When someone tells a story you don't believe

😂🤣 That story sounds like bull$hit. I have met people who tell similar stories, I don't contradict them because I find the fantasy they are talking funny and let them talk away. I remember once during the recession I met a guy in a pub, in his 30s, every story that came out of his mouth sounded made up, he asked me what I did, I was studying law at the time in college, he told me he was accepted twice to do law in Trinity but became a plasterer instead, he told me he pulled Rosanna Davidson in a nightclub in Dublin, people came to his house begging him to plaster their house and offered him 5 times the going rate. He took on 6 bouncers one night and knocked them all out.

he said he was getting paid 500 euro per week to train his local u12 GAA team, he drank a liter of vodka straight at a house party and was ok. the list was endless, he couldn't talk normally at all, all lies.

The one in the OP is a tricky one - on one hand there is an allegation of sexual abuse by a teacher and we know that all manner of institutional abuse was rife in Ireland years ago. On the other hand, when "badassery" and a happy ending is included in a story, that would make me start to question it. Knocking the teacher out, then getting As in the intercert and then the principal threatening to knock the teacher out himself - those details would make me think the story is heavily embelished at least.

As for my reaction to such a story if I decided that it was BS, I'd say something like "that's awful, a a lot of bad stuff went on". I wouldn't question the details or accuse the person of bullsh*t.

Actually have a lot of experience of dealing with Walter Mitty stories as I had some friends years ago who would constantly tell them. These were highly intelligent (academically) people - yet they also felt the need to spoof and lie constantly. With Walter Mitties, the stories will generally involve some sort of badassery - feats of strength of fitness, martial arts, beating up robbers and bullies, weapons and military stuff, scientific experiments, winning big at the bookies but never losing a bet etc. On a couple of occasions I've seen Walters called out on their nonsense and it resulted in an awkward, uncomfortable situation Whereas if you just let them spew out their fantasies and laugh about them later behind their backs, that is entertaining.

I have a friend, a guy I've known for 25 years. He's probably the smartest person I know, and one of the most witty and talented. Somehow he just never got his life off the ground though. He's never had a proper job, a job you might call the start of a career. He never learned to drive, he never went through the 'growing up' milestones the rest of us did.

As far as I know there's no gambling or addiction, and no specific mental health issues, he's just a bit useless. There's a pattern to his life now:

• New job! It's not much but it'll lead to something!
• Everybody is amazed at his capabilities! The boss is going to fastrack him to the top. He's going to revolutionise things!
• Mystery ailment. Very serious. Had to take time off work.
• Boss turns out to be a top-level criminal/an arfehole/incompetent/jealous.
• Flees the job, and sometimes the town, maybe taking incriminating files or emails that will blow this whole thing sky high. Prime Time are interested. Watch this space.
• Repeat.

All that is fine. There are lots of ways to be happy and successful that don't involve a job or career. The endless slog isn't for everybody. The thing is he constantly pretends to be operating at the top level of everything he does.

He has a hobby and he tried to make a go of it when we were in our twenties but it didn't take off. Fair enough, he gave it a try. Twenty years later he's still pretending to be involved in that business, involved in big events, taking phonecalls and turning down offers from the big names. A number of times I have heard him to refer to some of these people by their first name, or telling convoluted stories in which they ask him for advice and use his ideas and are eternally grateful.

I still see quite a bit of him because he lives close enough to me these days. He invites himself out to my house and sits in my kitchen and interviews himself all night. No input required from me.

"You know, Hazedoll," he says, holding a bottle of beer like an old cowboy, "One thing I've learned is that there's no substitute for tenacity." Then there will be a very long story that starts off with him getting an invitation to accept an award and ends with him buying an rare antique couch from the only living person who REALLY knows what happened to the Miami Showband.

He says things he knows I know aren't true. He will casually claim to have lived in cities all over the world, for example. He knows I know exactly where he has lived.

He invents scenarios involving people we both know, in which they have crippling debts or their marriage is abusive or they're hiding their sexual orientation. I know he's telling lies about me too. He has told people that I'm a hoarder and I'm the subject of an investigation by the Teaching Council.

So why don't I call him on it? The only explanation I can offer is that when you're sitting there and he is earnestly spinning these lies it's like seeing him dancing around naked in the town square. It's desperately awkward, it's embarrassing and painful to endure. I just want it to be over. So I stay quiet.

Once he told a story about driving a relative to A&E. The arrogant doctor wouldn't take things seriously until my Mitty friend specified which tests were needed and the protocols that would need to be followed.

"If I have to put my sick relative back into that car and drive them to another hospital I will personally see to it that you never practice medicine again!"

The doctor, realising he was in the presence of no ordinary pleb, became obsequious and eager to help and Mitty was proved right and saved a life. By the end of the story I was annoyed and tired of the endless fiction he was subjecting me to so I said "Oh, are you driving now?" trying to sound interested and positive rather than challenging and dismissive.

He stalled for a second. He had no idea why I had asked that. No clue what that had to do with his interesting story. His version of himself in his imagination was so disconnected from the real world that he wasn't able to see the link. The moment was so painfully uncomfortable that I changed the subject. And I assume that's what happens everywhere he goes. He tells stupid lies and people look at their shoes or nod silently and then change the subject, because challenging him would be like disemboweling him: ugly and potentially messy and not really necessary. It's easier to let him talk.

In my day it was the Intercert, and we got a great giggle in class when one teacher said “now girls, you have to take the “intercourse” much more seriously than you have done”. 🤣🤣

I detest outright lying but I enjoy elaboration and a bit of colour in discourse. I often elaborate myself, it’s the part of me understanding it myself. A minority of people take this negatively and imagine I must be making things up.

But I do know where people have deliberately lied to deceive. Some slightly dysfunctional people do it to paint a picture of themselves as having more in common or to garner sympathy. When I was going to Japan last year I heard a tale about a flying visit to Tokyo and how I will love it, then a year or so later same person tells others they’ve never been to Japan and would love to go. A kind of harmless example, there were way more impactful ones. Kind of Walter Mitty. People who tell porkies need to have very good memories to retain the deception. People who fall into the habit of lying out of a personality disorder simply cannot be trusted.

I initially tend to take what people say to me at face value, but when I realise I have been lied to more than once for no good reason, I get cynical and confrontational about it. Dishonest people come to hate me 🤣 in the long term.

That's brilliant, he sounds hilarious - in small doses and once you can distance yourself from him when you want.

Is he also a One-Upper, ever try to bait him into spouting even more outrageous bullsh*t by saying some of your own.

I knew a Walter in college and he was spouting for some time before I said to another friend "did you hear what yer man was saying, that can't be right can it" Mushroomed from there and was the start of a few years of great entertainment

Over 25 years ago now but a useful thing i did around the time was compile a list of his Greatest Hits and occasionally look at the list when I want to cheer myself up. Glad i did as otherwise I'd be doubting that he ever said those things - and exaggerating about what a Walter said may itself be something of a Walter trait.

He's not really a one-upper. He'll pretend to be more knowledgeable about something than I am, but to be fair to him he has in-depth knowledge of a very broad range of topics so he's quite convincing.

I get why it might be amusing, but I can't help taking it personally when he seems to assume I'm a fair target for his bullshit. I'm not some stranger he wound up sitting beside on the train, somebody he'll never see again so it doesn't matter what he says. It's just awkward and painful. He knows I chat to his brothers when I meet them, he knows I often run into his mother. Yet he'll tell a long story about his big plans to buy a fancy apartment in a new development in London because he's moving there at the end of the summer to start a job? I have no option but to assume he doesn't give a fhit what opinion I have of him. That's insulting.

I love this. I get a bit sniffy if I meet somebody from Cork who is around my own age if they DON'T claim to have been there!

OK, he's much worse (better) than the one I knew. My one was always BSing about what he had done but was grounded enough in his ambitions and plans for the future. The BS was mainly related to martial arts, feats of strength and athleticism, fights, military stuff and weapons. It was an amusing exercise to try to think of films that he seemed to be getting his material from. One that had definitely inspired him was the bar scene from Terminator II, others included Rambo, Commando, Chuck Norris films, Enter the Dragon, MacGyver and The A Team.

I thought that people grew out of this as they got older but if your one has been at it for 25 years that may not be correct. My one was still at it well into his thirties, long after we had lost contact, based on something I saw written about him online.

It was Henrys. I know I was there😝

Yeah , sure 😷

Correct. There was probably 300 at the Sir Henry's gig.

The Top Hat gig would have had a lot more as Sonic Youth were a big draw then.

They played McGonagles the year before (2 September 1990) on the Goo tour, tickets were £7 and I saw someone paying £70 outside.

But if people routinely disbelieve EVERYONE who says that they were at either 1991 gig then it means it was empty. Which was patently untrue.

Oh I know. But alot more people say that they had one than possible . I actually did have one

I wonder if boards is any closer to getting an AI detector up and running…

I actually had a spare ticket to the 1991 gig because we crashed into a Dublin bus on the way to the gig (!), and the lad driving went home because his lights were damaged, and didn't want to be caught in Dublin after the gig with no lights.

Anyway, I sold his ticket for a fiver, because there was a couple outside looking for 2 tickets but only had a tenner. I said I'd give them the spare ticket for a fiver and they could hope that somebody else might do the same. They could have been lying about only having a tenner (bringing this back on-topic 😉 ) but I felt like I had done my good deed for the day.

For me it depends on the intent of the lies.

I'm getting older now and more likely to call someone out on lies if they're trying to get me to dislike someone else etc

Context is key. I know a parent who continuously lies but our children are friends, so I'm not gonna call him out on it, but I'm limiting my child's access at their house and encouraging play outdoors etc.

Some you can call out immediately with a "do u want an egg with that waffle" type of comment.

Others you have to gauge/ ignore.

Either way, it's tiring and boring having to second guess people. Keep interactions limited if you must interact

I said this to someone in PI before: I've had experience with a pathological liar in the past, and in my experience, they lie so habitually and constantly that they end up either believing their own lies, or view lies as so inconsequential as to be not worth batting an eyelid over, hence the "blank stare" response to being confronted.

My other learning from dealing with pathological liars is that they often assume everyone else lies as much as they do, and so they genuinely don't see the problem. This is why they serve you nonsense that they know you know isn't true - they're not deliberately trying to insult or patronise you, it just genuinely doesn't occur to them. They don't care, so why would anyone else, is generally the "logic".

I did know somebody who spun tall tales, turned out they were alcohol dependent. The tall takes would t ne essayist be fine whilst drunk, in fact more truth was actually told when inebriated, they deception was more when sober.
There is a condition known as Wernicke-Korsakoff, which typically affects the brains of alcoholics, as well as others who have for other reasons suffered severe thiamine/vitamin B1 deficiency, apart from certain plain memory defects, one of the key symptoms is “confabulation”, or making up stuff to fit around the narrative of stuff they have forgotten but can’t remember they have forgotten, for want of a better description. This is one cause of the real life Walter Mitty persona. They actually believe what they are saying during the moment they are saying it, so it’s not intended as deception, but is quite a sad condition in that a lot of self-awareness is lost.