Why The Fuck Do People Make Up Unbelievable Lies, Are They Fucking Stupid? (an essay)

Essays are kind of like books, right?

Note: This post concerns a Reddit.com subreddit community devoted to posting screencaptures of people who make up ridiculous and clearly fake stories. It has nothing to do with books. You've been had.

You thought you were clicking on a Reddit post to see a funny picture (assuming you came from reddit), but AHA, I have fooled you into reading my tl;dr essay that I call: Why The Fuck Do People Make Up Unbelievable Lies, Are They Fucking Stupid?

I am prompted to write this essay for a couple of reasons. First of all, I have my own (old, unsaved) ‘thathappened’ moment that I’ll get to in a bit. It was basically this dumb asshole I met online who told me a completely batshit ridiculous story that clearly never happened, but we’ll get to it. The second reason is because I enjoy r/thathappened (at least when good posts are being made, lately the sub is infested with shit posting weens who scurry to it with literally any story they can find because as we all know, NOTHING HAPPENS EVER. I’m waiting for the day where I see a post on the sub with 10k upvotes and it’s some dude’s tweet talking about how he found a dollar on the sidewalk; but I digress).

This story of mine is something that really made me think about the nature of lying and why some people are just so egregiously fucking bad at it. Like they lack this little voice inside their head that tells them “Okay, that’s enough!” when they’re making up a story, so they just keep piling on unbelievable bullshit when, had they just stopped three sentences ago or so, their story would seem a lot more credible. People have this habit of thinking they’re funnier or cooler than they really are, I guess, and they don’t understand that gross over-aggrandisement doesn’t translate very well to other people. I dunno. But my r/thathappened story really, really made me think about how fucking dumb and bad some people are at making up lies.

People tell these ridiculous stories for internet cred or just to inflate their own ego, so perhaps they don’t even really care if people don’t believe them. They can post the story and then walk away from the computer, never having to face anyone telling them “Dude, you’re full of shit”. As someone who writes, it’s always intrigued me that people could be so, so fucking bad at making up a story that happened to them, and it’s always for the same reason: They don't stop. It's not enough for something cool to have happened to them, they keep piling on the ridiculous facts until there's no way their inane story could be believable. But enough on this for now, let's talk about my r/thathappened moment.

A bit of backstory; I met this idiot in question when my friends and I were playing World of Warcraft, both to hang out with each other and in the hopes that the game would cause us to experience braindeath. Sadly the latter never happened and I'm here today to tell you my story. Anyways, my friends and I created new level 1 characters on one of the game's servers called Moon Guard. For those not in the know, 'Moon Guard' in infamous within World of Warcraft for being the server everyone goes to in order to find 'erp', or Erotic Role Play. Basically it's a bunch of naked gnomes and elves sexting each other, like a more sexually exciting and pathetic version of The Lord of the Rings. So anyways, my friends and I make our characters on this server with the intent to mess around/take in the 'scenery' of all the erotic role players and run around the world as levels 1s, trying to avoid being killed by monsters that were a much higher level than we were.

As we, five nude male humans avatars, were running around a particularly higher-level area of the in-game world, this max level guy spots us and runs up to where we were. He adds me specifically as a friend and sends me a whisper message, asking us who we were and what we were doing. I explained we were messing around and trying to explore as level 1s. Anyways, an important factor as to why he chose me specifically to send a whisper message to was because I had named my character "Baddragontoy", after an infamous/bizarre website that sells dildos in the shape of animal dicks. This guy who whispered me asks me, "You're a girl right? Why did you make a male character?". When he initially asked me this it gave me a moment of pause because it was such a weird and random question, but essentially this dumbfuck thought I was a girl because I knew about a website that sold dildos (he was obviously aware of what baddragontoys are). I don't know what kind of stupid logic he was using, but whatever. I thought it was funny so I played along and told him I was a girl while telling my friends about this random asshole who was whispering me.

Eventually after he tries to creepily flirt with me for a few minutes, he wants me to add him on Skype (this happened like five years ago so please bear with me on the archaic IM programs). I add him for a lark and he continues to believe I'm a girl despite the fact that literally nothing on my Skype suggesting I was anything other than a guy (I didn't use an avatar on Skype so it's not like my irl face was my avatar, at least). He continues to bother me with dumb messages to the point that entertaining him became kind of boring, so I eventually ignore him. Anyways, he continues to pester me over the next few days, with me providing him minimal response, until my hardwork paid off when he tells me a random, unprovoked story.

So he didn't message me for a couple days and then all of a sudden messages me and explains he was sorry for being gone but that he had some "trouble". Wondering what the dipshit could possibly mean, I ask him what happened. He then goes off on this fucking ballad of bullshit that I couldn't believe; it's not that I couldn't believe the story, of course I didn't believe the story, but I couldn't believe this fucking idiot would ever think anyone would think his story was true. It's been years since this happened but I still clearly remember everything. Sit down and have a listen.

It goes as follows. First he tells me that a couple nights ago (before he ghosted and didn't message me for couple days) that he had heard someone trying to break into his neighbor's house. Okay. So he puts on his brass knuckles and goes out to confront two guys breaking into his neighbor's house. Alright. Then he punches one of the guys so hard in the jaw that it breaks his jaw and knocks him out. Jesus What lol. Then the second guy pulls a knife and stabs him in the shoulder, but he still manages to beat 'the shit' out of the second guy. god no. Then he calls the hospital and asks them what to do about his stab wound, they tell him he needs to come in for treatment but he doesn't feel like it, so they send a nurse over to his home to care for him. You'd think this is where it ends but the dumbfuck couldn't resist adding a few more egregious additions. So not only did the hospital send a nurse specifically to his house, but it turns out this nurse was a hot girl that he had went to high school with. Of course it was! I respond with some canned "haha wow :}" reply and then, because he can't not say stupid shit, has to add one final note and make the suggestion that the hot nurse girl was so impressed by his heroism that she had sex with him. To this fucking idiot's credit he at least had the mental prowess to merely strongly hint that something sexual happened instead of blatantly saying "SHE WAS SO IMPRESSED SHE FUCKED ME".

Obviously all of this story was fucking bullshit, but it astounded me on multiple levels. First of all, this dickhead thought I was a girl and he was actively trying to flirt with me with the hopes I'd expose my supple Night Elf tittiez to him in our favorite game: World of Warcraft. What would possess this garbage eater to tell a girl he's pining after that he fucked another girl? I get it, he's trying to be an alphamale badass, but most women you're trying to go after don't respond positively when you randomly tell them you fucked another girl, you know? Second to that, holy fuck his story jesus christ. It would've been more than enough had he just said "my neighbor's house was getting broken into, I ran outside and the two guys ran off", that's something simple and largely believable that makes him seem brash and heroic.

But that's not enough. He had to punch one of the guys. But that's not enough. He had to punch him so hard that it broke the guy's jaw. But that's not enough. It also knocked the guy out cold. But that's not enough. The other guy attacked him with a knife. But that's not enough. He also got stabbed. But that's not enough. He fought the attacker off after being stabbed. But that's not enough. He called the hospital and refused to come in for treatment. But that's not enough. The hospital sent a nurse to care for him at home. But hey, that's not enough. The nurse was also a hot girl from his high school. BUT THAT'S NOT FUCKING ENOUGH IS IT. Because the nurse also fucked him.

It's just one stupid fucking bull turd after another. It's a laundry list of every dumb kid's power fantasy, only at the time this dude was like 22+ or something like that. This story was so shocking, stupid and absolutely amazing that I immediately blocked/removed the guy and, for a time, had it copypasted saved on my PC (though the original transcript and screenshots have sadly since been lost). I considered continuing talking to the guy but there was no way I'd be able to keep up even my lazy/effortless facade of 'being a girl' at that point. He had crossed a dark and very stupid threshold, I figured I'd never get anything quite as good out of him ever again and thus it was time to end contact with a man who I can only describe as this nation's- no, this world's- greatest American Hero.

And yes for the record his Skype avatar was a picture of himself and he was a fat unkempt butt ugly neckbeard. How did you guess?

Anyways, like I said, this is something that seriously made me question just what the fuck is wrong with some people. Like, why do they have no ability to stop themselves from piling up egregious bullshit? Look, sometimes crazy or awesome stuff happens and sometimes people do heroic and incredible things. Not everything is a bullshit story. But when someone constructs a story that is one egregious detail after another and expects people to buy it? Like what are they thinking? What goes through their heads? Are they so egotistical and hungry for validation that they seriously expect people to believe their completely fake-ass story?

The distinction, I believe, that separates a true story (or a well-constructed fake story) and a story that it total bullshit is the amount of egregious details coupled with the amount of minor details. A true story will have fewer egregious details and will be littered with minor ones, as the person re-telling the story will recall minor details or add in details too insignificant to have been thought up to support a lie. A bad fake story will include primarily only major details and most/all major details will be bullshit. Fake stories, especially power fantasies, are all about trying to egoboost, so they'll selfishly focus on only making the storyteller seem more powerful or cool. Minor side details don't matter, because they're not something that directly supports how badass someone was in a story.

tl;dr: r/thathappened is full of stories that probably really did happen because lots of contributors to the subreddit don't know what an actual fake story looks like and this weird neckbeard I found over WoW told me a really stupid story okay bye.

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:

0/10 ACTUAL BOOKS REVIEWED IN THIS POST

Ha ha this blog used to be about books.