‘What’s the silliest thing you actually got someone to believe?’ – 22 people who were gullible beyond all reason

Does uncritically believing the things people tell you make you wholesomely trusting or a credulous idiot? The answer depends on exactly what you are being told, as it’s usually fairly easy to separate fact from fiction. Or is it?

Reddit user Horror_Vegetable_176 has found it laughably easy to convince people of ridiculous things, and posted this on the AskUK page:

What’s the silliest thing you actually got someone to believe? I once told a friend that when dogs chase their tails, they do it clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere because of the Coriolis Effect. As far as I know, he still thinks that’s true.

Which, to be fair, does sound kind of convincing. But what about the rest of these highly mischievous tales?

1.

‘Not me, but my cousin managed to convince some American tourists that the reason Irish dancers keep their back straight is because the English wouldn’t let them dance, so they had to hide their dancing behind sofas.’
–RiskItForAChocHobnob

2.

‘Told my coworker that IKEA is an acronym for ‘I Know Everything Already’. He went around repeating it like a proud Swede.’
–crawfordrylan3

3.

‘A chef. The reason pine nuts are so expensive is because they have to train squirrels to retrieve them. She believed me until I started laughing.’
–Skinnybet

4.

‘I realise this isn’t an answer to the question asked, but it made me think of the time my friends convinced me that a fairly egotistical mutual friend had been his own best man at his wedding, because he couldn’t think of a better man.’
–Adventurous-Read-765

5.

‘I once convinced my younger cousin that Wi-Fi came from lightbulbs, and that’s why it goes out when the lights are off. She still hesitates to turn off her room light at night.’
–DevGodzila

6.

‘Told wife she had to talk louder on an international call due to the signal loss over distance.’
–scubaian

7.

‘My uncle (a nurse) told me that the clinical term for bellybutton fluff is ‘blarone’, so strictly speaking the fluff between your metatarsals is ‘toe-blarone’. I loved this fact and told lots of people. Over 20 years later he confessed his deception.’
–craig552uk

8.

‘Someone once tried to convince me that a haggis was a wild animal that was hunted in Scotland.’
–Horror_Vegetable_176

9.

‘It took 18 months to train the gorilla to drum on the Cadbury ad.’
–Extension_Friend8191

10.

‘Many years ago my 10-year-old self had a radio I used to listen to air traffic conversations from Manchester Airport. My Gran had come over for tea, and we were the only two people in the room. I began to talk into the radio in response to the conversations, and did my best panicked face.

I told her that Air Traffic Control was down and they were asking amateur radio enthusiasts to keep the planes safe. There was a Boeing 747 coming in, I needed a piss, and could she just keep them circling till I got back? I snuck out and left her going ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ into my radio.’
–Treeandtroll

11.

‘Once told a girl at a party that I worked for Ferrari. I said I was in the wheel design department – basically lots of rich people like to display their cars rather than actually driving them. Sometimes they want to display upstairs, so I was responsible for designing bespoke square wheels so the cars can be driven up the stairs and into their display cases.’
–hhfugrr3

12.

‘That kingfishers explode – caused by the sun on the iridescence in their feathers.’
–betineri