Reddit Is Sharing The Biggest Lies That Had Them Feeling Exposed When The Truth Came Out
Look, we're all guilty of telling lies every once in a while. Whether it's to get out of work, get out of trouble, or get out of a friend date, we've all subjected our friends, family, and bosses to some of the worst, most pathetic, most outlandish fibs.
Reddit user u/danlee knows this truth and decided to help people get their worst and most embarrassing falsehoods off their chest by asking the question, "What is your most embarrassing exposed lie ever?"
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The answers led to a treasure trove of lies and fibs more wild and embarrassing than the ones you told your parents to get out of doing your chores.
Check them out:
1."My parents told me this story numerous times while I was growing up. When I was little, my parents used to call me their little princess, it was just a pet name, no big deal."
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"So when I was in preschool and kindergarten, they could afford to send me to a pretty nice private school. The teacher would call out my name in class, and I fairly regularly corrected her and told her I was a princess and she should address me as such. She must have been young because she believed it. So one day, she called my parents about something and was telling my mom that Princess _____ had done whatever that day. I have never heard my mom laughing so hard. I didn't even know I was lying. It wasn't embarrassing for me as much as it was for my parents."
2."I told my friends about this sexy girl I boinked on a summer trip 500 miles away. I even showed them a picture, but it was of a friend who lived 20 miles away."
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"In that world, 20 miles was like an ocean. I thought I was so safe, but one of my friends looked closely at the picture and knew her and totally busted me."
3."When I was in high school, my family had one computer and it was in the basement. I spent an ungodly number of nights sneaking down there after everyone had gone to sleep so I could look at porn on the internet. I deleted the browser history and cookies, covering my tracks as best I could."
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"One day, a friend of mine on ICQ asked me to download some audio files for her and bring them to school on a floppy because she couldn't get them to download on her computer. They were sex clips literally named 'oooooooh.wav'. Didn't seem like a big deal, so I did it. I didn't even listen to them because who the fuck cares about sexy sound files when there were boobies to be ogled?
"The next day, my dad threw a fucking shit fit because he clicked on 'run' accidentally and started typing — and the auto-complete dropped down the names of the audio files. He couldn't even play them because the disk was long gone. I told him the complete truth and got grounded from the computer for a month."
4."My dad found my computer porn stash. This was back before the web and maybe even before Windows 3.0 was out, but porn still existed on BBSs. So I have my pictures saved on the computer but hidden with the 'attrib -h' command. This way, they never show up and you pretty much have to know the file name to view them."
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"One day, my dad asks if I have pictures of nude women on the computer, and I tell him, 'No, of course not.' After all, I think I'm a super-smart 11-year-old who knows about file attributes, and my dad must not know anything. So he runs the command to view all hidden files on the computer ('dir /s -ah'), and this huge listing of pictures flies across the screen. I had to delete them all, and when it took 45 minutes to download one picture, that was a big loss!"
5."I was probably 13 or 14. My older sister had an AOL account paid for by her boyfriend. He didn't give me one, so she let me (or I just did) use hers. I would regularly have lesbian cybersex with this one 'girl,' all the time reminding her never to message me anything dirty out of the blue because it was my 'little sister's' account."
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"I also had recently discovered this geeky movie trivia chatroom, where someone would tell the plotline of the movie in a generic-enough way to make it fun to guess. (Sidenote: That actually was fun. Anyone know any cool 'guess the movie' kinda sites?) Being geeks themselves, my dad and one or two sisters would sit around the computer while we played. One night, we're all having a decent time in that chatroom, when out of the blue, an IM pops up..."
6."Met up with an ex-girlfriend who I was still secretly pining for a year after we had ended things on a rather mediocre note. So I'm trying my hardest to sound relaxed and aloof and not needy or clingy, and in a fit of 'inspiration,' I decided to tell her I had traveled abroad in the year since — not just traveled, but also got involved with a girl on that trip as well. (I might as well come clean and admit that I was old enough to know better than to embellish the lie further, but hey, I went for broke.)"
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"Needless to say, after a while we ended up patching things up again and started to go out. And as much as I tried to bury the whole Hellacious Tale under, it kept finding its way into conversation. The damn thing took a life of its own, as I was forced to add bells and whistles to the story every fucking time it came up, like places I had gone, things I'd done and conversations I had with this 'foreign girl.' It was horrible — in order to protect the lie, I had to make it real and give it depth and consistency. I had to devote a large part of my brain to make sure the dates and places all matched. And whenever I slipped, I had to quickly find a logical way to cover myself (like, 'Oh, that's right! We left Port Francis the day before because Lucia wanted to go shopping later that night').
"So of course, after many months of playing the balancing act, as I hosted for lunch, my sister brought the whole house of cards down by contradicting my tale in front of my former ex, who tried to correct her, who then told her I had spent the year at home doing nothing in particular. And just like that, the cat was out of the bag. Fuck. What an uncomfortable day that was, seeing the look of dawning comprehension on my former ex turned girlfriend, about to become my ex again. We stopped seeing each other shortly after that :P"
7."When I was about 15 or 16, I started looking at porn on the family computer, which was located in the living room. I did it when I got home from school and before my parents and brothers got home from work and school. (These were the dial-up days, when the progress bar crawled like a diabetic cat across a desert.) After a few months, I had figured out what sites to go to, what sites would probably freeze the computer, the best way to clean up, and the amount of time I had before they got home. I started to consider myself to be pretty ninja-esque with my porn-surfing-history deleting practices."
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"One day my mom asked me if I had been looking at porn sites. I denied it. Then she showed me an email she got from a porn site. I was shocked because I'm certain that I wouldn't use one of those sign-up sites, and sure as shit wouldn't be dumb enough to use my mom's email address. I quickly realized that it must have been my younger brother (11 or 12 years old).
"At the time, it blew my mind that he would be looking at porn at 12 years of age, so I manned up and confessed to my brother's crimes. I still haven't told him. I should probably cash in those bro points sometime."
8."Haha, oh man. Back in the AOL days, I had figured out how to use HTML and host my own page on my AOL screen name's space or whatever. I made this cool website with awesome animated GIFs and everything. Then I had this genius idea: This background I was using was the perfect color to obscure links."
"I decided to hide some links to my favorite porn images (I believe the website was hotsex.com or something) in there. My friends agreed that my web page was indeed awesome. Oh, the links were named 'Secret!' and such and laid out in a way that you would not see them with the wallpaper there.
"After my mom proudly showed off my web page to some friends, it became apparent that my plan was not fully thought out. It turns out that file://c:/my%20documents/webbackground.jpg doesn't work for other people. Somehow I managed to snake my way out of it with denial, and I may have even blamed hackers."
9."My professor told us this one: Before he started teaching and doing research, he worked at his parents' Teriyaki Kitchen (he graduated from university and was looking for a job). He applied to a large-scale software company and got selected for an interview."
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"He made it through the first two rounds of interviews and made it to the last round of interviews, competing with six other people. The interview was scheduled for Tuesday; meanwhile, his friends called him to go fishing the same Tuesday.
"He LOVES fishing, so he called his interviewer and said he needed to reschedule the interview to a later date because of a 'family emergency.' So he enters the interview, and one of the questions was, 'What is your favorite pastime?'
"He answers: 'I love fishing; just this last Tuesday...'
"He knew right then and there that he wouldn't get the job.
"TL;DR: Professor loses a potential job because he went fishing."
10."When I was around 14 or 15, I started mucking about with weed. We used to smoke a little on a morning before school sometimes because, you know, we were really cool and hard and proper rebels and all that."
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"One of those mornings, I decided that I would fashion a convenient ashtray out of paper. So I folded up a sheet of A4 into a serviceable tray and promptly perched it on the armchair. Finished my joint and stubbed it out in the ashtray, quickly and effectively burning a hole in the sofa like a regular teenage genius.
"My explanation for this? Well, I used to own a Game Boy. Back in the days before they had backlit screens, you could also buy attachable lights — adjustable LEDs that hovered over the screen. Surely, I could have created such a mark if I 'accidentally' left my Game Boy on, with the light gently resting against the sofa, burning a cigarette-shaped hole? Surely, this would greatly reduce any sort of punishment I might receive? Surely?
"And my parents actually bought this ridiculous, almost completely unfeasible fib! Or, at least, they pretended to. I think the latter is more likely. Regardless, my dad came home early from work a few weeks later, caught me in the exact same act (minus the furniture burning), and my lies got the better of me. Grounded for a good three months. Completely deserved.
"TL;DR: Smoked weed, burned stuff, lied, got caught."
11."In seventh grade, I was standing behind my math teacher when I saw him typing in the password to his personal email. I saw what he typed and got really excited with my power."
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"I logged into his email, telling two of my close friends what I was doing, and emailed out extra homework to two of my least favorite classmates. While I was doing it, two girls from the grade below me came by (I was doing this at school) and asked what we were whispering about. I was all full of pride with what I was doing, so I told them.
"The next day, there was a big inquiry about the whole thing, and every student got interviewed. I adamantly insisted I had nothing to do with it. I guess I got ratted out 'cause I got into some deep trouble."
12."When I was 16, two friends and I decided to skip town and drive to New York City for the weekend (we lived in Minnesota). I was living with my grandparents at the time and knew FOR SURE they would never approve of such a trek (they once had me stay home during a storm because of the dangers of lightning). I told them, and my parents, that we were driving to Chicago instead."
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"About halfway through Indiana, I was talking with my mom, and she was asking what Chicago was like. We had briefly driven through Chicago in the dark on our way to New York, so I just started talking about random things I vaguely remembered about the city (Wrigley Field, bad traffic, tall buildings, etc.). She then asked what Lake Michigan looked like from there.
"I froze up. I remember thinking, Where the fuck was Lake Michigan?! It was night and I was half asleep when we drove through. Should I be seeing it now? Should I have seen it at all? Is it prominent, or do you have to go look for it?
"'Uhhhhhhhh...I dunno yet. We haven't, uhhhh, we haven't checked it out yet.'
"There was a long pause on the other end before she finally said, 'Oh...OK.'
"We hung up, and my friends asked what happened. I told them and they were in total shock, saying, 'You're fucked, dude. Lake Michigan?! It's right fuckin' there, man. Right...there!'
"My mom called back an hour later and asked where we really were. I told her we were halfway to New York and to not tell Grandma and Grandpa. We still laugh about that one.
"TL;DR: Lied about going to Chicago, got caught because I said I hadn't seen Lake Michigan."
13."I was hitting my bong in my room with the window open, and I could USUALLY detect when someone was walking down the hall so I'd have enough time to stash everything and look like I was just chillin' normally. But one day my dad must've caught on, and he silently crept up to my door, knocked, and asked if I was there. I panicked, ripped out of my skull, said yes, and he came in and saw me with the bong, RIGHT after I'd just ripped a huge bowl."
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"I'm sitting there, high as a kite, and my dad looks down at me and asks, 'Are you smoking weed, son?' And I'm like, 'No,' with lungs as full as they could go, and I exhaled the huge hit all into his face. Yeah, I felt like a fucking idiot. He just walked out without saying anything. Don't really know how to feel about that night...we never talked about it; it was never bought up ever again. My parents did nothing at all. It was like, okay, son, smoke as much weed as you want."
14."The Relay for Life was going on, and it was nothing more than an excuse for me to hang out with friends all night long and get as drunk/high as possible. My mom wanted me to bring her and my sister, but I talked my way out of it somehow."
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"I walked into the house at the end of the night, and both parents were sitting there waiting for me. Mom asked if I wanted anything to eat; I said, 'No, just going to bed.' She asked why I was so tired...
"I tried to say, 'Because I woke up really early this morning and couldn't fall back asleep.' I'm not sure what came out of my mouth — some bastardized version of this — and my parents both started laughing at me. 'Hard as hell to talk to people, ain't it, son?' Dad asked. I couldn't hold the bellow of laughter in any longer.
"They just sent me to bed, and I laid there awake for two to to three hours, completely freaking out and wondering what they were going to do to me. I knew I was never going to be allowed out of the house again.
"They never mentioned the incident again until six years later when I asked my dad about it."
15."I lied and told a friend from high school that I was mugged outside my brother's apartment in the New York neighborhood we both lived in. I don't know why. I think I wanted her to be impressed that I had gone from our small town to a big, dangerous city."
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"She asked me about it while I was with my brother and he got very upset, thinking that he had failed to protect me. I had to confess to him that I had lied, and being the awesomest big brother, he asked me, 'Are you just lying to me now so I won't worry about you being safe in our neighborhood?' And I had to tell him again that no, I had made up a stupid, sensationalist story to impress someone whose opinion didn't even really matter to me. Because of that one stupid lie, I think my brother still doesn't trust me completely. What an idiot I was.
"Thinking about it now makes me nauseous."
16."In sixth grade, we were required to write in a journal every day. The teacher encouraged us to be completely honest when writing. So I wrote entry after entry about how ridiculously in love I was with my classmate Christine. Hearts with arrows, drawings of her face, etc. It was BAD."
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"Some assholes in my class broke into my locker and read the journal, then put it back. They cornered me at a school assembly and told me that they were going to tell Christine about my crush. This COULD NOT happen. I was a huge loser, very overweight, and had just transferred in from another school. I knew if this info got out, it would be another excuse for the class to mock me.
"A couple of days later, the kids started telling everyone in class about my crush on Christine, and 'Isn't it pathetic?!' and so on. I sat there, stone-faced, and said, 'It's a lie.'
"They broke into my locker (with the fucking study hall teacher WATCHING, I might add) and pulled out my journal, eager to show everyone the proof. However, I had carefully removed all of the pages that referred to Christine and left a note on the last page that read, 'Dear journal, I think someone has been reading my entries, so I decided to see who it was by writing that I had a crush on Christine. I found out that it was Drew and Mike, so I won't be writing in my journal anymore.'
"They called bullshit, and I think everyone, including Christine, knew that it was, but my little cover-up was enough to start a conversation with a couple of people, including Christine, who eventually turned into very good friends. So I WON."
17."In eighth grade, we were allowed to bring home our graded tests and make corrections to our wrong answers for additional credit. One night I forgot to do them."
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"Teacher [picks up my test]: Where are your corrections?
Me: What? Oh, I must have left them at home.
Teacher: Really?
Me: Yeah, they're definitely on my desk.
Teacher: So, then, you'll be able to bring them in tomorrow, even if I collect your test now.
Me: Fuck."
18."In fifth grade, our teacher would give out these little pink slips if we didn't do our homework assignment, which we were supposed to take home for our parents to sign. I've never been one for homework, even back in fifth grade...so I had a ton of pink slips. And I forged my mom's signature on all of them."
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"I asked my mom to sign a blank sheet of paper so I could see what her signature looked like. I shaded the back of that sheet with a pencil and then lined it up with the pink sheet and traced the signature. Then I went back over the thing with pen and erased the pencil. In retrospect, the whole operation was doomed to fail from the start because my forgeries were terrible. Every signature looked exactly the same because they were all traced from the same source. But fifth-grade me thought I was a goddamn genius.
"Cut to several months later, and I'm joining my parents in a parent-teacher conference. I'm sitting there, thinking we'll be talking about my progress in the fifth grade, when my teacher pulls out my many, many, many forged pink slips. Boom. From what I can remember, nobody was even that angry at me. But I felt absolutely terrible.
"I actually wrote a college application about this. I don't remember which college, though; nor do I remember if I got into that college."
—u/pliu22·
19."I'm half Greek. Many people who are born into a particular ethnic background learn to speak that language. However, my mum is Italian, so the common language was English...so we all spoke English at home."
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"When I was in high school and told people I couldn't speak Greek, people would say, 'Bullshit, you just don't want to speak it in front of us.' I don't know why they thought that...why the fuck would I pretend not to speak another language? I understand basic phrases, but that's it, unfortunately. So just to get people to shut up, one day I said, 'Yeah, OK, I speak Greek,' rattled off a few words that I knew, and for a few years, that's what people believed.
"Until I was 17. My English teacher was Greek. One day she was talking about how, when other people speak in another language around someone who doesn't understand it, it alienates them. Had something to do with the movie we were studying at the time (Dead Letter Office). For some reason, people didn't understand why. So my teacher picks me out, starts speaking Greek to me, and...I didn't understand a word she said. Slightly embarrassing. Although mostly relieving."
20."My girlfriend at the time had just moved in with me, so things were starting to take a more serious turn relationship-wise. She was a nurse and sometimes worked night shifts, which usually meant I'd spend the evening at home alone or occasionally go out for a beer. One night happened to be a work-related end-of-year party (called a bonenkai, popular in Japan, where I live). Our company had rented a large area of a restaurant, but some tables were still open to the public."
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"Toward the end of the party, I noticed a friend of mine had come in and was sitting at one of the publicly available tables. She was a professional hostess and was out with one of her customers, so she was done up to the nines and looked, to put it simply, fucking incredible. She caught my eye and came over to say hi. She said she'd soon be done having dinner with the guy who was with her, so we should go for a drink after our respective 'duties' were done with. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we both got incredibly drunk and ended up in a love hotel. I left the hotel at about 6 a.m., went back to my apartment, ruffled up my futon a bit to make it look like I'd slept the night, and headed out to my job. My girlfriend would have gotten back about 7.30 a.m., so I felt that my tracks had been covered.
"That evening, when I got home from work, she asked me if I'd had a good night, and I said I'd spent most of the evening at home watching TV. She asked if I'd been out, and I said I went to the convenience store for a few cans of beer, but apart from that hadn't done much. At this point she reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. 'What's this, then?' she said. In my not-yet-sober state when I got home early that morning, I'd emptied my pockets out onto the kitchen table (as men often do when they arrive home), and among the debris was the receipt for the love hotel, sitting there, proudly waiting for my beloved to discover it on her return."
"I won't go into the gory details of her initial reaction, but needless to say, after a couple of days, she actually forgave me, partly because she had the incredible grace to see humor in how incredibly stupid I'd been, not just to lie, but to leave the damning evidence where anyone could see it. Several years later, we ended up getting married, and to this day, I have never even entertained the idea of being unfaithful again."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
