People Who Believe Their Own Lies
For a long time I assumed it wasn't really possible for someone to swallow their own fabrications whole. I've changed my mind. I've run into enough of these people to know better. And the deeper trouble isn't only that they've convinced themselves. It's that they feel compelled to repeat the story to you, at length, and somehow you're stuck there until the last line. At what point does being courteous tip over into letting yourself be trapped?
What these people tell you tends to be absurd on its face. You rarely need any special knowledge of the subject to sense that what you've just been handed couldn't have happened. Consider the man who claims to have survived one life-or-death surgery after another. At some count, the arithmetic stops adding up, yet there he sits, still talking.
So if almost anyone listening can spot the falsehood, how does the teller keep faith in it? The tales are usually grand, built to leave the audience amazed, maybe a little dumbstruck. That reaction is the whole point, which is why the stories get recycled again and again. A fresh face in the room is a gift to them, someone who hasn't heard it yet. Though in practice they don't bother to ask, and whether you've sat through the same account five times already doesn't seem to register, or matter.
The oddest part is their indifference to repetition. As long as the room belongs to them, retelling an old story costs them nothing. Want an introduction to someone like this? I figured not. You know the houses people avoid dropping by, even when there's a perfectly sound reason to knock. You already understand why. And set apart from all of them is a different type entirely: the person who knows full well they're lying, feels no guilt about it, and simply finds the truth inconvenient to their aims.