Most of the time, we make up lies thinking the parties involved in a certain situation would be better of believing something false than knowing the truth. It doesn't happen all the time, but there are occasions when a lie does end up improving another person's situation. While we're taught as kids to never lie, it's hard to commit to that instruction, especially when we've actually witnessed positive things result from a little bit of fibbing. People from around the world took to the internet to share a lie they made that had the most impact on someone else. Whether their false statement helped give someone encouragement to follow their dreams or get out of a messy situation, these stories will definitely keep you entertained:
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 False Confidence Boost
I organized a party and invited a lot of people. My friend had been hanging out with a girl who was new in town, so I invited her too. He was short, chubby, hairy, and rarely the smartest in the room, but an unimaginably kind and nice human being. She was pretty and hanging out in a group where the guys heavily outnumbered girls, so I thought she was using him because he had a car, just to drive her around.
That day, he asked me if I thought he had a chance if he made a move on her. Smelling the defeat already, I told him "Absolutely, dude." At least he would get rejected and be able to move on instead of orbiting her. It worked though, and they are still together almost eight years later... He still thanks me sometimes for helping him make up his mind...
#2 Taking The Bullet
My good friend and I met this girl at the same time and we both were really into her. She was having a hard time to choose and asked me if I was into her. I told her no. They are now engaged. I still sometimes feel bad but I see they are happy, so it makes me happy. I cannot but think that I played a major role in their happiness.
#3 The Futoni
It won't impact her until someone finally calls her out on it, but I told my sister that futons were invented by a native South American tribe called the Futoni, and she's been sharing this "fact" with everyone.
#4 Alien Negotiations
My grandmother suffered from pretty serious dementia before she died. She was regularly trying to evacuate the people from her assisted living facility because of alien invasions. One day my mom calls me, BEYOND her wit's end, because the assisted living facility is fed up and would love to evict my grandmother, but they can't get her calm enough to do so.
I think about it for a minute and I tell my mom to tell my grandmother that my sister, who worked for the government at the time, has negotiated with the aliens and they've agreed to leave us alone. My mother was horrified and wanted to be offended for a moment, and then said: "Hold on, I'll call you back".
So my mom calls the assisted living facility and tells them to put my grandmother on the phone. She tells her what I told her to, and grandma immediately calms down, tells everyone it's okay, the aliens have agreed to leave us alone. She never saw another alien invasion again...
#5 A Wholesome Lie
I'm pretty skinny, and I had just moved to a new school. A kid who was overweight told me he wished he was skinny. I told him I used to be fat and that I started running, exercising, and being more careful about what I ate, and that helped me lose a ton of weight. He looked like he hadn't heard that kind of encouragement before. I moved away shortly after. I saw him a few years later on social media and he lost a lot of weight. He looked great!
#6 Unexpected Wingman
Fourteen years ago in college, I lied to a friend that this guy liked her. And then I told the guy that my friend liked him. BAM! They started flirting heavily that night and now they’ve been happily married almost ten years. I think I told the girl about a week later. Neither one minded and they thought it was funny. On the night of the lies, I talked to the girl first; if she had said she wasn’t interested, I never would have talked to the guy about her. Looking back, I took a huge risk because I didn’t know either of them very well, but we were all tipsy and it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.
#7 Soften The Blow
I was buddies with my next-door neighbor. He was always complaining about work, about girls. He passed away suddenly at 26. I met his dad when he came to clean out his apartment. The dad and I hung out, and I told him some fun stories about his son. Before we parted, he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said: “Tell me... was he happy?” I looked him straight in the eye, smiled, and told a string of happy lies. “Yes! He was excited about his latest work assignment! He was amazing at playing squash at the gym! He had a crush on a new girl and was hopeful about her!” He smiled sadly and quietly said, “Thank you.” Best lie ever.
#8 Define: Extrapolation
When I was in grade 8, my little brother asked me what extrapolation meant. I told him it was the act of defecating out a window and that in the olden days, it was standard practice for pilots as there were no facilities on wooden planes. I didn't think anything of it until years later he came home furious. He was in high school math class and the question came up, so he raised his hand and proudly answered, to the confusion of his peers. Whenever he got up to use the washroom for the rest of the year, people would tell him not to extrapolate.
#9 The Easter Bunny
I’ve told this story before, but as a kid, I told my younger sister that the Easter Bunny came through the drain. I thought she’d find it magical, like Santa. She found it horrifying. We stopped having egg hunts.
#10 Bros With Ali
I used to work for a tech startup with a service similar to Uber but using taxis instead. While training one of the new employees, a driver called in looking for help so I showed her how to look up his account and whatnot. The name was Mohamed Ali. I told her, “Yeah, it’s the boxer and he’s a very nice guy going through some financial hardships. He didn’t pay taxes for years.” I even pretended to talk to him after the call was over and told him I was a big fan. I doubt this chick realizes he’s dead and will probably tell someone she helped him when he was a cab driver.
#11 Bad Mannered, But Funny
I once spread a stupid rumor that a kid in secondary school had his front door stolen. Turns out, some kids thought it funnier if it was stolen. So at a party at his one weekend, they unscrewed the door from its hinges, took off with the door and left it in a field.
#12 Owls Aren't Real
It started as a little joke in my teens. I'd never seen an owl in the wild and the ones in movies were ALWAYS fake. Everything from car insurance, eyeglasses, and even colleges use fake owls to hawk their products. I just pretended to be indignant. I refused to believe that true owls existed and that they were merely battery-filled mechanical toys.
My wife has a great sense of humor, so spreading the idea that dad didn't "believe" that owls are real was pretty easy. Truthfully, think about it: they are as aerodynamic as a shoebox.
They turn their heads virtually 360 degrees.
They move like a machine.
You never see them in the wild.
In zoos, they just sit on a perch... usually near a power outlet.
Their vision is bionic
Their hearing is bionic.
They have that night vision thing.
They can keep their head still in a tornado.
Where are the legs?
You can see the batteries.
Why is every owl in movies or in ads fake?
#13 Sara Vs. Meg
I had become really close with a life-long friend (we'll call her Sara). She had grown into quite a beautiful young woman. We spent all of our time together. I was planning to ask her out because all the signs were there: we were at a corn maze and it was going to happen, I could feel it. I talked to our mutual friend, her best friend (let's call her Meg). She told me not to because it would ruin everything. So... I didn't.
It put a serious damper on things and our friendship kind of wavered. Then college hit and we really lost touch. We've probably talked twice in the last 10 years. Meg admitted five or six years after college that she lied in high school. She really had a crush on me and didn't want me to date Sara. But apparently, Sara had a massive crush on me too, and Meg told her I didn't like her that way. So both Sara and I started acting cold to each other because of Meg... Freaking Meg.
I always wondered what would have happened had we changed that one night. Maybe we would have stayed closer, but then again maybe it would have changed things and I would never have met my wife...
#14 Hearing Her Savior
This isn’t my lie, but my coworker's husband who suffered from what they thought was some type of dementia and MS. Unfortunately, her husband developed a severe memory issue at the age of 26 and passed away when he was 41. He was in and out of hospice, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. In one of the nursing homes, an elderly woman with severe dementia would not stop yelling, “Jesus! Is that you, Jesus?! Jesus, answer me! I know you’re there!” She’d do this for hours every day for weeks.
Nobody in the nursing home could console her or get her to stop. Finally, my coworker's husband had enough.
Woman: “Jesus!! Oh, Jesus answer me!”
Him: “WHAT?!”
Woman: “Is that you, Jesus?”
Him: “Yes! Now go to sleep and stop yelling! You’re fine!”
The woman never yelled out again... It apparently took another dementia patient and my coworker's husband lying about being Jesus to solve the problem.
#15 Shaking The Rats Out
Sometimes, with people who have these currently unsolvable mental issues, it helps to just go along with it. I had a dementia patient several months ago who kept telling me there were rats in her bed. So, I made a big show of pulling off her blankets and "shaking all the rats out." She thanked me up and down. Then a couple of hours later there were birds in her room scaring her. So I left the door cracked so they would fly out.
#16 Have You Met Ted?
Twelve years ago, I was talking to a girl at a bar. It became quickly clear that she bored the heck out of me. I happened to see an acquaintance out of the corner of my eye. I called him over and introduced him to “my really interesting new friend.” Five years later, they married. They remain happily married to this day.
#17 I Invented Batman
When we were kids, I used to watch the animated Batman series with my little sister after school. One day, I casually mentioned that I created Batman, and she got very excited. She told her first-grade class at school the next day, and the teacher told her that wasn't true. She didn't believe anything I told her for a while. She's 30 now and I still get "This isn't another 'I invented Batman' thing, is it?" when I tell her things.
#18 Knight In Shining Armor
There was this girl who went to my high school. She was not very popular and was picked on a lot. She wasn't attractive and was just a social dud. There was a dance or something coming up, one of the ones that you get a big gram for your sweetheart for. Well, one of the ways that these kids decided to pick on her was to get her one of those grams as a "secret admirer" and send it to her, saying they'd reveal their identity to her at the thing. I overheard this in a class I had with one of these jerks.
I felt so mad and sorry for her that I showed up and I made myself that "secret admirer." I showed her a good date. Screw those people. She somehow found her confidence in life down the road and ended up late-blooming into a complete stunner. Maybe I contributed to that change in her outlook? I don't know. I'm happy for her and her husband.
#19 Shaping His Future
I was secretary of my fraternity when this kid came to rush. Slacker motif, into snowboarding, looked like Shaggy from Scooby doo. We had chatted a few times during the rush week and I liked him. At our ritual meeting, we do a blind vote on giving out bids to pledge, and he was two votes short of a bid. Well, only me and the rush chair could actually see the votes, so I lied about the count, and he received a bid. The rush chair went along with it since it made him look good (or else he didn't count) and I figured it was no harm since he still had to go through the pledge program.
The fraternity became a big part of his identity, and he was voted president his senior year. He met his wife at a party at my house—she was my girlfriend's friend, and her brother was in our fraternity. They have two kids together now, and I can't help but feel partly responsible. Had I been honest about the vote count he wouldn't have received a bid, might have pledged to a different fraternity, and he wouldn't have hooked up with his future wife at my place that night.
#20 Just Going To Mom's
That I was just going to my parents for the night. I did not actually go to my parents. I went straight to the airport and flew several states away so I could dump him and he wouldn't be able to find me or convince me to come back to him. I haven't seen him in six years. His mom still tries to message me on Facebook to try to get me to go back to him.
[Deleted]
#21 "Serious Potential"
About five years ago, I was in the car with a friend. It had an old cassette player and a tape was stuck in it, so we just kept listening to hip-hop beats and instrumentals. I asked him if he knew how to freestyle and he was shy at first, but when I started, it looked like he at least wanted to try it, too. It was by far the worst rapping I had heard before, but his girlfriend just broke up with him and I wanted to be nice, so I told him he was great and that he "has serious potential."
I didn't think twice about it. A few days, later he started sending me voice messages of "new tracks" he wrote and recorded. I saved them and changed the speed to 1.5. This way, I could hear the lyrics in a minute without having to listen to anything else. We were friends after all. Weeks later, I received more and more. Then I received messages from other friends, asking me why I was encouraging him to do this. Apparently, I was not the only one he had sent the songs to. At some point, he started to invite me to open mic events. Even his parents were there. There was no skill whatsoever, yet everyone kept listening to him, the same way you listen to a bunch of kids playing songs on the flute on Christmas eve.
#22 The Power Of A Good Reference
I gave a fantastic reference for a former coworker, who was forced out of the company due to visa issues. Midway through the reference, I realized that they thought I had been his boss (his actual boss did not like him, and decided he was not worth the trouble on a visa). He got the job and is doing very well at his new company, and he now has a work visa for the next six years.
#23 The St. Louis Arch
In the mid-1980s, my father convinced my mother that the St. Louis arch was a McDonald's advertisement, we were moving to St.Louis from the east coast. My mother told all her friends this. Pre-internet. St. Louis was a fly-over country. She found out the truth after moved and felt like an idiot. My father never let her live it down.
#24 A Beneficial Lie
I started teaching a class and after it finished, I was talking to my boss at the hall. One of my students came to say hello (I didn't even know his name) and I jokingly said to my boss: "He's one of my most brilliant students, only good things await in his future." He looked at me and asked me if I really meant it, and I said: "Well, of course."
He became one of my best students, and even though he had average abilities, he put a lot of effort into learning and always had an optimistic outlook, even when he failed. In the end, he ended up learning a lot and even got certified after finishing the course I was teaching. The power was always within you, Franz.
#25 Lucking Out
I told a dude his girlfriend was cheating on him and he raged at her. She started crying and admitted everything because it turns out, she was actually cheating on him. The dude is my best bud 'til today. She was not a very good person, and my friend couldn't see or believe it because he loved her, so I told him some lie to try to get him away from her. But yeah, if I was wrong, it probably would have made things worse for everybody...
#26 Carrying A Burden
"No, I'm not sure what happened." Carrying my best friend's secrets, why he chose to end his life, is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.
#27 Helping Hire
That they should apply for this job they really wanted, even though they were underqualified for the position. I didn't really think they had a chance, but I said they did and apparently that encouragement was enough to get them to apply. They eventually ended up getting the job.
#28 Shadow Of Doubt
My sister and I were at church in front of the place where there are a bunch of candles with saints on them. I think a car drove by but a shadow or something went across the wall and it looked like a person flying by. My sister said, "Did you see that?" And I said, "What?" and she kept describing the shadow. Anyway, by my non-acknowledgment, she was convinced that it was an angel trying to give her a sign. She became super religious after that and married a super religious guy. They eventually divorced because he would just go on mission trips and never worked. They lost their house, etc. She is not religious anymore but I am not sure why I didn't just acknowledge it back then. I wonder if that incident caused her to kind of lose a big chunk of her life.
#29 Kids Will Believe Anything
I told my niece and nephew the only way to make the ceiling fan turn on was to hold their arms out and spin in a circle. The fan itself is remote-controlled, but the light turns on at the wall switch. Let's just say the remote is well hidden.
#30 Liar, Liar
So not me but my ex-girlfriend. She lied to me about literally everything about herself. Like, everything that I knew about her, wasn't actually true. She turned out to be a compulsive liar, and I found this out when her other boyfriend contacted me. He's a stand-up guy, I am still a bit shocked a month later now though.
#31 A Sad Way To Live
I figured it out on my own when some of her stories started to not make sense. It just seems so insane to me to live like that, just lying about everything. Eventually, people find out you're full of it and never trust you again. It really is such a sad way to live.
#32 Lost In Translation
Not totally a lie, but my friend got a tattoo in French when she hardly knows the language. It’s supposed to say “live life” but the conjugation is slightly wrong. Instead, it says “lived life” and I have never told her. At least it'll become truer in time.
#33 Martha's Infatuation
A friend of mine (call him Pete) is one of those people who are completely unable to signal to someone that they’re not interested - romantically or platonic. He just doesn’t know how to say no.
This girl, call her Martha, became infatuated with him, and followed him all around, wanted to hang out with him all the time. He couldn’t stand her, but every time she phoned up, he would answer the phone, she would ask him out for coffee, he would agree. The rest of us tried to help him by being generally unfriendly and cold to her, to no avail—she wasn’t great at reading the situation either.
Meanwhile, another guy we occasionally worked with (call him Bob) started inviting himself to hang out with us. We liked him about as much as Pete liked Martha. Both of them were socially awkward, unimaginably bland and uninteresting, had nothing to contribute to the conversation. They just sucked the life out of the atmosphere.
So we told Bob that Martha had a crush on him. And we told Martha that Bob is only hanging out with us because he’s into her. We figured this should be a strong enough hint since it was very obviously a lie. And they didn’t seem to be buying it.
But after keeping this up for some weeks, the two of them suddenly stopped showing up. We thought we were rid of them. Then we found out they got together. Later we found out they’re engaged. Later married, then children. Last I heard, they were still happily married 10 years later.
Who would have thought!
#34 Bamboozled
I have only lied once in my life. It was a long time ago, I guess 1999. I was walking down the street and saw a kid crying. I asked him what was wrong and he replied, "I lost my penny." I searched deep in my pockets and asked him to stop crying. I gave him a penny, telling him that it was his penny and I found it lying on the ground nearby.
He stopped crying immediately and ran away.
I began to smile and that kid looked at me and said, "Fooled you."
I have never gone anywhere near a kid since then.
#35 Big Regret
On my first day of high school, for the first time in all my years of schooling, there was another student in my school that had the same name as mine. I was overweight and afraid that when people talked about us, they would have to distinguish us somehow and I would automatically be known as "the fat juggling-monkey."
In order to stop this before it started, I decided to start a rumor that the other juggling monkey was gay. Sure enough, people started saying, "Has anyone seen juggling-monkey? The gay one?" In those days, high school students were more immature in that they made fun of all that type of stuff. I feel bad because he became very shy and lonely. Juggling-monkey, if you're out there reading this... I started the rumor. I'm sorry.
#36 The Truth Comes Out
This happened to me years ago too, but I was on the other side of it. I found out everything I knew about her was a lie well into the relationship and like an idiot I wrote it all off as a one-time thing. Over a year later, I found out she was "dating" another guy while we were still dating. I contacted the other guy, and we both agreed she wasn't worth it. Together, we told her to screw off.
In hindsight, it was a terrible relationship and I am glad I got out. I knew it was going poorly for months and that finally was the last push I needed to break it off. Especially now that I have a wonderful girlfriend.
#37 Pure Manipulation
Her job. Her hobbies. Her interests. Her future plans. What she went to do every day that I DROPPED HER OFF TO. As well as some more personal things. Things that just should never be lied about. Everything was manipulation. Everything she said was said in some way to manipulate me to change my perspective of her, or to do things for her or for her benefit.
#38 Siding With The Ex
A similar thing happened to me many moons ago but focused primarily on her life before me. She told me her ex was abusive and wouldn't leave her alone, even when we were dating. I kept a cool head about it but one day her phone rang while she was getting ready and I saw it was her ex so I picked it up. He was actually a pretty nice guy.
I gave him my number and we talked about her that night. Turns out she was giving him false hopes and said she wasn't sure about me, I wasn't nice to her (I totally was WAY too nice to her in hindsight) and that she wanted to get back with him. After that, I broke up with her and the ex quit talking to her. Never looked back.
#39 Perfecting The Art Of Deception
I went to high school with a compulsive liar. She'd lie about the dumbest things for no reason at all, just to lie. Sometimes I'd stumble over the truth, and realize that she lied for no reason. Then when I'd ask, she'd deny that she said the lie. It was really weird.
Believe it or not, she's a doctor now—a neurologist.
In hindsight, I think she was learning/practicing how to be a successful liar—how brains perceive things and test how well she was able to lie to improve. I think it probably came in handy later because she likely was good at identifying confabulation vs. deceit—being really good at deceit herself.
#40 Wasting Resources
I cut class once in 5th grade. When I finally showed up after lunch, the teachers were not happy with me and wanted to know where I'd been. I knew they'd call my parents to verify, so I made up a story about a white van with a scary, bearded man in it who chased me on my way to school, trying to abduct me. I thought it was a stroke of genius, probably because I watched CHiPs a lot.
I was extremely wrong. The school called my parents and then the police. The cops interviewed me, asked other kids if they had seen this van, had patrol cars all on the lookout for a man and a van that only existed in my 10-year-old mind. I don't know how much money and manpower they wasted because of me, or how scared I had made all the teachers, students, cops, etc.
#41 A Heartwarming Lie
I told someone that I was in foster care with as a teen that I believed that she really could become a physician someday. This was a girl who many people regularly called a stupid idiot or worse. I told her that because I didn’t want to be mean, not because I actually believed what I was saying.
18 years later, I found her on Facebook. She is now an oncologist. We talked and she told me that once I told her that I really believed that she could become a doctor and didn’t stop until she got there. She says that I was the only person who encouraged her about this until she made it to college. I think that was the best lie that I ever told.
#42 Not A Secret You Should Keep
My colleague didn’t disclose to his second (younger) wife that he had a vasectomy, in spite of her talk about raising a family. He had three kids from his first marriage and had no intention of fathering more. They were together for years trying to have a child before she found out about the undisclosed sterilization. She later divorced him.
#43 Fake Stat
My best friend still believes the lie I told her freshman year... 1 in 8 people you meet is a serial killer. I don't know where I pulled this stat from, but it’s been fun guessing who the serial killers are with her.
#44 Bragging About... Impotence?
I had a friend who grew up in a Russian orphanage. Most of the time, he was a huge jerk, but we all knew it came from this thug persona that he developed in response to severe early life trauma. Still, we liked to mess with him. I don’t know how it came up, but I convinced him that impotent means “you don’t give a heck.” Technically true, but misleading. Now, he goes around bragging about how impotent he is.
#45 No Regrets
I told my girlfriend "I love you” 25 years ago. She believed me and now we've been married for 20 years. Well, this was a lie, but I don’t regret it.
