• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
Ah - OT sidebar for one minute, we spent a while living in Port Jefferson on the north coast of Long Island. The wealth was somewhat conspicuous, wasn't it? The parallels with society there today and that of Gatsby - albeit set on the other side of the island - weren't hard to draw. Which of course itself is about facades (and the damage that preserving them can wreak on others), so maybe not quite so off topic after all.

(I should add we weren't a part of that set by a country mile - we lived further inland in much more modest circumstances, but close enough to see the money, if not the class in every case.)
Seen the Bridgeport - Port Jefferson ferry many a time, but we lived further inland - Oxford.
 
Yes, there's a huge difference between 'no, honestly, that's a lovely dress, it looks fine on you' (when the dress in question is average at best and just makes the wearer look like they normally do in any other clothing) and 'course, I was in the SAS just before I joined MI5' from your Uncle Dave who's never gone outside his home county and gets scared shopping in Tesco.
 
I think this is the only thread in which I have noticed all the staff members actively contributing. It led me to wonder what it is like to be a staffer for the Forteana Forums, reading daily of odd occurrences, and perhaps privately wondering if the poster was mistaken, telling the truth, delusional, or a confabulist.

I am so happy to be retired from governmental service, and not have to mentally conjecture about those possibilities at work. :)
 
I think this is the only thread in which I have noticed all the staff members actively contributing. It led me to wonder what it is like to be a staffer for the Forteana Forums, reading daily of odd occurrences, and perhaps privately wondering if the poster was mistaken, telling the truth, delusional, or a confabulist.

I am so happy to be retired from governmental service, and not have to mentally conjecture about those possibilities at work. :)
As a mod I don’t read any of the board, I have a cave full of interns for that sort of thing.
 
I post much less frequently now I'm a Mod. This may be why I was made one... :spider:
 
I half expected one of the mods to say “I don’t read the threads...the threads read me!”
 
... It led me to wonder what it is like to be a staffer for the Forteana Forums, reading daily of odd occurrences, and perhaps privately wondering if the poster was mistaken, telling the truth, delusional, or a confabulist.
I am so happy to be retired from governmental service, and not have to mentally conjecture about those possibilities at work. :)

Last point first ... In my younger days I spent 8 years as a front line case worker, interviewing people seeking help all day. Soliciting and negotiating the "truth" in a client's situation was a constant issue of concern. Sometimes simply assembling the basic facts can be unexpectedly difficult for a number of reasons including the client's own reluctance to give straight answers. I've had to deal with the full range of problematic interviewees, from the merely inarticulate to the dedicated fraudsters and scammers. Benign patience was required for the former extreme, while careful deception (acting as if I didn't know what was going on) was required to maneuver the latter to the goal state of obtaining the hard evidence allowing me to read the client his / her Miranda rights ("You have the right to remain silent, etc.").

Being a mod here on the Forteana Forums isn't the same thing, but it involves similar themes and issues. People who post here aren't automatically responsible to us for the "truth" in what they post. We are not responsible for ascertaining any standard of "truth" in their descriptions of personal experiences. As long as they don't violate the forum's Terms & Conditions and / or our policies (e.g., "no politics") it's all fair game.

In this context the negotiation of "truth" shifts from enforcing a standard to which anyone's held accountable to a more flexible attempt to clarify, if not explain, the weirdness being reported. I call this "scrubbing the story" to attempt to clarify what was experienced and to see whether there's a mundane explanation that might be suggested. Such alternative explanations aren't the goal - i.e., this isn't done in the service of any presumptive skepticism or dismissal.

Yes - there are occasional trolls whose objective seems to consist of nothing more than getting credit for relating an incredible lie. These unwelcome types don't always survive the scrubbing of their stories, and they rarely persist in their efforts.

On an average day I start by rummaging through all the new postings. Some I read more closely than others. Some I pass over as things I'm confident I've seen before, whereas others pique my interest and I may begin scrubbing the story. If I suspect the poster is an outright liar or troll I scrub really hard ...
 
...Yes - there are occasional trolls whose objective seems to consist of nothing more than getting credit for relating an incredible lie. These unwelcome types don't always survive the scrubbing of their stories, and they rarely persist in their efforts...

I've now had to revise my mental image of you in your modley pursuits, EnolaGaia. I'm now imagining Bob Newhart - specifically from about 1:50 in the following excerpt from FortFormMod TV:


(And if that isn't an illustration of how stuff doesn't really change very much, then I don't know what is.)
 
Last edited:
I have encountered some liars online; I'm not sure whether they would be habitual or compulsive.

One was a youngish single mother with a daughter of the same age as mine. She met up with some of the board members along with her daughter, so she WAS an actual person. She revealed that her mother had died, and some of the other ladies sent her a lovely bouquet. Then she was pregnant again, and so, as mums, we all did the maths and worked out when she was due. Then I noticed, on FB, a post from about the time that she was supposed to be giving birth that was completely incompatible with her supposed condition. Shortly after that she posted that her second child had been born prematurely, but something didn't seem right. Then one of the group ran into this woman's aunt, who lived nearby. Turned out the woman's mother was still alive and she hadn't had a second child. Somebody called her out in the group, and she just posted "I'm sorry", and vanished into the ether. All we could say amongst ourselves was "Why?"

The second was a. corker - one of the capping-every-story variety. She had a large number of children (6 in the end) with elaborate names. When pregnant with one of them, she said it was a girl but then it turned out to be a boy (not implausible, I would admit). Herr godfather was a member of Pink Floyd. She had got married in a disused London cinema (probably not even legal at that point!) followed by the most amazing vegetarian feast somewhere. She had inherited a very healthy amount of money from an elderly relative because she had been the only family member to actually visit said relative, and this inheritance allowed her to be completely debt-free and financially independent. I found her stories quite amusing, but apparently she also used to post on the Miscarriages board, and have long discussions with women who had just lost babies about her own losses. Then I came back off holiday one year to discover that she was a complete fraud - I don't think she even had any kids - and the whole board was massively angry at her. Whoever it was never posted under that name again, but every now and again, on the Names board, someone would pop up with several kids named in a similar fashion to the original poster, but vanish quickly again.

Certainly the second one strikes me as a good template for a story, something similar to "Gone Girl" but on the Internet!
 
1615072881981.jpeg
 
Anyone remember Fred Fibber from The Grumbleweeds? He was a hopeless case.
 
Does compulsive lying come from an inferiority complex? Or is it something else? I've known a few compulsive liars and I always wonder what they get out of it.

It might serve as a defensive tactic for folks believing themselves to be at a disadvantage (e.g., in a social situation). However, I wouldn't go so far as to claim this is the sole cause for pathological / compulsive lying.
 
It might serve as a defensive tactic for folks believing themselves to be at a disadvantage (e.g., in a social situation). However, I wouldn't go so far as to claim this is the sole cause for pathological / compulsive lying.
One of my oldest friends is a compulsive liar .. I loaned him some Spectrum 48k games on a cassette tape when were both about 12, he came out with some crap about how he couldn't give them back, my Mum was more streetwise than I was so drove me to his house to flat out get them back .. she always warned me that he was a bull shitter, she even went so far as to have a conversation with one of her mates who said "My Son's the same .. but that means our boys are loyal to their friends?" .. he continued to bullshit me but he was always a good friend at the same time so it was a strange friendship .. bullshitting was just what he did so I learned to turn a blind to it .. he came to my Mum's funeral last year, stood government allowed social distancing space away from me and the Mrs but every observation he made afterwards was spot on correct because he's known my family for so long. I was glad he was there anyway, that helped me a lot but he's always full of shit, some people just can't help it apparently.
 
But what's the point in telling everyone, as an adult, that you've climed Everest/toured with Led Zeppelin/been married to the woman out of Dollar/been in the SAS... when you know it's all bull? That's what I could never understand with these types and I've met a few of them. Even went out with one (although she was from Crewe, so...). It's one thing to say that you Dad is Bruce Lee when you're 5, but when you're 45? - I suppose that's where the 'compulsive' bit comes in!
 
But what's the point in telling everyone, as an adult, that you've climed Everest/toured with Led Zeppelin/been married to the woman out of Dollar/been in the SAS... when you know it's all bull? That's what I could never understand with these types and I've met a few of them. Even went out with one (although she was from Crewe, so...). It's one thing to say that you Dad is Bruce Lee when you're 5, but when you're 45? - I suppose that's where the 'compulsive' bit comes in!
Tell us more about the liar from Crewe.

(Limerick form will do.) :chuckle:
 
But what's the point in telling everyone, as an adult, that you've climed Everest/toured with Led Zeppelin/been married to the woman out of Dollar/been in the SAS... when you know it's all bull? That's what I could never understand with these types and I've met a few of them. Even went out with one (although she was from Crewe, so...). It's one thing to say that you Dad is Bruce Lee when you're 5, but when you're 45? - I suppose that's where the 'compulsive' bit comes in!

You courted a lass who’d climbed Everest and been in the SAS? lf l hadn’t rogered my way through Pan’s People before becoming an astronaut, l might have been jealous of you!

maximus otter
 
Back
Top