfriend or wife on the cover. We spotted it at the same time and she caught me smirking, which isn't awfully kind but in my defence we were caught unawares so I wasn't prepared to hide my amusement.

The next afternoon my boss called and told me I had to meet with the big bosses and that I was suspended from duties until after the meeting. The psycho had reported me for something utterly ridiculous & not in any way an issue but twisted it massively.

Luckily my boss was aware of her batshittery and knew me well enough to know that I would never do what I was accused of.

I never worked with her again BUT I did learn to be wary of bullshitting nutters!! The MOFOs are dangerous!!

I had a flatmate tell me how he studied Aerospace Engineering but the thing is I studied engineering and I thought he was full of it. One time he drank too much and I said sth like "Oh yeah you studied Aeronautical engineering, right?" and he said "yeah, I did! Your memory's great!". Hahahah!
To answer you, I think this is one of life's greatest mysteries. You'll never know why. I've met a few well-off, super normal people, who had cleptomania and, again, it all goes into "I'll never know way" category.

I shared a flat with a guy I also worked with. We worked in marketing for Tesco.

He maintained for such a long time that someone at MI5 saw a TV ad he'd produced and it was just so good that they recruited him to become a spy.

I repeat: I lived and worked with him. 🤣

As someone who can't eat wheat I'm always surprised at the amount of coeliacs in eg Facebook groups who are really ill if they have gluten but then somewhat frequently cave and have some cake anyway! I just don't get it!

I'm a fat knacker and struggle to control my cravings but I can safely say no cake on Earth is worth breath-taking stomach cramps, bloating to look like I'm due to give birth, feverish chills, the shits, a migraine and an itchy bastard rash!!

People are weird, honestly.

I always think about how it must be absolutely fucking exhausting for compulsive liars to try to keep up with their lies. The headspace and effort wasted. Baffling.

I work with a woman who claims to be related to several former Cabinet Ministers, half of Scotland and Ireland, and several celebrities. She also claims to have babysat Prince William when he was small (at a friend's house), to have advised a former PM about social policy, and accompanied a Hollywood actor fish the red carpet at Cannes.

The reality is a middle aged, junior grade civil servant who is very lonely and has multiple disabilities. She is a lovely kind lady and good at her job, she has ASD and is a vocal activist for equality. She's awesome. But she is also a fantasist, and it can be difficult talking to her when you know she is fabricating everything.

My work colleague is the biggest bullshitter. I smile and nod and go home and tell DP all the crazy

Once she spent the day telling me her DH was now working on an oil rig in the North Sea, she specifically made clear he was on the rig that day. I was working in our Cambridge office on this particular day and at 3pm when I was leaving to get my train home her DH merrily waved at me from his car. Kind of him to pop back from the North Sea and pick her up wasn’t it?

I could talk for days about the shit she spouts. I use to find it frustrating but now I just enjoy playing bullshit bingo.

People who do this don’t really get that they are not telling the truth. There’s not a hard boundary between their daydreams and their experiences / memories.

My dad is like this - he genuinely seems to believe he was in a famous band in the 60s and that he taught Charles Manson on a prison outreach creative writing scheme. He also told his colleagues for years that his wife was dead (she wasn’t!) and that he had no children. But this didn’t stop him inviting them round for dinner parties at our house, with seemingly no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. It was my mother and I who had to field the questions about whether I was a stepchild / how had my mother died, etc. when we confronted him about it he denied it.

He’s had quite an impressive career - having a very loose grip on reality is no impediment to success.

I think Boris Johnson is like this, too.

Everything that comes out of BIL/SILS mouth is bullshit. They tell stories back to us, about us, that bear no relation to what happened (they always come out very well).

I follow a semi famous woman on Twitter and not one thing that she says is true. It’s a personality disorder.

Im with you here , I also work with one , allllll day every day bull shit , by the end of the day I’m shattered from listening to it .

got home today fell asleep for 3 hours and she just shattered me out with her all day dribble !

I have an acquaintance who takes other people’s stories and pass them off as her own. Trouble is, she loses track of who’s who. Many times she has told me something hilarious/dramatic that’s happened to her and I’m thinking (or saying if I’ve had a few) “No shit? That exact same thing happened to me six months ago! Remember when I told you?’

Do you work with Nessa, from Gavin and Stacey?

I hate these people as OP
They cause a huge amount of serious trouble at work!

I've also been with one in a friendship and it's awful to realise you trusted someone who made up a load of crap. I feel as if there is more of this around than there used to be? I wonder if it's because society is more accepting of it and usually finds a label for it to remove the personal responsibility.

I had an ex like this. He had been in the SAS (he was in the army for basic training in his late teens and was no good!), He'd bought me a car then i dumped him (he bought the car for himself and i had my own!), last time i saw him He'd been invited to the bar (when I'd known 6 months earlier he was working in collections, and it turns out he was working in a collection legal dept).
There were other lies which i am sure i believed when we first got together. He just couldn't help himself. It's when i heard some about myself i got cross!

@knackeredagain Oh but Nessa was telling the truth! Don't you remember her wedding when John Prescott walked in?

I had a random cause to look up a former friend on linkedin the other day...her profile was reassuringly bullshit...listing universities she's attended for pretty much an open week and nothing more. You didn't get a degree from there love just from buying coffees. Librarian? Yeah I could put that too since I did a few days at my local library getting my girl guide badge. Just take a deep breath and be real and unapologetic for who you are instead of spinning a yarn.

I do find it hard not to just full on guffaw in the face of people who are so blatantly bullcrapping.

Apparently a lot of people like this start during childhood, and it can reflect being in an environment where they had to lie a lot.

I guess maybe they never develop the same filter that makes them feel they have to tell the truth?

I also think it has to do with an inability to form authentic relationships, instead they try and make connections through telling these stories.