When it comes to pranking with a lie, people can be so persuasive–especially towards impressionable people–regardless of their age.
So it's not entirely embarrassing that something you wholly invested in believing turned out to be untrue.
Okay, maybe it's slightly embarrassing. People can be so cruel.
Curious to hear how gullible people experienced their moments of truth, Redditor asraarmushtaq asked:
"What is something that you believed in wholeheartedly but turned out to be a lie?"
Dad's can be so convincing.
The Bear Fighter
"My dad told me his job was to fight bears. I had no reason to question this and would tell people that was his job until I was about 12. Learned he was actually an accountant on take your daughter to work day."
– KThuckleberry
The Daredevil
"My dad told me he once went down the Niagra Falls in a barrel, told me he had the newspaper clipping in the loft but didn't know where. I believed that for about 14 years 😂. Do"
– Vanillabean1988
What's The Word?
"When I was a kid, my Dad told me 'verily' wasn't actually a real word, just something they made up for SpongeBob. I believed that for years. Luckily, the word isn't really used widespread today so no real repercussions."
– DahColeTrain
Fuel For Thought
"My dad used to fill our outboard motor with gas from an old beet juice bottle and told me 'really small engines can run off of beet juice' didn't realize he was bullsh*tting me until he heard me repeat it to someone... I was 15 and he found it hilarious."
– joshyp42
Various concepts can easily be misinterpreted.
About Consequences
"if you do no wrong you have nothing to fear. you only get in trouble if you did something bad."
– I_Love_Small_Breasts
A Punishing Past
"I learned this was bs very early. I used to get blamed for so much crap someone else did all the damn time. Suffered many detentions, groundings, and beatings for things i didn't do."
– Aggravating_Ad5989
Misconception About Glass
"The whole 'glass is a slow moving liquid' thing. This was repeated by teachers and my grandmother who was an antique dealer to explain why old windows have ripples and are thicker on the bottom. It's a common misconception, that's just how old panes were made (hand blown glass cylinders are cut and flattened) and this causes imperfections and installers would install the window panes with the thicker edge down so they would be more solid (wider base)."
"Edit: To clarify. Amorphous solid does mean that the atoms do move (albeit extremely slowly in this case, like millions of years at room temperature in this case) but the ripples and thickness variations in old windows are due to the manufacturing process NOT the "slow liquid" thing. Yeah, not a materials scientist obviously."
– eNroNNie
Take It With A Grain Of Salt
"If you tell the truth, people will believe you. Turns out people believe whatever they feel is true and resent being told they're wrong."
– caffeineandvodka
These Redditors learned they had to curb their expectations.
Trouble Can Find You
"if you do no wrong you have nothing to fear. you only get in trouble if you did something bad."
– I_Love_Small_Breasts ·
Unfairly Punished
"I learned this was bs very early. I used to get blamed for so much crap someone else did all the damn time. Suffered many detentions, groundings, and beatings for things i didn't do."
– Aggravating_Ad5989
Kids Don't Win
"You basically can't win when you're a kid. You don't have any legal representation in the principals office. The principal is the judge, jury and executioner. Same with parents. You could be complelty innocent but if you have a history of bad behavior you basically lost already. I honestly think this is why some kids just continued the behavior. They can't win either way so might as well continue the process."
– Keudn883
And then there are natural phenomenon that go down in legend and had absolutely no basis in reality.
Ocean Lore
"As a kid, I believed that the Bermuda Triangle was a 'place of no return'"
"That anyone who sailed there would never be heard from again."
– Back2Bach
Fear From Above
"I worked for an airline (I was 28 at the time of this). And I went into the flight deck during our flight to the Bermuda. I asked 'How far do we have to stay from the Bermuda Triangle so the aircraft isn’t affected' The two pilots laughed at me for an embarrassing amount of time before showing me that we were flying right through it 🤦🏾♀️😅"
– Yaseuk
The Effect Of Piranhas
"I was always terrified of quicksand and rivers and lakes because of maneating piranhas...."
"Turns out quicksand doesn't really exist as it does in the cartoons and piranhas don't eat large moving creatures. They scavenge on dead stuff or catch and eat small things"
– Itakorgrefra
Hot Theory
"And catching on fire. When I was a kid I thought having my clothes catch on fire would be a big part of my life with how often we learned stop drop and roll. I've yet to catch on fire."
– nachosurfer
I was a very gullible kid, and my older brother always took advantage of this.
We had a lot of crows where we grew up, and they freaked me out. Why?
Because every time they crowed, I thought they were gearing up for an attack like in Alfred Hitchcock's nature thriller,
The Birds.
You see, my brother told me the sounds they were making was a battle cry and were calling out MY name, which sounded eerily similar.
I wholeheartedly believed this for about five years after I realized I was still alive at 13.
*Face-palms.
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