Fake dream reports

[JoannaB]

This thread is inspired by a seed of doubt that I know was planted by my mother: when I told her about the dream competition on DV, her reaction was "but that does not make any sense to have such a competition because anyone could claim anything, and there is no way to prove that anyone is telling the truth. And the winner could be just someone who is most daring in tall tales." Now, I do not actually believe that any of the participants in that competition are just spinning tall tales, and the reason I do not believe that is because I am a generally truthful person, and I prefer to go through life believing that others tell me the truth, even though of course I know that people do lie, and I may be naive in assuming that most people on here tell the truth when they report a dream, but I think part of being a good person is to believe others unless one has good reason not to believe them. If one is wrong, then one gets duped. But that is much preferable to assuming that others are lying, and then being wrong, in which case one has wronged someone else, which is bad. Of course, such dream competitions rely on the honors system of everyone truthfully reporting. And ultimately each of us can only control our own truthfulness and we are really competing with ourselves, and doing the best we can. And it is all just for fun. However, once the seed of doubt is planted ... And no, I did not then start suspecting any member of the competition I am a part of, but instead one of the other dreams I saw posted to DV today out of some reason some part of me - call it female intuition or call it mother-induced doubt or call it paranoia - but for whatever reason one dream I saw on DV today made me doubt that it was real. Of course, it was completely irrational because dreams are weird and one can dream anything, and why would I doubt that particular dream's veracity and not another? Anyway, I of course did not comment on that dream and never will, and the person who posted that dream will never find out that that was the dream I doubted. Have you ever doubted the veracity of any dream posted on DV? Have you ever posted a dream that was a tall tale or know that someone has? Any other thoughts on this subject?

[Darkmatters]

I trust the people who share their lives with the community - you know posting pictures and talking about their lives - the people who have been here for a long time and have never given any reason to doubt them. Even they might exaggerate occasionally, who knows, but I doubt any of them would outright lie, or if they do they probably get caught it it time and again, and that makes it harder to keep lying. I'm less trusting with people who appear out of nowhere and make some weird suspicious post filled with bizarre claims, and then they only stick around for a little while before disappearing. If you're not sure about somebody, ask them some questions about themselves or their lives - liars generally don't want to share any facts (though some will just make stuff up). Then there are the ones that it's hard to know what to make of - for instance the people who say they've had dreams that lasted years. Whoah - really??!! Ok, maybe some people do dream like that, I guess those of us who have never experienced it will just have a hard time accepting or understanding it. But it might be true - who knows? ** Edit Guess I should say - sometimes people who have been around a long time and share with the community might still be liars or trollish - but in those cases you can tell by their personality and posting record.

[FriendlyFace]

I've seen some bullshitters around here but usually they get called out or people just don't bother with them. I think it's because they are dissatisfied with their lives and the internet provides a perfect platform for making stuff up to try and impress people. There's no body language to give you away, and anonymity means you can say pretty much whatever you want and even if people catch on there's no embarrassment.

[JoannaB]

I guess for me part of why this issue is so important is because I experienced a close family member who had been lying for years (issue of infidelity and stories made up to cover up) and while I was not the one being betrayed I felt betrayed when I found out, and even after that I tended to assume that this person tells the truth (had to, this is a close family member) but then I would start catching evidence of habitual lying about things where really there would not have been any harm in telling the truth but this person just cannot help it any more, and it breaks my heart. That's why in part I am even more truthful than I otherwise would have been because I learned the hard way about lies. And yes, a person can tell lies for years and others do not catch on because they trust this person. Of course, the reason why in the example above it matters so deeply is the family relationship. A person on the Internet spinning tall tales does not matter as much. And I would put trolls in a separate category out of some reason. On the other hand even on the Internet we form friendships. Yes, it is anonymous, but yes, it matters. And we can hurt oneanother here as well. The truthfulness of regulars matters more because there we have more of a relationship there, whereas really why would I care deeply whether someone who posted here a couple of times and then left was telling the truth. But if I were to find out somehow that someone I got to know (or thought I had) was a fake, I would mind it much more.

[Sivason]

The competitions are often plauged by complete fakers. Anyone can join, and say they had a dream. I have been in the comp 3 or 4 times. I worked at it to the best of my ability and had lots of cool LDs. I got to mix up all the cool goals. I scored great. However, there is allways someone willing to lie and make up however many points it takes to win. Have fun anyways. There is no real prize, it is just a tool to motivate students, so try to get a kick out of it.

[Original Poster]

The competition is for yourself, and your own advancement. One does not truly win if they made it up because they gained nothing from it. Competition can often spark the drive necessary for certain people to advance farther than otherwise. It's important to keep in mind that not everyone you are competing with is faking it, so you're still competing with a base of authentic participants. I believe if there are fakers, they are the exception.

[JoannaB]

The competition is for yourself, and your own advancement. One does not truly win if they made it up because they gained nothing from it. Competition can often spark the drive necessary for certain people to advance farther than otherwise. It's important to keep in mind that not everyone you are competing with is faking it, so you're still competing with a base of authentic participants. I believe if there are fakers, they are the exception. That's what I believe too. Notice that my doubting veracity was not in anyone in the competition. And yes, I completely agree that in any competition like that one is really competing against oneself, and anyone who were to not be truthful would not really be a winner but only they would know that. But it is just for fun so it does not really matter who wins, except that of course it does since we are human and competitive. however, since I am in absolutely no danger thus far of winning that competition and am just trying my best to stay afloat with a score that I would hopefully consider good enough ultimately - my current one is not, but that's an issue between me and me. Anyway this thread while inspired by my mom's comment about the competition is not really about the competition but about veracity on DV and doubt about veracity. While my mom's comment was about the competition, but her comment caused me to doubt the veracity of some random dream of some random person. Oh how I wish that dream had been one of those that took years or a really impressive lucid because then my doubt would have been at least somewhat rational, but this was a regular dream and nothing in either the dream or the posting would give me any rational reason to doubt its veracity. In fact my rational part of myself thinks I am an idiot for doubting the veracity of that dream, but it was not rational just a weird gut reaction. And for the record I am reprimanding myself for having that gut reaction. I would rather assume that everyone is telling the truth unless I have any rational reason to doubt it.

[Highlander]

Although I have never really tried one of the competitions, TOTM, etc. I feel that if you were to 'fake it' then in the end you are just cheating yourself. I try to recall dream memories down on paper before they cloud over and get convoluted, to the point where my (rational) waking mind might try and 'interpret' things, but that is not the same thing as the OP asks as such. I do however feel a bit uneasy about 'adding' a really short 'weak' LD on my visible count (which I suppose could be seen as some as a form of competition, I dunno?) I generally leave them off, unless there is a certain unique 'quality' to it which I usually try to explain in the DJ notes at the time. TL;DR - You only end up cheating on yourself.

[Zoth]

JoannaB, seriously, how can you not believe I had that dream fragment?! Joking ofc xD Have you ever doubted the veracity of any dream posted on DV? Have you ever posted a dream that was a tall tale or know that someone has? Any other thoughts on this subject? I don't bother to doubt. Lucid dreaming is about the personal experience, so I could care less if something invented the best lucid dream ever. Besides, the person that does it seems to make it to build an image towards the forum, and that's such extremely....fine by me. So some people make up these tales, it's almost the same as bragging yourself: maybe you convince loads of people, but in the end, your "skill" is the same. And all that is still within your sphere of existence, completely unrelated to me. To add to that, even if I cared, I could never prove it, so it seems to me a complete waste of time. It's exactly like a person cheating on a test: her success, justified or not, does not hinder at all my success.

[Sivason]

I almost never doubt other members dreams. A few times I have wondered, mostly because the dream was too much like an episode of anime. Other than a dream being too sequential and non-dreamlike, I just accept what anyone posts. If you looked at my DJ some of the items may appear to fantastic, or I may appear just too crazy powerful to be believed. However, I know my dreams really happened, so I must assume anyone else could have wonderful fantastic dreams.

[SpreadLearner0]

One reason I have not made a dream journal on this site is that it would literally not make sense to any one but me if I tried to type out my dreams as they appear in my real life journal. It's kind of a short-hand way to jog my memories of how the dreams felt, with a rough outline of sensory inputs that stood out to me during the dream. One example of what I mean is that there are sometimes latent background stories that my dream self has prior knowledge of during the dream, even if nothing in the dream has explicitly given the information. This happened in a dream I had two nights ago in which I was a character that wasn't myself, who had memories of familial relationships and past events which effect what was happening in the dream but are otherwise entirely passive aspects of the dream experience. for instance, at one point another DC was dressing up as my fictional uncle 'Dan Cormish', and I knew by the way he was holding a glass of wine that that's the person he was imitating. Either way I accept that there is probably some level of supplemental information given about dreams by posters like me who aren't really getting lucid, but that's simply because the waking mind ultimately has to organize an experience that the sleeping mind generated.

[PennyRoyal]

I try to use it more as a self motivator than an actual competition. Then again I'm naturally skeptical of people on the internet. My goal this time around is really just to beat my score from the last competition. Have fun with it, but try not to take it too seriously.

[Alric]

I pretty much believe everyone, because there isn't any real reason to lie. Maybe some might lie for attention but everyone dreams so it isn't like you get that much attention. So if they are that desperate for a little approval, well I am happy to make their life seem a little more bearable. For the most part though, there isn't anything to gain. The only people who I might doubt are people who say they don't put any effort in and have 30 lucid dreams a month. That seems pretty unlikely to me, though I know everyone is different so it is possible. On a related note, I suspect that a lot of dreams change slightly when people tell them to others. Memories of dreams are kind of iffy to start with, plus we tend to insert things into dreams after we wake up in order to have them make more sense, and fill in holes in the dream and we do that subconsciously. Your brain even fills in holes while you are dreaming, and you can have memories inside the dream that are not real memories. So dreams can be a real mess, and if it changes some between the time you dream it and the time a person writes out what happened, I think that is pretty normal and nothing to worry about.

[Original Poster]

I lie so I can have an orange name.

[JoannaB]

i lie so i can have an orange name. lol

[Sibyline]

I'm not sure. I suppose some dreams could be embellished, and some people are just better writers than others, but now and then I have noticed journal entries that were so incredibly accomplished, what with the lightning reflexes, multitude of super powers used with 100% success rate, the snappy comebacks and so forth. But this could be someone who has been working on dream control for a decade. I really enjoy reading messy, weird dreams where not everything pans out, though. They are somehow more entertaining to me. Completely opposite to this issue, I have to mention that I recall OpheliaBlue recounting her egg-laying dream, and she said a really funny line to a DC, but asterisked it saying that she only wished she had thought of saying that. I found that so honest and endearing.

[Abra]

I don't doubt people until they admit they are lying. When I started having a lucid a week while living at my parents', I would tell my sister about the dreams, how they'd have plots and characters and places that continued from dream to dream. I taught her how I did it. Weeks later, she also reported recurring plots and characters. I was ecstatic, and believed her. Eventually she told me she was just making things up to fit in, to be closer to me. I suspect some members that lie about their dreams do it for similar social reasons. Dreaming is a skill, and people pick up lucidity and control at different rates. I still fuck up dream control on a regular basis. But the point is, I wasn't mad at my sister for lying, or even disappointed. She was only 10. I was actually happy, that she was using her imagination to world-build and dialogue-construct, which I pretty much saw as the pinnacles of imaginative thinking. And besides, what's the consequential difference between imagining an entire dream and having perfect dream control where you simply have to imagine what you want to dream? Sure, the latter requires more skill, but the imagination itself is what gives the story its soul.

[JoannaB]

Good point, Abra. My seven year old son reports having lucid dreams, and it has occurred to me that it is possible that he may be making them up to feel closer to me - it is possible. I hope that is not the case because I would prefer that he is telling me the truth in this. However, I would not be as disappointed with him as I was when I found out that he lied about something that he did to get even with his brother for something his younger brother did by mistake. So i admit that with lying the reason why one is doing does matter, and I am probably too extreme in my aversion to even "little white lies," due to my family history. And you are right that the reasons to lie about one's dreams are generally harmless, and waking imagination is great too - however, then one should admit that it is waking imagination, but I agree that this type of lying does not rank high in terms of how bad such lies are compared to for example lying on a resume or cheating on a spouse and lying about that.

[Original Poster]

I don't doubt people until they admit they are lying. When I started having a lucid a week while living at my parents', I would tell my sister about the dreams, how they'd have plots and characters and places that continued from dream to dream. I taught her how I did it. Weeks later, she also reported recurring plots and characters. I was ecstatic, and believed her. Eventually she told me she was just making things up to fit in, to be closer to me. I suspect some members that lie about their dreams do it for similar social reasons. Dreaming is a skill, and people pick up lucidity and control at different rates. I still fuck up dream control on a regular basis. But the point is, I wasn't mad at my sister for lying, or even disappointed. She was only 10. I was actually happy, that she was using her imagination to world-build and dialogue-construct, which I pretty much saw as the pinnacles of imaginative thinking. And besides, what's the consequential difference between imagining an entire dream and having perfect dream control where you simply have to imagine what you want to dream? Sure, the latter requires more skill, but the imagination itself is what gives the story its soul. It's so ridiculously difficult to retain both lucidity and control that I have trouble believing anyone who at least doesn't mention a slip or two. I've been lucid dreaming since like a year before I even registered on this site and I still slip up all the damned time.

[dutchraptor]

I don't doubt people until they admit they are lying. When I started having a lucid a week while living at my parents', I would tell my sister about the dreams, how they'd have plots and characters and places that continued from dream to dream. I taught her how I did it. Weeks later, she also reported recurring plots and characters. I was ecstatic, and believed her. Eventually she told me she was just making things up to fit in, to be closer to me. I suspect some members that lie about their dreams do it for similar social reasons. Dreaming is a skill, and people pick up lucidity and control at different rates. I still fuck up dream control on a regular basis. But the point is, I wasn't mad at my sister for lying, or even disappointed. She was only 10. I was actually happy, that she was using her imagination to world-build and dialogue-construct, which I pretty much saw as the pinnacles of imaginative thinking. And besides, what's the consequential difference between imagining an entire dream and having perfect dream control where you simply have to imagine what you want to dream? Sure, the latter requires more skill, but the imagination itself is what gives the story its soul. Yup I think my best friend makes up a lot of his dreams he tells me. I could waste my time trying to figure out if he really does but I'm honestly just happy that he takes the time to be interested in something that I'm passionate about. It's so ridiculously difficult to retain both lucidity and control that I have trouble believing anyone who at least doesn't mention a slip or two. I've been lucid dreaming since like a year before I even registered on this site and I still slip up all the damned time. Well it is possible to get really good, I go through phases, which usually reflect how active I am here on DV. It's interesting that there really is no way of knowing because some people genuinely become masters within a few months, a guy I met one day said he got into it when he was 50 and he got the hang of it straight away. It is true though that it's really easy to muck things up, though with sufficient confidence and drive it is possible to get a string of flawless lucids.

[SnowyCat]

It's so ridiculously difficult to retain both lucidity and control that I have trouble believing anyone who at least doesn't mention a slip or two. I've been lucid dreaming since like a year before I even registered on this site and I still slip up all the damned time. I think that it's important to recognize that it can be hard to communicate "slips" in dream control and lucidity through posts and DJ entries, as those are usually (at least for me) the foggiest and most confusion-inducing parts of a dream, and including them can take away from the larger image you're trying to paint through sharing your dream with others. For example, the few dreams I have in my dream journal appear to be fantastically stable and ridiculously smooth, but really I just leave out the minor "kinks" in order to make the post more readable. If I were to day something like, "I sat in the snow for a while before trying to mess around with elemental powers" or something, it would be much clearer than "I sat in the snow for a while, when suddenly I lost lucidity and began running away from a multi-legged beast. Upon escaping from the beast, I regained lucidity and tried to mess around with elemental powers". But I guess every individual will have a different style of storytelling, when it comes to those kinds of things. TL;DR I think it's important to give people the benefit of the doubt when judging the truthfulness of their dreams through written stories.

[Original Poster]

I suppose that's true, my dream journals are all full of details that don't seem to follow proper context. They're also often full of knowledge I have in the dream, and I'm not sure if I should explain this as activity that took place in the dream or just strange beliefs I had at the time. I typically just have severely bizarre and fascinating dreams, and I suppose I should understand that everyone dreams a little differently. Hell, I do actually know one person who has had naturally impeccable lucidity for as far back as they can remember.

[SpaceCowboyDave]

I like to think that people have so little to gain by lying online (especially in this instance) that it would be relatively uncommon.

[Sibyline]

Hm, I have changed my opinion. There is definitely some (fan)fiction disguised as dreams on this site. It's not a bad idea, but it would be nice to have a special segment for it, e.g. "Dream-inspired fiction". That would be a great place for aspiring writers to practice their art, while keeping the DJ area for its intended purpose.

[Woodstock]

What's the point of lying about a dream? To try to impress complete strangers who you only know on the internet?