As human beings, we all develop interesting ticks and facets of our personalities that can manifest into very strange behavior. Often our desire to feel "good" and avoidance of feeling "bad" can cause us to make a series of consecutive decisions that see us walking too far down a particular path and becoming something we might never have anticipated.
Take "Disney Adults" or any fandom as a prime example of this. You get exposed to something at some point in your life, say, Disney media and it makes you feel good. You like feeling good, so you seek out more of it, you're now a "fan". Soon you've run out of material that has been produced by the original creator of said thing, so you instead turn to online discussions, seeking to dig out obscure facts from extrapolated and exaggerated takes on single sentences—seeking to recreate that good feeling you felt while reading/watching the original material. You also turn to collecting things: memorabilia, figurines—it doesn't matter what that thing is—as long as it gives you that dopamine hit for your growing fandom obsession. But, even after the initial dopamine hit is gone, the thing still remains—now your home is littered with Funko Pops, posters, mugs, and even themed toilet paper with Gaston's face on it that you're too afraid to use.
Anyways, I guess the point is here that this same principle applies to lying and it's pretty easy to see how people get trapped into it. Lying feels good, telling people things that are better than the truth and having them more positively perceive you feels good, and fills that gaping hole where your ego or self-confidence should be. But once you're in there's no going back without making the relationship worse off than it would have been in the first place—in fear of being exposed you double down and the lies begin to pile up—you can't even keep track of them now. Everyone else knows (or at least suspects) that you're lying, you're now no longer fooling anyone but yourself.
That's probably how we get there, but it doesn't make it any less annoying for the people in these people's lives—especially since pathological liars are also chronic one-uppers—like this coworker who made a point of interjecting himself into everyone else's experience with his better experience. Don't be like this guy.
Read on for excerpts of the story that inspired this post below. Next, check out this IT guy who quit and scheduled a company-wide email to expose his boss.
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