I’ve told exactly one lie online, about loving a spin class, and the guilt still wakes me up at night. The people below feel nothing. They post stories where strangers applaud, cashiers cry and six-year-olds deliver TED Talks, then hit send with their whole chest. My ruling on every single one is the same: that never happened. Please hold your applause, unlike everyone in these stories.
Imagine being the son in this story.
Lawyered his way into a free blue drink.
The ex's mom is playing chess.
Ten out of ten for confidence, zero for the handwriting.
Some people block their blessings. Some people invent them.
Every chapter is the best one when you write them all yourself.
Grew seven inches on one car ride.
Two bullets, one very carefully arranged table.
Pilots famously skip the passport check for fans.
God is good, but the bank has cameras.
Honestly, I hope this one happened.
Every bus I've ridden had zero flirting and one smell.
The LinkedIn lunatics are my favorite strain, because they lie in a blazer. One man turned down seventy-five thousand pounds to teach his son to ride a bike, and somehow made the kid the villain. Another went from cleaning toilets to owning a hundred businesses in two years, a timeline I would love to see in writing. I once put proficient in Excel on a resume, so I understand the impulse, but I never asked anybody to clap.
Then there are the fake stories where the hero is a tip. A ten thousand dollar envelope behind a trash can, a table leaving three hundred dollars and their son’s number, a cashier quietly ringing up a hundred and fifty dollars of groceries for twenty-six: this is not people lying online, it’s fan fiction about money. The tell is always the dialogue. Nobody in real life says brother that smoothly.
Here’s why we love these: the lie is always so specific. Nobody fakes a boring Tuesday, they fake the exact moment they finally won, the speech they wish they’d given, the stranger who finally saw them. That’s a little sad and a lot human. We all rehearse the perfect comeback in the shower, and these people just post it.
The bus did not clap. The pilot did not wait. The bullets did not kiss.
Go read Sure, Buddy: I Have Reviewed Your Story and My Official Verdict Is That Never Happened for a second opinion, then The Worst LinkedIn Posts Have Convinced Me That Some People Should Be Legally Offline for the corporate wing of the same problem. Applause optional.
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Phil M., Co‑Founder & Content Strategist
Phil is one of Thunder Dungeon’s co‑founders, doubling as our resident meme analyst and dark‑room brainstormer. He specializes in trend‑spotting across social platforms and shapes the editorial calendar to keep our galleries fresh, topical, and worthy of your valuable procrastination.
