Even though the art of lying is very nuanced, one thing is for sure—no matter how big or small, every lie has a consequence. The ripple effect of a lie can really go either way, from haunting a person for the rest of their life as a silly joke to being an actual blessing and even a tragedy that made someone’s world fall apart. 

Below you’ll find stories about all of it, good and bad, by people who confessed to their lies online. Brace yourselves for dishonest truths that had the biggest impact on someone for better or worse—just a scroll away.

#1

Organized a party and invited a lot of people. My friend had been hanging out with a girl who was new in town, I invited her too.

He was, and still is, short, chubby, hairy, rarely the smartest in the room, but an unimaginably kind and nice human being. She was pretty and hanging out in a group where guys heavily outnumber girls, I though 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 8 years later…he still thanks me sometimes for helping him make up his mind…

Image credits: Pepito_SeriousAdvice

#2

My grandmother suffered from pretty serious dementia. 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, stammered, 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, and never saw another alien invasion again…

Image credits: SkaBob42

#3

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 lost a ton of weight. He looked like he hadn’t heard that kind of encouragement before. I moved away shortly after. Saw him a few years later on social media and he lost the weight and looked great!

Image credits: ChristopherPlumbus

#4

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.

ETA: WOW, this blew up! To answer questions, yes I confessed! 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 drunk and it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.

It is a little like Much Ado, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. I had actually just finished a huge term paper on why Beatrice and Benedick were a superior couple to Hero and Claudio so it’s entirely possible that I came up with the idea from that.

Image credits: tenpercentofnothing

#5

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 FB and found out that 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, she went balls to the wall 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.

Image credits: fiftyshadesofroses

#6

I once spread a stupid rumour 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, theu unscrewed the door from its hinges and took off with the door and left it in a field.

Image credits: anon

#7

I didn’t tell the lie, it happened to me.

Sr. Year of high school, young, stupid… you know the drill. I had become really close with a life long friend (call her Sara), she had grown into quite the beautiful young woman. We spent non stop time together. I was planning to ask her out because all the signs were there, we were at a corn maze, 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, that we were just close friends and it would ruin everything. So… I didn’t.

It put a serious damper on things and our friendship kinda waivered. Then college hit and we really lost touch, have probably talked twice in the last 10 years.

Meg admitted 5 or 6 years after college that she lied in high school, that she had a crush on me and didn’t want me to date Sara. But that Sara actually had a massive crush on me 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….

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…

Image credits: hanginround

#8

This isn’t my lie, but my coworkers husband who suffered from what they thought was some type of dementia and MS.

Unfortunately, her husband developed severe memory issue at the age of 26 and lived only to 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 coworkers husband had had enough.

Woman: “Jesus!! Oh, Jesus answer me!”

Him: “WHAT?!”

Woman: *long pause* “is that you, Jesus?”

Him: “yes! I hear you. Now go to sleep and stop yelling! You’re fine!”

The woman never yelled out again… it apparently took another dementia patient and my coworkers husband lying about being Jesus to solve the problem.

Image credits: anon

#9

I pranked my best friend once when she was sleeping at my house. I told her that, usually, two hot dudes with magic powers would come at night to get me and take me on adventures, but that because that night she was with me I wasn’t quite sure they would come.

We were quite young and avid readers of fantasy books and the likes, so while at first she was just playing along, we talked so much about it and fantasised about the monster and the appearance of the guys that I have no doubt she ended up believing it just a bit.

So, as we went to sleep, I said (because I am a bad person) “man, I hope they don’t wipe out your memories to maintain this a secret” and left her to worry.

Next morning she was like “You didn’t have to worry, I remember everything!” and I looked at her in the eye and said, sadly:

“No you don’t”.

(Don’t worry I eventually told her)

Well, fast forward about 10 years later, she is in the process of transforming the lie into a novel, and she even got a tattoo in her ankle with some symbols regarding some details I told her that night.

Image credits: CristelAl

#10

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.

Image credits: eclecticsed

#11

I was buddies with my next door neighbor. He was always complaining. About work. About girls. He lived until 26 years old. I met his dad when he came to clean out his apartment. 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 right back, smiled, and told a string of happy lies. “Yes! He was excited about his latest work assignment! He was kicking a*s 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.

Image credits: mysterysciencekitten

#12

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.

Image credits: VelvetTush

#13

Both of my kids, 25 and 16, think that I don’t believe in owls.

Image credits: Odd_craving

#14

Twelve years ago, I was talking to a girl at a bar. It became quickly clear that she bored the hell 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.

Image credits: BokenUnbroken

#15

Not me… a friend of a friend. He has chocolates that contained powdered psilocybin mushrooms. His housekeeper found the chocolates in his room, and put them in a bowl on the kitchen table when he was at school. His father comes home, sees the chocolates, and eats a few. A hour or so later, they are eating dinner, salmon. They didn’t eat fish often. His father loses it, tripping hard and thinks he’s having a stroke or something. They go to the hospital, do a ton of tests, nothing shows up. He’s fine, but he still thinks he’s allergic to Salmon.

Image credits: BushWeedCornTrash

#16

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 awhile. She’s 30 now and I still get “this isn’t another I invented Batman thing, is it?” when I tell her things.

Image credits: Xe1ex

#17

There was this girl who went to my high school that 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 mum for your sweetheart for. Well, one of the ways that these kids decided to pick on her was to get her one of those mums as a “secret admirer” and send it to her, saying they’d reveal their identity to her at the thing.

I felt so mad and sorry for her that I showed up and I made myself that “secret admirer” and showed her a good date. 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? Idunno. I’m happy for her and her husband.

Edit:

Thanks for the nice words yall. That girl was a kind person and didn’t deserve a bad day like that. I guess karma paid off for me bigtime, because I married a different, but awesome woman, myself :).

Image credits: texasjoe

#18

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 6 years.

Image credits: waterskier8080

#19

In the mid 1980s my father convinced my mother that the St. Louis arch was a McDonalds advertisement, we were moving to St.Louis from the east coast. My mother told all her friends this. Pre internet. St. louis was fly over country. She found out the truth after moved and felt like an idiot. My father never let her live it down.

Image credits: Youtoo2

#20

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 I did and apparently that encouragement was enough to get her to apply and she eventually ended up getting the job.

Image credits: -eDgAR-

#21

My sister and I were young at church in front of the place where there are a bunch of candles with saints on them and I think a car drove by or something but a shadow or something went across the wall and just the shape 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-acknowledgement, 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 and they divorced because he would go on mission trips and never worked and they lost their house, etc. She is not religious anymore but I am not sure why I didn’t just acknowledge it back then but I wonder if that incident caused her to kinda lose a big chunk of her life.

Image credits: luxii4

#22

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 he 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 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!

Image credits: reditanian

#23

So this is a stupid one, but:

A long time ago a good friend of mine was desperately trying to sell his Xbox 360 to make some quick cash before moving, and another mutual friend of ours decided to buy it. I’m talking with said mutual friend just before the deal goes down and I tell him to save some money he could probably just tell the guy he only showed up with X amount of dollars ($20 less than the agreed amount) and he’d still probably sell it. So he does, and the guy selling the Xbox gets mad, talking about how stupid it is for someone to agree to an amount and then straight up not have enough money, but he sells it anyway just like I thought.

Fast forward to a decade later and I’m still great friends with the guy that sold the xbox. We’re talking and the subject of the mutual friend comes up and my buddy just goes off saying how he’s hated that guy ever since he cheated him out of $20, and he really thought less of him as a person after that day. I agreed with him saying that was a pretty dumb thing to do. I don’t think these two guys would have been best friends or anything, but I made certain it didn’t happen.

Image credits: IHadACatOnce

#24

I once got too excited when my friend let me borrow his copy of Tony Hawk: Pro Skater 2. I walked into my apartment complex’s hallway, pulsing with energy, and tried to do a back-flip off of the wall. The way it happened in my head was awesome, slow-mo and flawless. What really happened was my foot went right through the wall and I fell. I scurried away into my room and told my mom what had happened – that the juvenile upstairs neighbor’s kid had – in an enraged stupor – punched a hole in the hallway wall. A few weeks later, after the landlord had patched the hole, I saw those neighbors moving out. I believe they had been evicted.

Image credits: ElPlatanaso2

#25

Got caught in a wrong number group text. They assumed I was Dave. Dave has a beach house. They asked if they could use the beach house for the weekend. “Dave” told them where the key was. At least one hopped a last minute flight to the party. Six people realized I wasn’t Dave when they couldn’t find the key and blew up my phone so badly over the next week from a bunch of other phones that I panicked and got a new number.

Image credits: anon

#26

I told a prospective employer that I made more than double what I actually did. I got hired on at that rate. It’s made a world of difference for my wife and girls.

Image credits: FreeAsianBeer

#27

This was in elementary school. I think grade 2. I farted a really smelly fart, but it was silent. Everybody started blaming me, but I was good at hiding it, and I blamed another guy. This gave him the nickname “stink bomb,” and nobody would go near him for the rest of the school year. People would get grossed out if they had to go after him for the water fountain, and nobody wanted to be friends with him anymore. The next year he changed schools and we never saw him again. Sorry man.

Image credits: anon

#28

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 rush week and I liked him. At our ritual meeting we do a blind vote on giving out bids to pledge, and he was 2 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 2 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 wouldn’t have met with his future wife at my place that night.

#29

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 and then convince me to come back to him.

Haven’t seen him in 6 years. His mom still tries to message me on Facebook to try to get me to go back to him.

Image credits: Brideofthelivingdead

#30

About 5 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 hiphop 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 “has serious potential”. I didn’t think twice about it. A few days later he started sending me voicemessages 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 am 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.

#31

Told a dude his gf is cheating on him and he went rage on her. She started crying and admitted everything because turns out she was actually cheating on him. Dude is my best bud till today.

#32

“No, I’m not sure what happened.”

Carrying my best friends secrets, why he chose to end his life, is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.

#33

I told my niece and newphew the only way to make the ceiling fan turn on was to hold your 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.

#34

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 whats wrong and he replied, “I lost my penny”.

I searched deep in my pockets and asked him to stop crying and *gave him a penny, telling him that its 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

When I was in kindergarten, I lied and accused my music teacher of grabbing my arm and slamming it back down on the table. I said it because I was terrified of him and wanted to be removed from his class. I was only afraid of him because my older sister, in high school already, told me he was mean and would hurt me (just to scare me because she was my older sister). They did an investigation and everything and he was nearly fired. I finally ended up telling the truth during one of the final interviews. I still think about how messed up it all was and how I almost ruined a man’s life, and almost my dad’s, too, considering he was on the verge of wanting to seriously hurt the man. I fear of having bad teacher karma because of it.

#36

I can’t claim that this had a profound impact on her life or anything, but my wife is from the US and we both live in the UK so there are frequent opportunities for me to lie to her for my own amusement.

Just for laughs, I tell her she’s mispronouncing words when she isn’t and vice versa. She’s not totally gullible, but I’d say she falls for it about 60% of the time. For example, I told her that in England we pronounce “soup” like “soap”. Not a brilliant gag by any means, and I didn’t think it would ever leave the house, but imagine my glee when I heard her ask a guy in a supermarket where to find “chicken noodle soap”.

She was particularly confused when she first heard that we use Stone as a weight measurement for people. She asked me what the excess stones were called (if, for example, you weighed 12.6 stone) and I said pebbles. It was obviously a joke, and once again I forgot I had even said it.

Months later I find out she’s been telling a bunch people that in the UK we measure things in stones and pebbles like primitive medieval folk.

#37

A friend wanted to become get into show biz. He was super corny though. I told him to keep pushing, and that I enjoyed watching his movies (that he wrote, directed, filmed with an iPhone, and starred in). They were cringey. But I think a passion should be pursued. He went all out though. Sold everything and moved to a big city in his barely working Honda Accord. for more opportunities.

A couple of years later he came back to visit. Picks me up in his Cadillac, takes me out to dinner. Gives me a nice watch and tells me I was the only person who ever told him to pursue his dreams. He doesn’t act anymore except for occasional commercials, but now he has a small production company and a management company for new actors. I’m very proud of him and amazed that he made it.

#38

Had a Jamaican friend in high school who drank apple juice with lunch religiously. I told him that I had seen a study that found that prolonged consumption of apple juice throughout a life time led to male lactation in African American populations.
We worked a summer job together and had a black boss that found the joke hilarious. He wet the nipples on a t-shirt and chugged some apple juice in front of this friend. The friend’s eyes got huge; he knew what it meant. We went to different colleges, but stayed in contact.
Two years later, I get a call from him reaming me out. He apparently shared this “fact” with a friend and was laughed out of the room. He had stopped drinking apple juice for two years. I feel a bit bad, but the guy didn’t even look into it, just took my word on faith. He knows better now.

#39

Colleague didn’t disclose to his second (younger) wife 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 and divorced him.

#40

I was trying to get my GF to stop using tanning beds because you know, skin cancer. I jokingly told her they are powered by mini nuclear reactors and that’s why people get cancer. Shockingly she believed me, stopped going and started telling her friends. I was more shocked to find out some of them believed her.

#41

Not me, but my brother sometimes has a stroke of genius:

His third name starts with “I” so on his ID it says “Name1 Name2 I.” so he once convinced one of his friends that the “I” meant that he was “the first” and that he was of royal blood. She had been bragging about knowing royalty for years until she found out that it’s just the first letter of his third name.

#42

I’m a teacher.

I had a student who always said she wanted to be a writer and asked me if I thought she could do it.

She was 13 at the time, and her writing was fine technically, just not particularly interesting.

But of course, she was just a kid, I told her she could be whatever she wanted to be with a lot of hard work.

Well, it turns out I was one of the first people to give her any encouragement on it and she spent all of high school trying to position herself to become a writer.

Went to college and got a degree in creative writing.

Is now working as a manager at a chain restaurant after 14 years of trying failing to break in.

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