Why Lie About Being a Crime Victim?

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Recent events in the news have highlighted the issue of people falsely claiming to be the victims of crimes. We here at WP may also see this among members who claim to not only be victims of crimes, but victims of social ostracism, repeatedly broken or continuously non-existent relationships, or government conspiracies.

Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference between the truth and a fabricated story, even when the people claiming victimhood keep changing their stories -- what happened, when it happened, who did it, et cetera.

Believe it or not, there are people who study this problem, and who have come up with a few common features that all of these false victims seem to display. CNN posted a news article yesterday that provides some expert insight into this behavior.

Source Article: Why would anyone lie about being a victim of a crime?.

So, with the most common motivation being a desire for attention or sympathy, the behavior is something like "Munchausen by Proxy", only without the proxy.

Munchausen's by Proxy, without the proxy, is plain old Munchausen's syndrome. But I can that pretending to be a victim of crime or pretending to be ill could be closely related.

Correct. I needed an easily-recognizable analogy.Exactly. Both are classed as "Malingering".

I would say that attention-seeking is probably the strongest motive... I acknowledge that you've already identified that one in your original post. I've even read of people trying to make money by pretending to have a terminal illness.

I've observed a lot of malingerers in my time and been astonished (sometimes) at the effort they put into avoiding toil. I often think it would be easier to put in an honest day's work.

Well gee whiz.

Folks who falsely claim to be victims of crimes do so ..to get attention/sympathy. Well duhhhhhh….iz dat doh?

Anyone with common sense would kinda assume that that would be the reason.


Now that you have gone to all this great length (including linking to a long lengthy link) just to tell us all that "water is wet" , do you have an actual point to make?

Or are you just waisting our time by stating the obvious?

I'm quite a fan of stating the bleedin' obvious. Surprising how often you have to do it around these parts... I mean where I live, not the all-round good eggs who inhabit WP.

I am stating the obvious and backing it up with expert opinions so that anyone who suspects that other people might be faking their victimhood will have a source of referential material to back up their claims.

It's one thing to say, "You're just doing this for the attention" and quite another to say "I think that you're doing this for the attentions because..." and then cite a relevant source of information.

Okay.

Then why are you doing THAT then?

This is social website. Not a detective division of a police department. So you're basically admitting that you ARE waisting our time.

Why not?

Would you rather I started another thread on "Is my friend on the spectrum"? How about "The damn leftist media is at it again", "Trump says something stupid", or "I can't stand NTs"?

I know! I could start a series of threads on the subject of "Baba Yaga Love Magic"! Would that make you happy?

Why start a thread at all if you have nuthin' to say?

If you don't like this thread, then you can either ignore it or report it. And right now, I don't see you doing either.

IDK, it seems like a pretty pointless and risky endeavour, plus you can ruin or make life more difficult for other people to.

Also, it is an insult to people who really have been victims of crimes, and likely makes things harder on them. Maybe because you lied someone will assume another person who actually did suffer is lying to.

One close one is ...

"Hero" syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_syndrome

"People with hero syndrome will usually cause an accident and pretend to help"

For example, you bravely fight off MAGA homophobic, racists and want recognition for it.

There seems to be a lot of this on WP
Start a thread and watch how people react...

If there was a rule against it, then I dare say that there would be only two moderators and a half-dozen regular members left.

This happened to a close family friend. He owns a billiards/pinball business and services a lot of pubs and bars. Some female friend of his from I think his pool league got sick with some kind of brain cancer and shaved her head and everything to appear bald from chemo/radiation treatments. He was conned into doing fundraiser parties for her at some of the bars they play at. It turned out she faked the whole thing for attention because she's Mental.