Attention-seeking behavior can appear in various forms, such as acting out, excessive displays of emotion, and continuously seeking praise and affirmation.

To learn how far people are willing to go, Reddit user MelodicFishing8899 posted a question on the platform, asking everyone to share the worst examples exhibited by their friends and relatives.

Perhaps it was the anonymous nature of the internet, the desire to empathize with others, or both, but many did. Continue scrolling to read some of the most memorable stories from the thread.

#1

My cousin pretended to have a seizure at her own sister’s wedding & ruined the whole thing.

Image credits: Impressive_Love4586

#2

Pretended to be me on a facebook account and messaged herself as me saying that I was using my bf to get over an ex and she took a screenshot of it and sent it to him. He broke up with me and didn’t tell me until we became friends again a few months later.

Image credits: DueStill1908

#3

My friend staged a fake breakup on social media, complete with dramatic screenshots and sob stories, just to get sympathy likes.

Image credits: AwayExchange2629

#4

My cousin faked a proposal at my grandma’s 80th birthday party just to get Facebook likes. Classy.

Image credits: Silver-Parsley9770

#5

My childhood bestie wore a white, backless sundress and a white flower in her hair…

To my father’s funeral.

Image credits: Aphid61

#6

He pretended to be deaf. He thought all deaf people were mute, and tried to communicate using sign language and the notes app on his phone.

Image credits: Butt_Stuph

#7

Pretended to lose their voice for three days just to seem mysterious. 🙄.

Image credits: Keawave

#8

Friend of a friend, our senior year, called in a b*mb threat. He wanted to do something so epic that he’d be remembered. Almost 30 years later, I still remember him as the dude who scored a suspension his senior year and had to spend a fifth year in high school.

Image credits: Worth_Box_8932

#9

My ex-wife staged a fake pregnancy for April Fools, instead of it being just one day of April Fools, she turned it into a week long prank. All her friends and family sent her money, gifts, and guidance for the fake baby. I told her not to do the prank because it’s mean but she didn’t care. Thought it was funny and to test how naive people were. After about a week, she finally said it was a prank and kept all the money and gifts. Her family didn’t talk to her for a few months after that and her friends dropped her. Anyways, one of the reasons why she’s my ex.

Image credits: Jiggly_Love

#10

A cousin of my best friend at the time (1999?) became close to me for a summer, knew who I had a crush on for my entire teen life, encouraged me to profess my love for him and ask him out.

Took months of encouragement and I did it!
Turned out that she was secretly dating him the entire time.

She apparently told him that she had cancer and only had a year to live…

The sheer insanity really shook me in my early adulthood.

Image credits: oymaynseoul

#11

Girl I went to high school with. The cheerleading coach took her own life. The girl broke into her house, put on her jewelry and clothes and took pictures posing as the dead body.

Image credits: notallamawoman

#12

Told the newspapers that the people helping her out on the emergency line was rude and was putting her in danger. Ended up in a national paper, the recordings popped up. Guess who was rude and unhelpful, and also drunk?

Image credits: Mystiax

#13

My ex MIL insinuated she had cancer every time she couldn’t have her way. If you couldn’t make a family dinner- she had news she wanted to share from her hospital visit. That kind of thing.

She also tried to stop the wedding by faking a “medical emergency ” for which an ambulance had to be calked. Right in the middle of the ceremony.

F**k that b***h. I sometimes Google for her obituary , hoping one day soon I’ll find it.

Image credits: WankYourHairyCrotch

#14

My cousin’s uncle (not my dad) was visiting her. He went upstairs and was gone for ages. She went looking and found him lying naked on the bed unresponsive. Called an ambulance, they came out and he tried to pretend to be in a coma because he lost his job, started gambling and got in debt and some people were looking for him.

Image credits: Cophed

#15

I might have a few that include my MIL.

1. She vomited during our wedding cake tasting

2. She passed out when I was trying on wedding dresses

3. She decided during our reception dinner she could no longer walk up stairs. She got put in a chair and carried up the stairs. (She has done stairs before and after this)

4. The day of our wedding she decided she needed to be in a wheelchair and only the groom was accepted to push the wheelchair

5. At the wedding reception, she gave a speech. She said her older son was unfortunate as he just got divorced, and wished he could be more like her younger son getting married. She then proceed to say if anyone in attendance was rich, she was single.

6. When my husband and I bought our house, she came in and said it was all wrong. Then said she was having some financial troubles with her house and left all emotional. Upon my husband researching, there were no financial issues

7. We were all having spaghetti one night and she kept putting it on her shirt and looking around to see if anyone would notice / say anything. I kept my mouth shut.

This was all over a decade ago, and her behavior has gotten much better.

Image credits: JennHeinz

#16

A coworker used to have convenient crises to steal the attention of the other co-workers.

She had a fake lawsuit with her ex-boyfriend about being thrown down the stairs. Completely fabricated.

Updates would continually happen as there were announcements of other co-workers being pregnant or getting married.

She had to take time off cuz her mom died. She wouldn’t return anybody’s calls.

When we called her sister, her sister had no clue what we were talking about and cleared everything up.

This was after I’d already moved on from the company.

My former co-workers took me out to dinner to apologize for believing all the slanderous things that were said about me.

I was always curious why there was a change of heart by people and they started being really mean.

Image credits: Drewbus

#17

Led a convoy to the nation’s capital. She’s a conspiracy nut who yearned for an audience. She used to spout conspiracy theories and post cheesecake photos on FB to friends and family.

Image credits: tangcameo

#18

Paid to have a girlfriend.

Image credits: Successful-Mine-7343

#19

Friends younger sister announced her pregnancy at my friends wedding, she wasn’t pregnant. Funniest thing is she only said that after the rest of my friends family got on her a*s about it and she tried to play it off as a joke.

Image credits: GloomyApricot2090

#20

My dad’s first cousin’s second wife (giving you all that context to properly DISTANCE myself from this horrible woman i share no blood or bond with) lived in the same hometown as me and worked at our elementary school as an aide. I’m long out of the school at this point but knew her as a faculty member. It came out a couple yrs ago that she was impersonating her 13 yo daughter on instagram to sext with other 13 yo boys in her class. She was literally taking nudes of the young girl and sending them out to children as her. The daughter didn’t find out until a boy came up to her in class and showed her the conversations with her own explicit pictures. absolutely despicable. The daughter reported her to administration and she was arrested. Her reasoning was, quote, “to make her daughter more popular”. So disgusting to involve your own daughter in your ploy for attention from minors. I think she’s in prison now but we don’t talk to them anymore … for obvious reasons.

Image credits: buchabitxh

#21

My brother pretended to have a back problem until the doctor pulled my mother aside and told her that he was clearly faking.

We were extremely poor, and could not afford doctors. We probably spent our rent money just to get the doctors to talk to him, and I bet it was years to pay off all the bills.

My sister was maybe worse than that by calling me, crying, telling me that our mother had forced her to abort her baby. After an hour of consoling her on the phone, I called my mother to yell at her. My mother responded ‘What the hell are you talking about? She’s sitting right here, big as a whale!’. So, I told my mom to give my sister the phone, and immediately said ‘What the f**k?’, and she explained that she was just bored and wondering how I’d react if that had happened.

Image credits: User1539

#22

For context, my aunt always needed the spotlight, always an attention seeker. This was at her own daughter’s wedding for context where she didn’t get attention.

Aunt: “I’m gonna k**l myself”

Me with anger issues and tired of this s**t

Me: *hands her a knife that was meant to cut the cake* do it, I want to watch, do it, right now, I dare you.

She never said that s**t again in front of me because I would keep doing it. I had enough of her bullshitting. I got in trouble but it was worth it to call her out.

Image credits: EmoElfBoy

#23

Classmate in high school faked a b*mb threat that got classes called off for the day while investigators raided every classroom checking for explosives. None were found and the call got traced back to him and he was presumably kicked out as we didn’t see him the following semester.

Image credits: Heroic-Forger

#24

This girl I used to be friends with had multiple fake pregnancies during our senior year of high school. Lucky me I had mostly distanced myself from her at the time, but it was infuriating watching how she got people to fawn over her for every fake pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage story. She also got one of our mutual friends arrested and sent to juvenile hall for falsely accusing him of a**ault just because she felt like it. She was a nightmare.

Image credits: Willing-Strawberry33

#25

He (27) self harmed then sent me a video with no caption. When I called him out for being immature, inconsiderate, and generally just saying like hey don’t do that (I have a history of self-harm and it was very triggering) he flipped out saying I was a bad friend and it was a cry for help. I told him to just be a mature adult and message me that he needs some support right now.

Later on he sent me another snap just labelled “single life” which I didn’t respond to and he once again flipped out. Blocked him after that one, f**k that. I don’t need that in my life right now.

Image credits: MeatballsRegional

#26

Step 1: My cousin went off her birth control without telling her boyfriend so she’d get pregnant and guilt him into marrying her.

Instead, her boyfriend offered to share custody when the baby was born.

Step 2: My cousin said she had a miscarriage to emotionally manipulate her boyfriend into marrying her.

Her boyfriend marries her out of guilt.

Step 3: Oh-wow, my cousin gave birth to a healthy baby just 5 months after their wedding. Coincidently, the due date was just three days off from the due date for the baby she miscarried.

Yeah, she didn’t have a miscarriage. He sued her for divorce after their daughter graduated.

Image credits: WatchingInSilence

#27

Maybe not intentional, but when i graduated middle school in covid, we got home and my mom’s skirt was ridden up a bit. she started crying because she thought everyone had seen her like that.

she didn’t leave the car the entire time except to stand in front of the door to watch me say goodbye to my teachers. no one could really see anything that was going on because we were all in cars.

i was already upset because, hey, im graduating in the middle of a pandemic, having the last of my middle school time and graduation ripped away from me, not sure if ill ever seen any of those friends again.. but we had to comfort her because she was crying over her skirt being messed up. (it probably rode up on the way home, anyway, not at school).

Image credits: ranbootookmygender

#28

Sister had a baby with a rare condition. The community rallied together to fundraise and support her. It was a big occasion and a great night.

This is a very small community where everyone knows everyone. She had everyone’s support and attention because of her child.

She later falsely claimed another family member sexually a**aulted her, abandoned her baby after finding out it also had autism, and disappeared to another state to hide after using my name for her debt collectors.

Years later, it was discovered she spent most of the fundraiser money on herself. She crawled out of wherever she was hiding only when our pop died so she could suck money out of our grieving nan.

She got the attention she wanted alright. Everyone in that community now knows to never trust her. Some are out for blood if she ever returns.
Family has cut all contact. Any attention on her or her name is bad news now.

Image credits: Lamington_Salad

#29

My husband’s ex (they broke up 2-3ish years before we met) sent weird messages to me after we got engaged. She created fake profiles that were quite convincing they were real.

Then a month or two before our wedding she started unsending a ton of messages in their fb messenger conversation from years ago. I’m talking like from 2014-2017. This happened in 2023.

We had to give security and everyone working the event a photo of her. My brides people also knew what she looked like. She didn’t show, but through mutual acquaintances we found out that she was in the area of our wedding when we got married. This place was across the country from her and our wedding website was private for that very reason. None of the mutual acquaintances were invited to the wedding as well….

Image credits: Patient_Art5042

#30

Someone I used to know recently told me they are waiting for a cancer diagnosis. He said the blood tests only show stage 4, so even though the blood test didn’t should anything to do with cancer, the doctors still suspected a tumour…..

Maybe I don’t know enough about diagnosing…. But I just felt this was all very off.

Image credits: Weneedarevolutionnow

#31

Not a friend of mine but a colleague got dumped by his girlfriend. He came into work the next day saying he missed her and wanted to get back with her. She was having none of it so he decided to take some pictures of empty packets of paracetamol and phoned her and said he took an overdose. It didn’t work out for him as planned and she rang the store and he was fired shortly after.

#32

When i was a freshman in high school my friend and her 2 older brothers had a house party. Well she and her brothers dr**ged me. They put their little brother’s anti seizure medication in my beer. They did that so her 2nd oldest brother could sleep with me. Luckily that did not happen because one of the brother’s friends thought it was f****d up. Needless to say i was not her friend after that one.

#33

Told me she was depressed. It was shortly after she told me I’d die alone (guess which one of us was recently left), unless I get married to a toaster or pet.
I told her she’s cruel and didn’t text again.
And then she had depression and the next day, she lost her phone.
Can’t say I cried a ton when her boyfriend left her.
Edit: she conveniently had „very bad thoughts“ after being this cruel to me and me no longer responding, which seems a bit of a stretch on the believability scale.
Also who cares? If someone is cruel to u, let them be depressed.

#34

My aunt. Pretended to have MS for 20 years, even though the doctors ran every test and they all came back looking normal. And she told me that, but because I was a child and she said she had MS and s****y doctors, I believed she had MS and s****y doctors.

Her “MS” stopped very suddenly 10 years ago (I think she said some diet cured her???) and now it’s one of the things we’re not allowed talk about at family dinners.

#35

My friends daughter faked having cancer in school….even got a fundraiser out of it to help for medical bills.

#36

My uncle pretended to have Parkinson’s, and then several years later faked having cancer.

#37

My best friend lied about being r*ped and then faked a pregnancy from it.

#38

I’m pretty sure my sister crashed her car for attention. She was at least decent enough to hit a stationary object rather than another vehicle.

#39

My aunt, at her own mother’s funeral wake, gleefully proclaimed she was engaged and the wedding will be later in the year.
Then got huffy when everyone looked at her in shock & disgust.

#40

A member of my high school friend group faked brain cancer.

Her boyfriend told me she was very scared and not to talk about it to spare her anxiety and not to spread it around school. He said she was starting treatment but it was too soon to say if she was at risk of dying. Being the gullible idiot I was, I followed orders and didn’t speak of it to a soul. If I caught her alone I’d ask innocuous questions like, “Hey, how are you feeling?” And she’d give me an equally vague answer back, and I thought that was as supportive as I could be while respecting her wishes.

It wasn’t until YEARS LATER that one of the other friends in the group casually threw out “Wasn’t it crazy how (friend) faked cancer for so long?” And I was like “she f*****g WHAT? None of you were going to tell me??”

I’m a little upset that we stopped hanging out long before I found out she was a lying piece of s**t, so I didn’t even have the chance to call her out on it. Last I heard she married a pastor, had a couple kids, and became a stereotypical tradwife.

#41

I haven’t ever talked about this one, but in my teen years I was heavily involved in a very niche internet fandom. One individual who was also active faked a s**cide attempt. Her “friend” logged into her account to post about it and also shared “updates from the hospital” for several days. I started getting individual emails as a “close friend” of this person, which they asked me to share with the rest of the fandom. When the emails started up I felt a little off, because they sounded exactly like the writing style of the individual supposedly comatose in the hospital. At one point the “friend” mis-used a phrase that I had noticed the person using before. I never wound up calling them out (felt screwed up to go “hey I think they faked a s**cide attempt for attention!”), but the individual made a remarkably quick recovery and spent weeks responding to messages from others wishing them well. Still wonder if anybody else caught on to the ruse or if it was just me.

#42

A friend once faked losing their phone just to get everyone to help search, only to find it in their pocket an hour later with a dramatic gasp.

#43

A trans friend of mine was frustrated by not getting any attention in a local dive bar and spontaneously shouted “Is nobody interested in this package?!!” Turned out there were and she started dating this guy right away. I gotta say I was impressed.

#44

Some girl I met when I was in middle school ran away from home when she was 18-19 and made everyone think she got kidnapped.

#45

Bought a Range Rover…

1. noone around here even knows that it is a luxury suv

2. he paid around 10k per year in repairs.

#46

A friend went out on a date with a man one time. Once. She changed her name on Facebook to having his last name.🤣.

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