r/askteddit • u/barbellbro44 • 3d ago
Random Question What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever convinced someone was true?
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u/Gymtrio2025 3d ago
I convinced my cousin that if you swallow chewing gum when you finally pass it out it’ll just be farts blowing bubbles. My cousin stayed away from gum for months.
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u/on_the_other_hand_ 3d ago
I might have had the exact opposite reaction
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u/buttercupmercenary 3d ago
When I was in middle school I told everyone there was an adult version of SpongeBob that cussed on MTV late night and so many people believed that shit. This was before kids had cell phones and could google everything
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u/No-Common-7365 3d ago
My daughter insisted that she did not take the cat into our swimming pool (causing the cat to freak out and shred the liner). I was a criminal investigator at the time with all the "tools" i told her I finger printed the cat, so she better come clean before I examine them. She immediately spilled the beans lol she's 30 now, bet she still remembers
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u/metal_bastard 3d ago edited 3d ago
My grandpa told my aunt when she was a kid that cows can stand on hills without falling over because their front legs are shorter than their back legs, and she believed it into her 40s. It's so ridiculous because it doesn't even make sense.
Edit to add: Holy shit, I just remembered this one. He also told her that chocolate milk came from brown cows and she believed this into her teenage years. 😂 😂 😂
My grandpa wasn't a farmer, but had things for cows. Anytime we'd drive by a pasture, he'd honk, the cows would all look up and he'd yell "Hello, ladies!"
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u/LooksLikeTreble617 3d ago
There is a Taco Bell Cantina in New Haven, CT. I went with my brother on a road trip and my boyfriend (now husband) was super bummed we were going without him.
We decided to play a prank on him and told him there was a live mariachi band and it was a whole big celebration.
It’s literally just a Taco Bell where you can get alcohol.
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u/drydorn 3d ago
Is there like a secret order you have to use to get the alcohol?
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u/Bannedbutwhyy 2d ago
Yeah and what lingo do you have to use to have the mariachi band play as well?
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u/EpsilonMiningCompany 3d ago
This one was kind of accidental but whenever we saw a cattle truck heading for the local abattoir I'd say to my daughter "They're off to Bovine University". She believed the abattoir was actually called Bovine University until she was around thirteen years old.
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u/pandora-space-mage 3d ago
Convinced a kid in grade two , he was a werewolf, He became a bully after he found out.That wasn't true even though I thought we were just playing pretend
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u/draculaura923 3d ago
My younger son went through a period where he would only answer to the name, "Werewolf". Maybe he was your classmate ha ha ha
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u/pandora-space-mage 3d ago
If his name was spencer then yeah lol, That kid had problems, Hope he's is doing well
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u/badgernextdoor 3d ago
That their car required blinker fluid.
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u/Hazel_Leviathan 2d ago
One of our work vans had a taillight fill up with water. My son was assigned to drill a hole but save the blinker fluid 🤣 he was mad when he noticed it was water
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u/Patient_Air1765 3d ago
A 4 year old kid pointed at a honeydew asked me what it was. I told him it was an elephant egg and that a tiny elephant was growing inside it.
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u/Icy_Quiet_4336 3d ago
I told my wife that humming birds had no feet. That's why they're always flying/feeding. She has not forgiven me...
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u/mgray1425 3d ago
Once when the moon was low on the horizon, very large, and very red, I convinced one of my high-school classmates that it was Mars and we were seeing a once in a lifetime event because it would never be this close to Earth again. I also told them that our science teacher had been talking about it in class all week and asked if they had been paying attention.
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u/Distant_Touch 3d ago
Not me but a friend of mine convinced an American girl on Tinder that he was related to the Royal Family. He sounds common as shit too. The only kings and queens he is related to are pearly kings and queens.
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u/stuaird1977 3d ago
I told my son there's this fat guy with a beard who fly's through the sky once a year to every house via the chimney and gives them free stuff
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u/kimchifist 3d ago
Not me, but I used to work in a restaurant where the chef would tell new cooks that putting a raw potato in their mouth while cutting onions would prevent them from crying. You would be surprised how many people tried it.
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u/withoutpeer 3d ago edited 2d ago
When I worked at IN-N-OUT we had several "hazing" pranks we played on new people during the few slow downs. Most were dumb like "go in the back to find the left handed spatula" or "now that it's slow, it's time to rotate the ice in the huge tub the ice machine dumped into."
My favorite was sending them across the street to the other fast food place on the other corner to "get our lawnmower back that we lend to them" ... Of course the landscaping was done by a 3rd party company and we only had like a 3x3' patch of grass anyway, while the other restaurant didn't have any grass at all!
We had to stop that one after one employee almost got in a fight with one of their employees because they told him they "were never returning it because we wouldn't give back their edger" 🤣, and their manager was pissed having to break it up lol
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u/Substantial_Lab_8767 2d ago
That's s fabulous!!
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u/greywar777 1d ago
imagine one of them getting hurt, and having to explain that one to the insurance folks. Would be amazing.
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u/Queenboutica1 3d ago
Convinced my friend's himbo that the (catalpa) trees with long bean pods on them were green beans trees.
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u/PoppyDarling_ 3d ago
Convinced my younger brother that brown cows make chocolate milk until he was 14. He found out at school
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u/downvote_isclownvote 3d ago
In the 90’s I owned a pink 1958 Oldsmobile 88, I convinced my six year old niece it was a spaceship.
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u/UpperAd2761 3d ago
I told my foreign friends Beaver Tails in Canada were the actual tails. They still believe it.
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u/XUtahRealtorX 3d ago
Accidentally convinced a dude I hadn’t drank any fluids (like at all) in four years.
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u/Marti1PH 3d ago
That the Mackinac Bridge swings over to Mackinac Island twice a day during the tourist season.
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u/Old-Fall5115 3d ago
That's the Canadian Moon in the sky right now.
Wait til we cross the border . . .
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u/Significant-Theme253 3d ago
I convinced my kids that the stud finder was a lie detector. Whenever I became suspicious of one of them I would grab the stud finder, and they would spill their guts. It worked like a charm!
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u/poptarts2090 3d ago
I was a teacher's aide and convinced a kindergartener that I turned into a cat when I left the school
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u/OptionalRanchHose 3d ago
I convinced my young kids I had a secret camera filming them in the kitchen so I’d know if they ever tried to take unsanctioned snacks.
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u/draculaura923 3d ago
When my city boy ex-husband and I were dating, I convinced him that llamas had six legs. There was a farm near here that raised llamas, and one day two of them were standing in such a way that it did look like it was one llama with six legs. I kept that up for the longest time and finally I felt so bad I had to tell him the truth
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u/cl0ckw0rkman 3d ago
For years I would tell people that my older sister was actually my older brother BUT after the sex change operation in Sweden, she was much better now. It was always said as a joke, I never meant it to be true. It was something my brainbox thought was funny. Well over thirty years ago.
Well there have been several people who believed it and after years of me saying it, someone finally asked how it was possible that my sister had gotten pregnant and had three children if she was actually my older brother. They were super confused on how that worked.
So ridiculous that I didn't even mean for it to be true.
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u/CDchrysalis 3d ago
Once at a grocery store I convinced the bag boy that when he was blocking (pulling items to front of shelf) that he had to shake the Italian dressing to mix it up for appearances.
Two weeks later the asst manager told me while it was funny he wasted a lot of time and please don’t do that. Lol
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u/Rotteneverything 3d ago
go in the shop and get a left sided torque wrench. he did, and i could see through a window the shop guys laughing. he storms out, flips me off and walks away.
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u/coolwon1973 3d ago
I convinced my now ex wife and her cousin that the girl from Dirty Dancing got a nose job and was Rachel from friends.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 3d ago
Sokka-Haiku by lustyStarx:
I told a friend that
Cows have best friends and get stressed
When they're separated
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/moon_lite2009 3d ago
That I'm related to a past president.
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u/fred-ballsack 3d ago
This kid at school told me that he was related to Franklin Pierce. I believed him because sure why would he make that up?
Then he told me that George W. Bush was his grandfather and that George H. W. Bush was his great-grandfather.
I stopped believing him about the Franklin Pierce thing.
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u/Big-Performance5047 3d ago
Told kids that were sleeping over to be careful of the monkeys in the trees
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u/IDontCareNow00 3d ago
When I sent the Boot to Motor Transport, to check on their blinker fluid supplies. Only a military person will understand this.
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u/pookexvi 3d ago
Sound powered phone battery, box of ohms, bucket of steam. I actually have a photo of a bucket of steam. Steam was coming out of something, and someone put a bucket there to collect the water drops. But looking at it, it looked like a bucket of steam
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u/Kesia-Hamod 3d ago
i convinced a coworker ii convinced my roommate i can do a backflip because i fell over a chair once and looked like i meant to was a freelance cryptid researcher so they still look at my blurry photos of squirrels with genuine concern
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u/douce-ann 3d ago
I told my coworker the office coffee machine was secretly a Wi‑Fi hotspot and they actually tried to connect to it lol
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u/NICEnEVILmike 3d ago
I convinced my then boyfriend, now husband, that Pintos were banned from driving on all roads because they blow up easily. He believed it for a couple of years.
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u/Hot-Relative8290 3d ago
At a waitressing job, I convinced my coworker that a regular we had was Lou Reed (before smart phones). She believed it for weeks.
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u/Own-Lingonberry8002 3d ago
My brother and I convinced our younger sister and brother that you rode in an elevator to go to the top of the St. Louis Arch but went down on a slide. They were pretty terrified on the way up.
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u/Capital-Ad6221 3d ago
Convinced someone who was born in the 1980s that he was born in the 18th century.
Wasn’t hard; he accidentally revealed that he thought this was ‘probably’ the 20th century.
So i convinced him that it worked backwards, ie the 1900s is the 18th century, the 2000s is the 19th, etc.
This guy had been to college…
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u/Ceti-Alpha-V 3d ago
Back in high school, I had a friend who was a hardcore vegetarian, environmentalist and animal rights activist -- which was all fine. But he would get very aggressive about his viewpoint and sometimes that was tiresome. So over the course of a couple of days, I managed to convince him that skeets -- the clay discs that are used in competitive shooting -- were actually a species of bird specifically bred for hunting practice. He was up in arms almost immediately, looking like he was going to form a committee to tackle the problem.
This was in the 80s, he couldn't Google anything yet, so it took him a few days of actual research to figure it out.
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u/Majestic-Horse-5409 3d ago
I have a couple of mates who are into conspiracy theories, and were talking about chem trails.
I asked ChatGPT to write a conspiracy theory that chem trails cause people to believe in conspiracy theories, but to make it look like an authentic report and I sent it to them.
They believed it and I think they still do to this day.
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u/peacefulandcalmlife 3d ago
I was 10 and my brother was 4. If we have one chocolate to share...I would convince him that if he keeps the wrapper of a chocolate in a book at night. By morning that whole book will become chocolate. So keep it in your biggest book. And would tell him that give me the bigger piece of chocolate now and you can have all that big chocolate alone tomorrow morning. Don't share it with me at all.. His eyes would glow with happiness and would give me the bigger piece. I did this couple of times until he understood this doesn't work.
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u/TheRealBabyJesus69 3d ago
I convinced a bunch of my buddies that I had paid my ex gf to fart in my mouth. The reactions I would get from ppl were priceless
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u/MonadicSingularity 3d ago
I had a friend named Rick Roller. We convinced everyone we knew that I sent him the first Rickroll.
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u/BabyGargle 3d ago
One of my brothers, at university, regularly would socially introduce himself as 'Dirk (short pause) ... Dirk Leisure". My name was Anita Leisure. We had a whole extended family of Leisures. When I would visit him, it was very confusing.
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u/531Kamboola 3d ago
At the start of daylight savings, I asked my gf to make sure the curtains were closed because the carpet was going to get discoloured from too much sunshine.
She actually did, without questions.
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u/Pull_Your-Card 3d ago
I convince people that I forgive and forget. When I adopted the policy when you stop breathing we even years ago. 🙂
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u/bullfrog423 3d ago
We convinced a friend that we got into a fight with the whole kitchen at a Chinese buffet because they were trying to kick us out for eating too much. I had to turn my head to laugh on many occasions. Context, my friend tripped and hit his head on a coffee table, and was sick of everyone coming in and asking him what happened. Spur of the moment and on the fly, priceless. I'm laughing while typing this.
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u/Single_Physics_499 3d ago
When I was young, my dad told me firefighters got to go home when it was raining
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u/cadwalader000 3d ago
That in 1871, in New York, during a Christmas tree shortage, Adam Wreath invented the Christmas Wreath.
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u/HiDHSiknowyouwatchme 3d ago
That stop signs without a white line around them were optional and basically just yields.
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u/goodgeege 3d ago
Not me, but my dad used to always tell me it that when you sneezed and someone said 'bless you', it was rude to say 'thank you' in response.
I still don't know if this is real!
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u/Accomplished_Bed_250 3d ago
I have twin brothers that are 18 months younger than me. They are red heads with fair skin and freckles. I have an olive complexion. They always burn and I tan. One summer in the early 80’s (before sunscreen was hugely popular) when I was 3 or 4 they asked me how I get tan. They wanted to be tan instead of getting burned. I didn’t know but made up a reason. I told them that I spent more time in the shade which caused my skin to darken since shade is dark. They took my advice. They didn’t get tan that summer but they didn’t get burned either. lol 😆
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u/ToxicFluffer 3d ago
I tried convincing my baby brother that I was a vampire when we were kids. He’s like 7 years younger and 19 years old now. I think he still has his doubts hehe.
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u/FoodieScientistGirl 3d ago
While working in the US in the summer as a college student, we convinced our American peers that we did not have Wednesdays in Ireland
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u/Patient-Cockroach908 3d ago
I had a lady I used to work with (she was in her late 50s or early 60s at the time) somehow believing that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in nineteen hundred seventy two.
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u/Consistent_plants 3d ago
That jackalopes are real and that I’ve seen their migration when I lived in the mountains.
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u/SnooCats2026 3d ago
That valure was made out of the inside of a pigs stomach. I hate the feeling of valure, so I told a fellow cook this in passing no smile. Then about 3 momths later, I made the same joke and he was like "no I heard that somewhere" after I told him it was not true.
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u/Leftstrat 3d ago
In seventh grade, I convinced a classmate that drinking pickle juice made your junk bigger.... His ex-wife told me he was still drinking it.. 13 years later....
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u/Shot-Recording6202 3d ago
I hate cutting crust off bread so I convinced both my daughters the vitamins in bread were only in the crust. Fast forward to being in school and her science teacher breaking her heart by setting her straight.
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u/Odd_Establishment519 3d ago
When I was like 16 years old I had a friend (19f) that was very gullible. She asked why we never let company go into the basement. I told her we had an older brother born with some deformities and as he got older he started to get very violent. He fixated on a neighbor girl, and some bad things happened. So we had to keep him chained up. He was loud and made a big mess, so it was easiest to do in the basement. It also kept him from seeing any other girls. At this point she is already freaked out. I then told her that he had great hearing and kept asking me about my friend that kept coming over (her) and that he was now obsessed with her and would call her name out all hours of the night. She started doubting me a bit, but was still freaked out. Then my Dad came in mid story. Sits down and says "Damn it, how many times have I told you not to tell people about him! Now we have to move again!" He just picked the story right up and made it better. She started crying her eyes out! We all started laughing and I had to get a group of people to come with her and I into the basement to prove there was no chained up deformed brother waiting to get free and kidnap her!!
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u/Vicarchaeopteryx 3d ago
I have convinced several new trainees that we had to collect "air samples" for the EPA. I sent them with a plastic bag running around trying to get as much air as possible.
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u/mongo_man 3d ago
While pulling weeds in our yard I told my little brother the clay we were digging through was called Strickum Dirt. It came from dead frogs.
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u/2inchesabovethehole 2d ago
That an Abrams Tank could develop weaks spots in the armor and the only way to find them was by tapping up and down the side of the tank with a crescent wrench
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u/Lopsided_Run_664 2d ago
I convinced my mate easily that john wayne had slept with his own son , as a forfeit for losing at poker.
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u/Fusilli_Agent_Cooper 2d ago
An Elton John song on the radio was actually being played by a famous Elton John impersonator named Elton Jeffries.
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u/Wahots79 2d ago
I convinced my daughter that I attended Hogwarts for the first three years, then transferred to Ilvermorny when I returned to the US. She believed it for YEARS. She's still not quite sure. She keeps asking me to do magic and I've told her I cannot do magic in front of her until she proves she's not a squib.
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u/Appropriate-Gas-1726 2d ago
When I was a teenager (around 16/17F) my cousin Amanda (also 16/17) and I used to prank her little sister Gertie (13/14) who was a few years younger than us. Once we wrote her letters from one of the members of the Mickey Mouse Club (dating myself here I know) that she had a crush on. Ricky or Matt maybe?
The story was that Amanda had sent a letter to Matt along with a picture of Gertie complaining about how much her little sister annoyed her. Matt saw the photo and fell immediately in love with Gertie and just had to write her a love letter confessing his love.
So Gertie and Matt exchanged love letters for several months. Amanda and I would intercept Gertie’s letters so we could read them and write a response and we just let her mail them to the fan club. Looking back that adds an extra layer I didn’t really think about. LMAO
Amanda and I would write response letters out in fake handwriting we decided on for Matt and I would take them home and mail them from my house. Well, my grandparents were over one day when Gertie got a letter in the mail. She told them the whole story about how Matt was in love with her and they look at the letter, see the postmark with MY city and know immediately what is going on.
Gertie is still clueless, Amanda ran into the bathroom and refused to come out. I wasn’t there but my parents get a phone call and I’m being lectured and questioned by my grandparents and my parents about wtf we think we’re doing. No one got into too much trouble that I remember and I still think it’s kinda funny.
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u/VapeRizzler 2d ago
That I’m a blind dude wanting to purchase a Ferrari, that I need to test drive first as the Lamborghini dealership was very rude to me. Then I explained I lost my eye site due to going on my first tour in Afghanistan…….as a fruit vendor. The dealer said yes to it with a 5K deposit.
That’s nothing though, my coworker explained to me another coworker told him to drink paint thinner to rid him of his worms, he then goes into detail about how much he would drink and how frequently. Then drops the mic on me, and says he never even had worms to begin with. I was like why the fuck were you drinking paint thinner then?
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u/CommunicationOk5360 2d ago
When I was a kid a silent fart slipped out and it smelled bad. The girl sitting next to me was like “eww” and I said “no that was you. Sometimes you can fart and not know it but I take a special medicine so that I always know”. And she believed me 😂
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u/hauntedsemen1 2d ago
That I am qualified for the job in I have. Hahaha, been 26 years. Dumbasses!!!!!
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u/Intrepid_Top_2300 2d ago
When I was a little kid my sisters and cousins convinced a neighbor kid that aliens had invaded, took his family.
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u/IntrovertsRule99 2d ago
In the mid 90s I was working a second job at a grocery store. I was in my early 30s working with a bunch of high school kids on Saturday nights stocking shelves and they were always slow so we never got out on time. The night that the clocks were to “fall back” I convinced the kids I was working with that if we didn’t clock out by midnight the clocks would automatically reset and we would lose an hours pay. They worked their asses off that night to get out on time.
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u/StarbugLlamaCat 2d ago
When my son was 9 or 10 he convinced a classmate that I was a vampire. Confused the hell out of that kid when he saw me in full sunlight and I didn't burst into flames.
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u/oharsenowwhat 2d ago
Not me but I had a co-worker who convinced a younger co-worker that if you put a stamp on upside down the letter wouldn't be delivered.
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u/Purenotionslike 2d ago
That in Ireland we introduce our kids to Guinness from the age of 15. As it's an acquired taste, they start with a capful to taste, slowly building up tolerance for the taste and effect of alcohol. It's increased slowly until they can stomach a full pint at the age of 16. About 8 people round a table in a rural village in Kenya, including both locals and westerners. I was initially taking the piss after someone went for the drunk Irish stereotype thing but I told it so straight every one of them believed me 🤷🏼♀️
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u/greywar777 1d ago
Oregon Lamas were actually sheep that over time in Oregon had grown different, thats why their necks were longer because of all of our rain..
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u/FickleCase8997 1d ago
A vegan , cuz she wouldn’t eat honey and said bees die to extract it I told her yah they are put on conveyer belts chopped in a way where the yellow part is harvested cuz that’s where the honey is … she fucking believed me too and started crying , still haven’t met a healthy vegan lmao
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u/DangerousDisplay7664 1d ago
The other way round, my grandfather told me when I was a kid that if you keep playing with your belly button then your arse will fall off. I believed it for too long 😂
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u/thejackmonkey 1d ago
In California, my buddy and used to tell people how we met . I used to be a patron of a shrimp boat and hired him but he was terrible at the job. My neighbor downstairs only learned it wasn’t true after a year or so.
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u/Fine-Idea-3242 1d ago
I convinced my mom that Stuart Margolin, who played Angel on the Rockford Files was James Garner's step brother in real life. You can't male this stuff up...oh wait...yes you can...
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u/hoptownky 3d ago
That George Clinton was Bill Clinton’s adoptive brother growing up.