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Comment by rland | Hacker News Reader

Had a family member like this. She would lie in the most outrageous fashion, right to your face ("I slept with JFK! We flew to Bermuda for a week 1st class together, just the two of us!" that sort). If you called her out on it, she would just stare blankly--any rational response just doesn't land. Laughter or praise, on the other hand...

I believe that New York attracts these people, from all over the country. Maybe it's the accent, but I spot this trait in a few other famous/powerful people, especially if they're associated with nyc -- Giuliani, Donald Rumsfeld, and (guess who) come to mind.

It's absolutely possible for people to just straight lie, under any circumstances, for any reason, straight to your face, with zero cognitive overhead, zero concept of what a lie even means/is. It's just a default mode.

They live among us. And usually they're immensely charismatic, larger-than-life.

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More likely than not, its easier for a liar to get by in densely populated areas. Get caught in a lie, or marked as a liar in a small town can hurt social standing.

However, I wonder if this changes now with social media - for better or worse, accusations (true and false) are quite quickly thrown.

> However, I wonder if this changes now with social media - for better or worse, accusations (true and false) are quite quickly thrown.

One might easily argue the opposite as well.

On the other hand, most people lie (or at least exaggerate) on social media. So maybe everyone stays silent in order not to get called out themselves.

There's likely a lot of truth to this. They say that every human is a liar. But I wonder if every human has the courage and ambition it takes to lie big?

Most of us are way too fearful to even lie to low ranking people, so of course we'll never be caught in enormous lies to high ranking people. So when you imply all people are liars, yes, that's true without question. However, I'd wager that only a select few have the guts or desire to go all the way to the top with a lie.

Near the end of your first paragraph sounds a bit like what a lot of people say about narcissism.

Yes, I believe the clinical term is Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

> I believe that New York attracts these people, from all over the country.

Not just from the country and not just to NY. From all over the world to wherever there is wealth. There was a famous case of the "Fake Rockefeller" where a german guy duped many into thinking he was a rockefeller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Gerhartsreiter

And if you enjoy lying narcissists, you'll love the documentary "The Imposter". I don't want to spoil it so I won't go into details here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imposter_(2012_film)

It's unbelievable the bald-faced lies that people can come up with. It's also unbelievable the lies people are willing to believe.

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