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?

I worked with a woman like this. Me and another colleague would just roll our eyes and mouth ‘that was me’ across the desks. I’m sure people knew she was full of shit but let her get away with it.

I’ve got a relative who bullshits. My take on it is that
-he chooses stories that are unlikely to be proven untrue
-he likes to sound more interesting than he already is
-he gets a little kick out of fooling people

I once fell out with him because of one of his lies. He told me he ran a local hobby club, and I was proud of this because I completely believed it. Years later I was out of town, and I ran into someone who expressed an interest in this hobby. I said proudly that my relative ran the club in my home town. …. Yes, the man I was speaking to was the one who really did run that club. I looked like the lying twat. It was embarrassing.

I used to work with a compulsive liar, she drove us all mad with it.
You would be sat having a chat with a colleague while having a break and she would come in and take over the conversation. You could be talking about having a headache, oh when I had a brain tumour, she would say. Then go on about this fictional brain tumour.
According to her, she was actually our supervisor, but rather than be paid as a supervisor in her payslip, the company paid her the difference in cash separately. We didn't even have supervisor's!
Her ( deceased ) father was extremely wealthy and used to build houses for homeless people to live in....free of charge. Then the next day, tell someone else that her father was so poor that he used to go poaching to feed the kids.
In the end we all used to scatter if we saw her coming. It was painful.

I knew someone who lied compulsively. Unfortunately in her case it included telling outrageous and very damaging lies about other people. But even restricting it 'just' to the lies she told to boost her image, they were massively implausible. She claimed she'd done so many degrees with the Open University that they were going to name a building after her! What a dingbat.

I worked with a woman for 15 years who was a compulsive liar and she was a talker. What she hadn't done, seen, had! She could relate to everyone through her lies!We had a conversation with another colleague and a few weeks later in a conversation with a different colleague she tried to pass it off as her own experience! She practically recited what he'd said word for word!
We were the longest serving workers and new staff that joined didn't know what I knew ...which was that most things were lies!
She had several days off work when her ex husband passed away. She wanted to be a support to her adult children which was understandable. No one else knew that 5 years previous she'd had a week off work for exactly the same reason!
Quite often I'd say To be a good liar you have to have a good memory!

I just feel sad for them. I think they are either very insecure or lonely and they see the "real" them as boring and/or worthless. I tend not to get worked up by them.

My partner's mother is a bit like this. Among her classics was when she claimed her cleaner had tried to kill her. We called her bluff - picked up the phone, told her this was very serious and we'd have to report this to the police etc. she then said to leave it as she'd report it herself later. When we asked her a few days later about it she completely backtracked. Just one of many examples! I think she likes the drama/attention.

Reading this thread reminded me of when I was a teenager and one of my friends said the dance teacher was her cousin and that they spent loads of time together at family parties, she talked about it for about 2 years. Later on it became extremely clear that this was not the case but I was just embarrassed for her and didn't say anything about it.

I also had a friend who would embellish everything that happened to her. Once she got locked out and told people she'd slept on the street, when actually she'd called me and slept in my boyfriend's house. When we were in primary school she apparently told the teachers that she had cancer and the truth only came out when they asked her parents how they could support her, I say apparently because she told me this as adults so I don't know if it was a genuine admission or not.

I also knew someone who would claim you were lying about literally anything and say it never happened and then if you wouldn't let it drop would suddenly remember things in a way that was immensely flattering to them. She seemed to rewrite history all the time to make herself feel better, I'm not sure if even she believed it.

Weirdly, I knew a man years ago who used to claim he was secretly dating an England footballer, but that it had to be very hush-hush as ‘the press would bury him if he came out’.

I could have almost believed him, had he not been nearly 50 with over-bleached hair and a Ronseal level fake tan. No multi-millionaire footballer was risking it all for him (which is why his much-vaunted move to London to be near him never actually happened).

As an aside, when I told him I was moving to London and he asked whereabouts, his response to my reply was an airy ‘Not bad’. I longed to say ‘Well at least it’s a real place!’ I wouldn’t think twice about it now.

It’s not directly on the assessment but it’s to do with crap impulse control and definitely a known part of ADHD for some people.

I used to do it and only stopped in my late teens. It was that tiny rush of saying something that would recieve praise/admiration/shock. I used to hate it about myself and I would know people knew I was lying as I was doing it.

I just really had to practice breathing/counting before talking. Or asking people questions about themselves instead of saying something mad. I used to rabbit on about myself constantly too.

I’m a good person and I’d never lie about something serious/to cover up a fuck up. I consider myself very honest but it was just like verbal diarrhoea that was tied up into my daydreams.

@Neverendingdust we have a saying for that, it’s an elevenerifer. If you’ve been to Tenerife, they’ve been to elevenerife

Cringing whilst reading these!

10 or so years ago i was friendly with another mum on the school run. We would occasionally have coffee, meet up in the evening with partners. Anyway, she dropped me like a hot stone. Completely started blanking me, would turn her back if she saw me at the school gates. It was actually very upsetting at the time.

Turned out after a few weeks of this and me asking her directly what i had done wrong, she told me she couldn't trust me as I was a bullshitter!!! I had told her a couple of stories about my life that are 100% true, however in her head she chose to think i was lying. Why i would lie about such things?

For me at the time it felt like such a betrayal of trust, to tell someone you thought you trusted something very personal-for them to then think you are a liar! Still galls me to this day.

My friends and I are constantly having a laugh at someone right now actually because they lie constantly, say they've bought very expensive things, it's on back order, getting designed etc. They are a cleaner, and that is their only income, nothing else. Nothing ever turns up, and if you ask them where it is, it's always 'oh it wasn't right so I'm selling it'. The next time this happens I'm going to ask to buy it, see them struggle for the new lie.😂They are so funny and completely bonkers. I don't even get why they do it, it's not like the rest of us talk about buying expensive shit all the time, and we don't anyway, so it's not keeping up with the Joneses mentality. It's trying to pretend they are better than us.

IsAnybodyListening sorry that happened to you. I blame the bullshitters.

Fair enough. I wouldn’t call myself a bullshitter in comparison to these stories, I don’t lie very often (maybe every year or so) and not about big things like health or allergies etc.

Not sure how I would respond if people asked more questions, eg: about the concert, I guess it would be awkward but luckily the times I’ve said something not true nobody has followed it up asking for details. I wouldn’t intend to fabricate a whole story, usually when I’ve lied it’s been very spontaneous and in a wider conversation and hasn’t been something that interesting in the first place to warrens lots of follow up questions. I don’t like the attention on me and tend to be quiet and awkward in social situations so wouldn’t aim to have to talk about it too much! As I said I always regret it afterward and think, why the fuck did I just say that? I think it just comes from being socially awkward and impulsive and sometimes not knowing what to say in a conversation and feeling like I have to say something and so I say the first thing my mind thinks of to add even when it’s not true.

They have a role model for lying. Clue, he has blonde hair.

Challenge such tall stories- something like 'too late for Booker Prize entries'.

I used to be the bullshitter. All through my childhood and my teens. I did it because I absolutely despised myself. I thought every person who came near me must not like me. I was desperately unhappy and couldn't imagine anybody liking me, or even tolerating me. A lot of the time I didn't even mean to lie - they just slipped out. I was embarrassed of myself but I couldn't stop. It was incredibly important to me that people were impressed by me, or at least interested in me in a positive way. I don't think they were, usually, but I kept on trying.

In my early 20s I gradually stopped the BS. I'm not sure exactly what helped me, but now I'm thinking back to it, I did cut ties with my parents in that time of my life. They were abusive and made me feel bad, and one day I had just had enough of them. That was a positive change. I realised that hating yourself is a bad thing, so I started trying to fix that, in baby steps. I started taking care of myself more and being kind to myself. I learned that the voice inside my head telling me how shit I am is not in charge.

I'm in my 40s now and I definitely don't BS anymore. I haven't for a very long time. I think I would feel embarrassed if I met people that I used to know in my teens, because I worry that they would remember the silly things that I used to say. I'm like a completely different person now. Thankfully I emigrated to another country, so I'm probably safe from bumping into old friends! The people in this country have only known me since I've been "normal".

I'm not sure what my point is. I suppose I am just taking the anonymous opportunity to shed some light on what it's like to be the bullshitter. Other people may have different experiences to mine.

I work with someone who’s a real bullshitter
she took two weeks off work as she had sores all over her feet-boss googled the pictures and they where the first images

claims she’s a type 1 diabetic-not bad enough to need insulin but enough that she feels faint and has low blood sugar when she doesn’t want to do anything
oddly she never mentions it when our main boss is around-who is a type 1 diabetic

she came in the other day claiming she’d been raped-just hours before
she got sent home and we offered to phone the police for her,which she refused saying she’d ring from home
she came back a few days later and was taken to one side to be asked what did the police say and how we could support her
she looked confused then said she was fine but the police where not interested so she’d dropped it

she’s also shagging one of our married manager’s-they both claim that they are not but they’ve been seen all over town,draped all over each other and the only one who doesn’t know is the man’s poor pregnant wife

shes claimed 5 times to be pregnant with twins-all girls-and lost each set to stillbirth-shes never showed which she would with twins-each time she’s got to 20 weeks,gone into hospital on the night time,given birth and back at work the next day
shes not even 20 years old yet

we all just roll our eyes at her now

This is probably how celebrity stalking starts!! Convincing themselves they're in a relationship with someone they've never even met!

Just bonkers.

I remember one at work once. She was on the same low wage as the rest of us but pretended she was as rich as a footballers wife. She'd refuse to come out lunch or drinks with us as 'those venues / that food is for poor people'. If someone said they'd been to Morrisons, she'd say she did her grocery shopping 'at Harrods.' Like... I don't know much about Harrods but I don't think you can get a week of groceries there. She just loved using silly 'rich people' buzzwords.

It was pretty sad.

They rely on people being too polite to call them out. If you think they're a harmless saddo you can just leave them to it. If not, just call them out. "Not so fatal now, then?" and a pointed look tells the bullshitter you're on to them and that you will comment, so they'll not bother to do it around you.

Why did my message get deleted ?!!!

Bullshitters are one of the few things in life that make me furious. I've had one school friend tell my friendship group that she had a brain tumour (she didnt), my college boyfriend told me he had inoperable cancer and was dying and that his 6 year old niece was on her deathbed and my boss told a staff member that his dying mother asked "Mandy" (different colleague) to take care of him when she was gone - Mandy had never met bosses mum in her entire life. I have no pity for whatever the fuck their reasons are as it's sick and twisted.

Rain "They rely on people being too polite to call them out."

I think they know everyone knows they are lying but they find it all very funny. Grey rock is best but it's a terrible strain if it's a colleague and you have to listen to them all day.

@QuandaleDingle

Looks like some posts naming Mumsnetters have been deleted.

I didn't name anyone though.