All of us need at least a little attention sometimes. But how far are we willing to go?
For some, the answer is clear: WHATEVER. IT. TAKES.
What was the weirdest thing you’ve seen someone fake for attention?
byu/bel_kitty inAskReddit
Oh boy, does Reddit have some stories.
1. The big emergency
An acquaintance faked a kidney stone problem, demanded her husband take her to the hospital in the middle of the night, and then when he got dressed and grabbed the car keys, she insisted on going alone by car and warned him that she might get into an accident and end up getting k**led, and it would all be his fault.
He insisted on taking her, and she wouldn’t go, she would only go herself, all alone, risking her life in a car accident.
So it’s either getting the kidney stones untreated, or risking her life in a terrible car accident that might happen.
They had a huge falling out and she went back to bed.
Of course, this was all a result of a previous fight they had earlier that day.
– madashmadash
2. The kidnapping
A boy i went to elementary school with faked being kidnapped in the middle of the school day. He disappeared for hours. The whole school was in a panic, especially his mother who was a teaching assistant.
They eventually discovered him “passed out” in the woods near the school.
He claimed that one of the Hispanic construction workers who was across campus working on a new building had abducted him, beat him unconscious and left him for d**d in the woods.
However, he did not have any signs of being a**aulted. He was just covered in dirt.
His mother was immediately suspicious of her sons behavior, not sure why, and told authorities she thought he was lying. The construction worker he blamed had several good alibis. He had a special trade that made his whereabouts particularly important for the project they were working on that day.
The cops investigated and his story quickly fell apart and he confessed to making it up. I’m not sure why he did it.
I went to school with him for years after. He was a weird kid and acted out on other occasions for attention just to a lesser degree.
He had great grades too and seemed to have a very loving family.
– valerieswrld
3. The “alter”
I knew a girl in high school who spent about half an hour lecturing me about creepypasta so that I would understand what she meant when she said Jeff the K**ler was an “alter” of hers.
I think she was hoping I’d be more impressed than I was.
– an_ineffable_plan
4. The pregnancy
A girl in my year at school faked a miscarriage and went ’round telling everybody that a guy from her class fingered her and he must have had some cum on his hands because she got pregnant and lost it.
The guy had an alibi, his friends confirmed he was playing football with them and a LOT of people called her a dirty slut.
Being fingered on a Friday evening and losing the “baby” on Saturday is quite impressive (/s) She got attention but I think she was expecting sympathetic attention and it backfired spectacularly!
– Retrosonic82
5. The relative
A friend of mine used to make up relatives and talk about them on a daily basis.
She apparently had an aunt that worked for the Rolling Stone, and would come into school saying her aunt interviewed Paul McCartney/Mick Jagger/*insert famous rockstar here*. We used to both use DeviantART on the regular and she actually made an account for her aunt and commented as her.
Also claimed to have a cousin who was in the SAS and would legit start the waterworks claiming he was leaving the country for his work.
Even faked a boyfriend at one point. Fake Facebook profile and everything. Always had an excuse for where any of them were whenever one of us would visit her house (despite them apparently visiting almost every day!).
These three were just a few of the supposedly massive family she had!
No idea why she did it, eventually these family members just faded out of existence, we never heard about them again after secondary school!
– geekitygeek
6. The liar
There’s a woman I work with that is a chronic liar.
Normally the stuff she makes up are about how she was a world renowned x. So far she’s been an opera singer, competitive swimmer, prodigal child, teacher in Mexico (doesn’t speak a word of Spanish), mensa member, coked out drag queen, figure skater, and has just a ton of obscure diseases.
The diseases obviously prevent her from being able to do certain things around the office but luckily never interfere with her ability to go out to her car to smoke on break.
What sticks out was telling everyone she was pregnant and later on that she miscarried. That one sticks out because it happen while another woman in the office was pregnant and getting more attention.
Currently a good friend of this person who also works with us is pretending to use a cane in order to try and get FMLA and avoud certain responsibilities. Which is…. Not boring…. if anything else. Luckily for her, despite not being able to walk 5 feet to check in stuff, she’s also still able to make the journey out to her car and smoke on her breaks.
– [deleted user]
7. The orphan
My “friend” who I cut off, pretended,
a) he had DID,
b) that his mom was d**d.
Both of which turned out to be false, and even to this day I remember her face when she came to back to school night only to find out her son had told everyone she was d**d.
I can only imagine what she felt.
– KingofChing
8. The phantom pregnancy
There’s a post on Facebook about a girl who faked a pregnancy for 9 months.
She got her bf to pay for everything, they had a gender reveal.
Just for 9 months to pass and nothing….
– mad_scientist434
9. The baboon
Here’s a doozie from college years ago: This attention-w**re-of-a-woman tried to convince all her friends that she not only received a baboon’s heart as a transplant, but then proceeded to win a marathon thereafter.
Like… WTF?
– eatababy
10. The survivor
Was dating this girl and things were getting serious, her best friend was jealous of the time we were spending together and faked a story about cancer.
Shaved her head and everything.
We found out it was a lie a month later when we ran into her dad
– DeftTrack81
11. The speech impediment
A kid in elementary school faked a speech impediment so she’d keep getting out of class for speech therapy.
Initially it was real, but speech therapy had totally cured it. She just didn’t want anyone to know. One of the words she mispronounced was “yellow.” She would say, “Lellow” instead.
One day we were on the playground together and she said, “I’m gonna tell you a secret!” she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “YELLLLOWWWW,” with a hard “Y” at the beginning. Then she laughed and said, “Don’t tell anyone!”
So I didn’t, until just now.
– NeedsMoreTuba
12. The “cousin”
When I was in middle school, a girl who was a senior at the high school d**d.
This girl in my class said it was her cousin, she even broke down crying in class, shaking, hyperventilating..etc.
Turns out it was not her cousin, in fact, she never even met or knew of her till she d**d.
– Cannonfury
13. The stoner
In year 7 this kid always pretended to be high so he would seem cool in front of everyone, I’m pretty sure he’d never done any drugs of any kind since all he did was act like he was seeing stuff lmao.
Eventually he told everyone he was smoking weed in school and the headmaster called his parents and he got in s**t.
– Time-Sand-1452
14. The senator
One of our senators is the lunatic daughter of a late dictator
She never finished college, but keeps insisting that she graduated from Princeton, as well as one of the top law schools in our country. She doesn’t show any paperwork, photos, degrees, diplomas, or records of any kind.
She just insists it’s true despite it being the easiest thing in the world to debunk (as it was, over and over through a simple email or phone call to the schools in question.)
Her bizarre, elaborate statements to dodge simple yes/no questions about her academic credentials have become somewhat of a meme.
– AdvocateSaint
15. The hidden friends
In high school this kid passed away in a car accident. I didn’t really know him but was tight with his older brother.
The sheer amount of people who never associated with him that came out of the woodwork was f**king crazy.
Like the guy was really into riding dirt bikes and any x games types of hobbies (skating, bmx, snowboarding) and actively talked s**t on a couple of regular sports jocks. But apparently they were best friends when nobody, not even his brother knew they were. His brother just kinda eye rolled them to their face and talked mad s**t with us later on. It was really pathetic to take one families pain and try to get attention with it.
– No-Umpire4788
16. A heart attack
My grandmother faked a heart attack because she and my dad got into an argument at Thanksgiving.
Grandfather was so embarrassed.
– acorngirl
17. The “asthma” attack
One of my classmates got an asthma attack and everyone was flocking over to them to make sure they were okay.
On the other side of the room another one of my classmates also got an asthma attack, even though it was common knowledge that she didn’t have asthma (there were very few people in class that had asthma and we all knew just in case it was an emergency). They faked the hard breathing and exaggerated gasps.
It was weird that someone would do something like that just so they would have attention.
– AmeriRos
18. The hallucination
One of my friends friends pretending to be hallucinating.
She even had the nerve to ask me “how long do hallucinations last?”.
She was doing it to see how her boyfriend would react.
– Anqel_Celeste
19. The seizure
A girl in my class faked a seizure after someone got injured in baseball practice, she loved the attention.
Her seizure magically came to a halt when I suggested we call 999
– chocotripcookies
20. The possession
Being possessed by the devil.
He would ask people to hit or slap them to prove that it didn’t hurt him as if that proved he was possessed.
This went on for like 3 months until he got bored and just started acting normal again.
– dylan7404
21. The center of attention
There was this one dude, Jake, h**ed it when the attention wasn’t on him.
This was roughly 12 years ago but once after a party ended he was deemed too d**nk (he had a beer and 2 shots of sour pucker liquor) he stayed the night them pretended to sleep and that he was a soldier during nam and was running all over the place with his eyes closed.
One of his buddies ended up tossing a bucket of water on Jake but that didn’t wake him up. That same buddy tackled Jake before he ran outside to make a scene and that magically woke him up.
Whenever there were get togethers he would saying he’s gonna hurt himself when people weren’t interacting with him.
People stopped paying attention cause he would say it every single time and when he realized it he’d start throwing a tantrum that everyone h**es him and that he has no friends so no one would care.
I responded, “the police will care. Let me call them” he stopped that act real quick
– SingleWar5
22. The other woman
In high school I had a toxic, controlling friend. She once set me up with this classmate of ours, essentially pushing for it to make us both just feel cornered.
A week or so later, he breaks up with me (didn’t really give a s**t, really) and then not quite 12 hours later, she calls me and confesses that he loved her all along and how guilty she felt but this is the man for her.
She’s just going on and on. His sisters are supposedly pressuring him to confess that he’s gay but he denies it, says he and my friend have s** all the time. So she runs with it, allowing this ongoing lie that they’re having all this s**, they’re so in love, just really laying it on thick.
Dude later comes out as gay and they were both still virgins. I just don’t get the point? She further ruined a s**tty friendship for a guy that was gay. But for what? People are f**king weird.
– bitterherpes
23. The miracle recovery
A girl said to me she has cancer 3 days after I rejected her proposal.
I still didn’t accept her in my head I was feeling terrible that I am such a bad person but 2 days after that she said she got cured.
So either I am crazy or there must be some fasta** super effective chemotherapy out there.
– shrewdlyweird
24. The phantom pregnancies
A chick I went to high school with always faked pregnancies, did this multiple times.
It got to a point where she stole her sisters ultrasound pictures and posted it everywhere… Her sister ended up calling her out on her bs.
Then she claimed she had a miscarriage..which she also lied about multiple times.
– mynameis-human
25. The fight
Bleeding.
I was in an argument with a girl in elementary school and she was being antagonistic.
She picked a scab and squeezed it until it started bleeding. She started crying as if I’d hurt her.
– Narrow-Ad-6338
26. The injury
I’m an aerial instructor, some of my students are young girls, between 9 and 14 yo..
One of them once said she broke her back and she wouldn’t be able to climb on the silks.
Then she spent several minutes crawling on the floor asking for help.
She had absolutely nothing, she always does that kind of thins the get attention
– TotalCardiologist793
27. The finger-pointer
A pupil with a grudge against a teacher at my school deliberately broke his own finger by slamming a locker door on it and then accused the teacher of slamming his finger in a door in a fit of anger, just to get him into trouble.
Of course, the problem was it was his index finger and he could not have had it so badly damaged without severely bruising/cutting/breaking the fingers on either side.
He was psychotic!
– VorlonKing
28. The hall of fame
we had a girl fake asthma (for years, she then became a smoker so), a couple faked mental health s**t like anxiety, depression, panic attacks and tics.
My personal favorite is this one guy faked having a record label sign him even though he was 12 and he would leave class on fake phone calls with his “producers” lol.
– punkmf
29. The inmate
A friend of my classmate faked her d**th once.
My classmate went on for five years believing that her friend was d**d.
Turns out, the girl was just in prison.
Her grandparents (who she had been living with her whole life) told everyone that the girl had d**d and everyone believed it.
They even had a fake funeral for her. I don’t know much about it, but that’s what I do know.
– purple_flower18
30. The survivor
In second grade this girl everyone loved said her sister threw a plastic headband at her and it scratched out her eyeball, so she had to go to the ER and they dug through a bucket full of donated eyeballs to find one that matched her iris color.
She also told us she had her leg bitten off by a shark and had a prosthetic leg (but we all saw her at a water slide party a week later so that was hard to explain)
– OctopiBlobby
However lonely you get, try to never be this person.
Do you have stories like this?
Tell us in the comments.
