The Biggest Lies People Have Ever Believed

Adulting 101

"That adults knew what they were doing."

- yukipurple

"Maybe not ALL adults, but I definitely thought that adults with responsible jobs have their s**t together. Then I realized they do not have their s**t together at all."

"Which in turn makes me feel somewhat better about being an adult with a responsible job who does not have their s**t together."

- kjhwkejhkhdsfkjhsdkf

Moving Violations

"It’s illegal to turn on the dome light while the vehicle is moving."

"Nope. Turns out it’s just annoying as h**l."

- OstrichMan975

A Lottery Trick

"When I was a kid, my cousin convinced me for, like, an hour that her mom had won the lottery. I can still feel the loss of millions of dollars two decades later, and that s**t hurts, bro."

"WHY, JESSICA, WHY?!"

- iforgotwhereiparked

That Truth Hurts

"I’ll fill up my car with gas before work tomorrow morning."

- hoangtudude

"I will do stuff like this for my fiancé in a heartbeat, but if I need to fill up my own gas tank to avoid doing it tomorrow? That sounds like a problem for future me."

- robbviously

When That Grief Hits Seven Years Later...

"My mom told me when I was five and my favorite dog died that it doesn't matter that dogs die, because in seven years, they respawn."

"So I was like, 'Oh, fine. See you then, bud, I will be older, and we will play again.'"

- josevilla7

Replacement Pets

"My hamster died while I was in school. Went back home, and I instantly saw he was a little bit different."

"My mum tricked me into thinking it was the same hamster and he hadn't changed a bit."

"Mom told me the truth a few years later. I was so p**sed off."

- changethename7

"My mom has done the same thing with my nephew’s parakeet. One day, Pickles #1 flew into the pantry, somehow got stuck in a case of Diet Coke, and got crushed by a can avalanche."

"He was immediately replaced by Pickles #2. My nephew asked why Pickles was so mean to him now. Pickles #2 is an a**hole."

"I’m suspicious that we are on Pickles #3 now but I don’t want to know for sure."

- Brotox123

"My mother's cousin did that with her little boy's rabbit."

"The new rabbit was a psychopath. Having his previously loving rabbit now hate him and repeatedly attack him was almost certainly more traumatizing than learning about death."

"I always wondered if stories like that were part of the inspiration for 'Pet Sematary.'"

- victoriaj

Just in Case

"The microwave will explode if I put my face too close to it while it’s heating food."

- ezzysalazar

A SUPER Secret Affair

"That my parents were married."

"The truth is, my father was, just not to my mother."

- left_over_croissant

A Creative Story

"That my dad moved out and rented a room in the house of a female friend for tax reasons."

- Eldhannas

Such Good Friends

"Outside of dumb lies your parents tell you as kids, my friend who worked at a gas station with a big food station that has some ground beef items told me they use kangaroo meat for their ground beef because it was cheaper than cow."

"I am gullible with my friends."

- _Goose_

The Lie That Keeps Going

"When I was 15, over my summer break, one day my mom called and said she was gonna pick me up and we were gonna go to my stepdad's for the weekend."

"I didn’t understand why I had to go when she would leave me at home by myself for the weekend all the time. I was old enough that I knew the rules and she could trust me."

"She told me there was a mixup at the electrical company and they seem to think we didn’t pay the bill and so the power was gonna be shut off, so we were gonna go to my stepdad's until that got sorted."

"That was a lie."

"A weekend turned into two weeks, which turned into a month, and then the entire summer. We hadn’t been home in over two months. I kept asking when we could go home and she’d always have an excuse."

"We reached September, she’s driving me from one city to my hometown to register for the following year of school, which started up in a week, and this was the closest I had been to home in two months! After I registered, we bypassed my house and started heading towards the highway to go back to my stepdad’s."

"It was at that moment I snapped and started freaking out! I knew something was wrong."

"She pulled the car over and started crying. Apparently, my brother had been helping her pay the bills and when he moved out, she could no longer afford the place on her own. So my stepdad was trying to help but he had his own house and kids he had to look after, and he couldn’t keep it up. We had been evicted."

"We stayed with my stepdad for the summer while my mom tried to work something out with the landlord, but they couldn’t come to an arrangement. Because she never told me, and in order to buy herself time to work something out, she had to be comfortable with potentially leaving EVERYTHING behind…"

"Well, she couldn’t work it out with the landlord and we lost EVERYTHING. The only thing I got out of that house was the shoes on my feet and a few outfits and pajamas enough for a weekend stay."

"My mother wanted to keep the lie going for as long as she could to buy herself time that she had to leave behind everything to keep it going. She never went back for anything, so eventually I can only assume it was all thrown away."

"So not only did I lose material belongings like my computer, my video games, and all my clothes, but I lost basic things like my own bedroom… and privacy as a teenager! I slept on my stepdad’s couch for almost two years until his daughters moved out and I took over their old room."

"But I also lost sentimental things like childhood pictures/videos, the memory box I started when I was seven, and the porcelain dolls my dad had given me over the years, he bought me two per year (birthday and Christmas,) and now that my dad is dead, those are things I wish I still had."

- Neikitia

An Elaborate Tale

"When I was very young, we had a pet hamster. He got out of his cage, so my dad put the cage in the basement, thinking he might get hungry and get back in."

"One morning I woke up and there was the hamster in his cage in the usual place. I asked my mom how they found him and she told me she opened the door to the cellar and there he was dragging his cage back upstairs."

"It wasn't until I was a teenager and remembered the exchange that it occurred to me she obviously made that up."

- censorized

Too Real

"That acne would only be a problem when I was a teenager."

- McGamers56

"I started breaking out in the third grade and haven't had clear skin since. I'll be 27 pretty soon. This one hits home."

- bayleenator

Part of the Family

"When I was like 16, I found out that one of my sisters wasn’t actually my sister. She was actually just best friends with my oldest sister growing up, and she lived with my family from when she was 12 or 13 through 18 (she and my oldest sister are 15 years older than me)."

"Unfortunately, her parents wouldn’t sign her over for adoption and didn’t contribute anything to my mom raising her for six years."

"The weirdest part is that my family is predominantly fair-skinned, blonde with blue eyes, but the girl I thought was my sister was traditional Hispanic with darker skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. My mom was always very tan and had darker skin and hair throughout my childhood, so I thought that my other two sisters and myself were the odd ones out."

- Schleeeeeem

The Deepest Betrayal of All

"On April Fool's while I was getting ready for school on a cold winter day, my mom told me, 'School is canceled! It's a snow day!'"

"I ran around for a good two minutes celebrating before she told me, 'April Fools!'"

"I've never felt so betrayed in my life."

- samivat

"You better be a mastermind supervillain by now."

- T_WREKX

"Thank you for sharing your Joker origin story, lol (laughing out loud)."

- JulienS2000

These lies have a wide range from the hilarious to the absolutely diabolical, maybe even with a few villain origin stories thrown in.

A common thread throughout most of these was someone telling a lie in order to avoid a tougher conversation, which only led the younger person to have a lot more to process later.