How can you tell someone is telling the truth about their lucid dreams?

Hello guys! I didn't know where else to post this. Could you move it to the most appropriate place if this is in the wrong subject? thanks!

Now, I am not saying by any means that the majority of people on the forum are liars. However, how can you tell that someone is telling the truth about their experiences? Or at least wildly over exaggerated their experiences? By how long this forum has been up I bet there has been some members in some point of time that did this.

This is such an easy subject where you can lie through your teeth and no one can prove you otherwise. You can say you have the most extreme lucid experiences and have wonderful in depth conversations with dream characters or entities in your dreams. You can write in your dream journal everyday even if you don't remember a thing about your dream; who is going to say you're wrong? This is simply a subject where you have to trust total and complete strangers are telling the truth.

Someone could come on today and decide "I am going to be the best lucid dreamer and dream controller in town." and can easily do it. They could gain quiet a following with people asking "How can you do it? What is your secret? without question. Then they might grow a cultist like group but only with dreams. Cultist like behavior doesn't have to involve religion at all.

Now, what do you personally think about this cloud of uncertainty hanging around this subject? I believe it really makes you think twice when you read about these sort of things. Not only on here, but it applies to books as well.

People can lie about all sorts of things online.
I can't imagine lying about lucid dreaming being as rewarding as actually lucid dreaming.

I just don't see the point in lying about having lucid dreams, at all. What would someone gain out of lying about their lucid ability? A few people envious? And how would that benefit the liar, they wouldn't even know about it. Even if some people would be like "wow, amazing dream, you're so good at LDing, etc", the liar would obviously know that is not true, and at least deep down feel bad about it. It makes no sense to lie about LDing, and you should have better things to concern yourself with, such as your own lucid ability, instead of worrying about the honesty of strangers on the internet about their LDs, just my two cents..

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the liar would obviously know that is not true, and at least deep down feel bad about it.

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That's hoping they would feel bad about it. They can gain a lot of things from lying about that sort of thing for example; Followers, Recognition, Great Reputation, ect. Some people might do it just for fun.

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They could gain quiet a following with people asking "How can you do it? What is your secret? without question.

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I am concerned about them because it effects the community we love directly. Plus, I believe its better to face the reality of it then pretend its not there.

My thought is that mostly the people who really spend a lot of time in this place and invest themselves in it aren't going to lie - unless they're compulsive liars or something and can't help it. I think it would mostly just be people who post occasionally or for a little while and then disappear. After you get to know somebody fairly well and talk to them regularly you can tell if they're not being honest by the way they respond to things or the way they present themselves. As for people who only post a few times - especially if they have fantastic stories and don't seem to want to answer questions about it, I don't give them much credence. People have to earn trust, and you don't do that in a few posts.

It is quite possible though that some compulsive liars or narcissists or something similar might have made this place their online home. I suppose there would be an added bonus since as you say dreams are impossible to prove or disprove - you just have to take somebody's word for it. And people do have a tendency to compartmentalize their weirder beliefs and practices away from the normal stuff, so a person could well present themselves as quite friendly and honest in here while making up incredibly blatant lies about their dreams. I suppose there's no way to know really..

Lol sorry, I was no help at all, was I? :rolllaugh:

I believe you are right Darkmatters. I don't think there is anything to worry about anymore really. I should work on my own lucid dreams.

I haven't had a lucid dream in nearly a year.

Every now and then I wonder about some questionable post here and there, but in general what people experience and relate resonates with my own experiences...what they describe is similar to what I experience, so most on this forum are very credible. But as you raise the point...how can you prove what only you experience and others cannot share in? That is the main frustration I have with lucid dreaming... I cannot REALLY share it. So I seek out kindred hearts here on the forums. To a true skeptic, all you can say is that it is unreasonable that there is this conspiracy involving thousands of liars worldwide...the scientific evidence notwithstanding.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

My thought is that mostly the people who really spend a lot of time in this place and invest themselves in it aren't going to lie - unless they're compulsive liars or something and can't help it. I think it would mostly just be people who post occasionally or for a little while and then disappear. After you get to know somebody fairly well and talk to them regularly you can tell if they're not being honest by the way they respond to things or the way they present themselves. As for people who only post a few times - especially if they have fantastic stories and don't seem to want to answer questions about it, I don't give them much credence. People have to earn trust, and you don't do that in a few posts.

It is quite possible though that some compulsive liars or narcissists or something similar might have made this place their online home. I suppose there would be an added bonus since as you say dreams are impossible to prove or disprove - you just have to take somebody's word for it. And people do have a tendency to compartmentalize their weirder beliefs and practices away from the normal stuff, so a person could well present themselves as quite friendly and honest in here while making up incredibly blatant lies about their dreams. I suppose there's no way to know really..

Lol sorry, I was no help at all, was I? :rolllaugh:

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I agree with this.

You can usually tell by how willing people are to answer questions about the events.

Also, I am confused on what you mean by post occasionally then leave.

Do you mean like post 6 times in total then jet? Or people who don't frequent the site a lot? I know that I have been very iffy in activity over the past 6 months, but I don't lie about my lucids :P

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Originally Posted by pepsibluefan

They could gain quiet a following with people asking "How can you do it? What is your secret? without question. Then they might grow a cultist like group but only with dreams. Cultist like behavior doesn't have to involve religion at all.

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How would they gain a following if what they were saying didn't work.

Suppose some total faker came in and said forget about eye masks, forget about earplugs, its all about wearing a paper clamp on your nose that's what makes you super lucid and totally in control. Then a hundred people read it and 20 of them tried it, and it worked for 19 of them, would they really care that some liar made it up? Even if it was 100% placebo effect they would be glad they read it if it worked even a few times.

Suppose instead the liar said its all about holding your head under a faucet for 20 min switching between hot and cold running water then sleep in a pretzel position. And 20 people tried that and it didn't work at all. How then would they gain this cult following?

There are 2 basic problems underlying your issue.

1) What ever works works
2) Anything is possible in a dream (if you can dream it, YOU CAN DREAM IT!)

Sure next thing you know your riding on a bus full of people with clamps on their nose saying (in a very nasal voice), if I wear this thing all the time I'll have to breath thru my mouth all day, but when I'm asleep and realize I can breath thru my nose even if I do a nose pinch (ironic) then I know I'll be dreaming. :cheeky: But So What!!!

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Originally Posted by SinisterDezz

I am confused on what you mean by post occasionally then leave.

Do you mean like post 6 times in total then jet? Or people who don't frequent the site a lot? I know that I have been very iffy in activity over the past 6 months, but I don't lie about my lucids :P

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Right on both counts - I just suspect liars don't want to stick around and face the music - if they disappear for a good long while then come back, they might figure people have forgotten. That's not to say everybody who posts sporadically is a liar!!

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Right on both counts - I just suspect liars don't want to stick around and face the music - if they disappear for a good long while then come back, they might figure people have forgotten. That's not to say everybody who posts sporadically is a liar!!

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:(

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Originally Posted by pepsibluefan

That's hoping they would feel bad about it. They can gain a lot of things from lying about that sort of thing for example; Followers, Recognition, Great Reputation, ect. Some people might do it just for fun.

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1. Normal people would not feel satisfied with being praised for something they did not do.
2. As someone else said, they would not get "followers", since they would not talk in depth about their fake experiences due to lack of actual information/experience
3. If someone seriously gets a kick out of getting on an internet forum and writing paragraphs of amazing fake experiences to strangers just to get some comments like "that's cool" and "awesome".. then that's a pretty darn sad thing and that person has worse problems than lying about lucid dreams online.

It's not something I worry about. Very few people come on with near-unbelievable very detailed claims. There are trolls who come on from time to time claiming vaguely to be a natural and "totally understanding lucid dreaming" but it's usually accompanied by terrible spelling, grammar, and being very incoherent and generally obviously "not right in the head." For all the others, it's simply a matter of having a shared common experience that resonates so closely to one's own.

It's like cheating at online chess, ultimately the only person you're cheating is yourself.

Having personally (too infrequently in my mind) had the amazing experiences available in long, vivid non-lucids and lucids both, I know anything is possible in dreams. And that pretty much everybody here who has a lot of lucid experience and frequent LDs also eventually go through dry spells like us mere mortals.

It seems extremely pointless to lie about one's lucid dreaming frequency, especially on the Internet, where you are even anonymous most of the time.

Personally I would just feel bad about myself if I cranked up my LD Count to like 1,000 or something - I would know that this number wasn't true, and I would feel like a fake.

It's like with darts and my forum there, everybody can stick three darts in the treble 20, make a picture and go on the net posting ecstatic smileys and proclaim they threw a 180. I don't think anybody does, it's not satisfying and gratifying, compliments would feel completely void, so you know they are nothing about you and how you throw, so they won't motivate you.

While I was there, a new thing came up, WDA, where you can direct a camera at your board and play over the internet. Loads fun, I did that myself a lot, when it got fancy. But you could see how some people, who were very vocal bragging about how good they are, suspiciously avoiding to sign up there and show off what they actually can do. Several such people seemed suddenly swallowed up by the earth and their bragging with them.

It's natural for people to exaggerate and embellish their stories, though, sometimes in full feeling of honesty, I'm sure about this, because memory is so malleable in general. And sometimes knowingly, feeling a bit bad about it, I guess, but not completely faking it.
I try hard not to exaggerate, but what I noticed, was mentioning an experience of mine on here, after having it journalled quite a while before that, and upon revisiting my DJ on it, having a vague suspicion in that respect, I found out, I wasn't giving a correct account of it from memory.

I can't see people on here any more who keep claiming to be extreme-dreamers, battling evil spirits every night with their shared dreaming buddies, that seems to be a thing of the past. Once you've given yourself a certain image, you might feel enticed to keep it up and running, even while lacking the substance. But yeah - what I came across in terms of contemporary DJ reading, including in the competitions I took part, I take it on people's word, and didn't yet specifically suspect blatant lies there, like in order to get points. It seemed all really quite fair and square.

This:

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

It's like cheating at online chess, ultimately the only person you're cheating is yourself.

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Since in the end we're all in this for ourselves (in a good way, of course, with gaining greater LD'ing skills & frequency our ultimate goal, and not impressing others, in most cases), I don't think blindly showing off (aka, making shit up) for the sake of trolling or impressing really goes very far here.

I think there may be a bigger problem with the memory-based self-delusion Steph noted above: people are telling themselves things that might not quite coincide with what actually happened, either by innocently embellishing their memories of dream events or, also innocently, lending the most interesting conclusions to the nature of their dreams without even considering what probably did happen (i.e., me and my best friend shared a dream because both our dreams had the same things in them, rather than considering that, as best friends, their lives probably contain a lot of things that might come up in a dream coincidentally). That sort of lying is a bit more of a problem for me, because it feeds into the general narrative of the forums until it becomes understood that lots of people, say, frequently have shared dreams, or that SP matters, or that "naturals" are common (and please guys, I'm just making a point, not offering an argument about the nature of these things). And then the problem spirals upwards, as people start feeling left out because they are not having shared dreams or SP and start (again innocently and perhaps unconsciously) adding stuff to their experiences, to their memories, to both better "fit in" with the forum standards and also to convince themselves that they are making progress. And, of course, if any noise is made about this problem of compounding delusion (especially in the SP and "was I actually lucid?" departments, in my case), they generally make very little headway.

This I think might speak to the OP, in that the question of whether we need to have a "lie detector" app in our heads when reading posts, because these accidental embellishments might have slipped so deeply into the norm that they have led many (especially new or potential DV members) to read every post with a cynical eyebrow slightly raised.

On a nicer note, it was a pleasure reading the posts on this thread, and being reminded both that there are still many honest people out there and that they still hold faith that the general theme is "be honest," rather than "be impressive"... that goes a long way toward making everything I just said wrong, and I would like that very much.

I didn't read the replies to your post OP, but I can say this.

There could and probably have been liars, and they probably did gain quite a following.
You have to be careful who you trust. Take everything with a grain of salt and don't idolize just one person.

I don't think twice about "these sorts of things" as you put it because I have had personal experience with it. Personally I don't have the time to concern my self with whether or not you believe me or not, I'm just looking for individuals who do believe it and work from there. That's how most people think I think, we're all here to learn how to induce, lengthen and master this art.

People are people, you just gotta be careful is all.

I see no reason to lie about dreams. If others lie about their dreams than that is their problem because they would be missing out on all the cool stuff they can do. Honestly, when I got on this forum and for a while I was confused about what SP was. I read that it was when you are paralyzed on your bed and you are asleep but for some reason your body is keeping you from acting out any movements in waking life. So every time something like that happened in my dream I would write it down. But my brother told me that it was sort of different so maybe most of it was probably just the dream making it appear like SP was happening but it wasn't really SP. It was a really good dream sign for me though. :D

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Originally Posted by DawnEye11

Honestly, when I got on this forum and for a while I was confused about what SP was. I read that it was when you are paralyzed on your bed and you are asleep but for some reason your body is keeping you from acting out any movements in waking life.

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Well, that is basically correct, it's also called REM atonia, and it's always there when you are in dreaming state, so you don't act out your dreams and fall out of your bed or worse. Except something is wrong with it, and you sleep-walk for instance.
So this is always there in dreaming-sleep and it's normal, if you happen to be conscious of it, people mostly call it SP. Happens when waking up with your mind, but the safety measure of the paralysis for your body isn't yet gone, like when you wake yourself up consciously and forcefully, that's how I know it. And some people feel it when going into WILD, also a state of being conscious, staying conscious while entering the dream. Seems some people tend to this more than others, but experiencing SP consciously is not pathological, like some people on here claim. Up to 50% of people have that at least once in their lives. Not pathological - but also nothing to aim for.

It's not a thing which feels as happening in your dream, though - it's something you experience in your bed, feels like being awake mentally and the body just doesn't follow orders yet/any more.

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Originally Posted by DawnEye11

So every time something like that happened in my dream I would write it down. But my brother told me that it was sort of different so maybe most of it was probably just the dream making it appear like SP was happening but it wasn't really SP. It was a really good dream sign for me though. :D

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As I said above, it's not something supposed to be "happening" in your dream, what people talk about is happening in their beds, feeling mentally awake.
Do you mean it as in you couldn't move, or move only like through thick molasses in the middle of your dream?
That is definitively not what is usually meant by experiencing SP, but my reckoning goes - it might actually be exactly that after all, which makes these dream immobilities happen, the cause for it being so wide-spread in people's dreams. I almost never have it, but I do have vocalization problems, no sound, or only croaky and strenuous, and when that happened, several times, while sleeping next to my husband, he told me I would have talked in my sleep.
So maybe the impulse got through to my real body, which couldn't do it properly, and such it felt and sounded in my dream.
It could be something similar with this phenomenon of paralysis in a dream.

Why would you suddenly stop to use it as a dream-sign? It's a classical dream-sign, to be unable to move - keep it, why on earth not if it works? Don't let anybody tell you what you should or shouldn't do, when your own experience tells you otherwise! Labels are unimportant, it's getting lucid, what counts!

Hi guys, what? You're raising some doubt here on what's possible while lucid. I haven't even considered people lying about their experiences. This site is showing people what's possible while lucid and the bar is rising. I've literally made no progress in what is possible while lucid in last 40 years, but by reading the journals and forums has increased my new experiences 10 fold. I really had no idea what was possible. Simple things like walking through walls for example. Everything I've read certainly seems to be possible when I try it. Somethings I don't want to try new things, like pulling my eyeball out - Gab! I think these LD's are great understatement of people's experiences (words can not capture the magnitude of what's going on here). Words can't describe what is happening, especially when you consider all your senses. Maybe one day with technology we'll be able to record somebody's dream and slam dunk CG. There's been some progress with this where they've generated basic images of test subjects viewing objects.

Ohhh.Thanks for explaining it to me StephL. When I say I couldn't move I mean it felt like I was stuck in a position on the bed but I could tell I was still in the dream though because images would appear, the lighting in the room was different, there was something that wasn't in the room that was present and I would be in a different room than I slept in. I recall a time when I felt awake and was watching something squiggly and black moving but I couldn't move and my eyes felt like they were hard to keep open. I think that may have been real SP. I still have the old dream sign happen at times but less than before. I didn't want it to happen as a dream sign anymore because I didn't want something that was considered bad to be my dream sign.But what you said makes sense so i might start using it again. Thanks. :)

You dont know. In online you shouldnt believe too much on anything. Just make sure the experiences either match to your experiences or if your new you at least confirm the techniques your practising with more known techniques. Usually new member are just excited and exaggerate their experiences but i just compare their statement based on my experience. When i started at this forum i did exaggerate my experiences or made misleading titles because of writing excited and to get insight of someone more experience to what i thought was this cool idea but i never saw harm in that. Thats how i learned to lucid dream because of my stupid ideas and great instructions from members.

As for lies there are not nothing to worry about only thing they can do with them is to sound stupid or lie to themselfs. People notice the genuine stuff and even if they didnt we can just test their claim.

But just to say it my only reason coming here is to share my experiences and thoughts here since i cant talk about it besides online and as i think is for everybody and i think that shouldnt change it even if there pop up few lies time to time.

In my experience from being in forensics, liars are usually vague, while truth-tellers give you lots of details up front. If someone is a liar, they are more apt to run around saying they have lucids all the time, but will never describe the dreams or journal them. A truth-teller would probably be a person who can give you lots of details of their lucid dreams, how they got lucid, how they felt, what they did, and what the dreams were about. I'm sure there is someone out there who is willing to sit there and make insanely detailed lies about something like lucid dreaming. But I think it's rare because there just isn't enough reward for it.

Have you ever played a truth-telling game? It's an icebreaker. Each person tells a story, and you must guess if their story is true or not. You'll notice that most of the false stories leave out details or otherwise have holes or inconsistencies in them. That's why a good liar will stick as close as possible to the truth, since it will be easier for them to remember the lies.

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Originally Posted by DawnEye11

Ohhh.Thanks for explaining it to me StephL. When I say I couldn't move I mean it felt like I was stuck in a position on the bed but I could tell I was still in the dream though because images would appear, the lighting in the room was different, there was something that wasn't in the room that was present and I would be in a different room than I slept in. I recall a time when I felt awake and was watching something squiggly and black moving but I couldn't move and my eyes felt like they were hard to keep open. I think that may have been real SP. I still have the old dream sign happen at times but less than before. I didn't want it to happen as a dream sign anymore because I didn't want something that was considered bad to be my dream sign.But what you said makes sense so i might start using it again. Thanks. :)

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See if this sounds similar Dawn.

I have been caught between dream and real body on two occasions.

To start out with I was fully lucid, I was dreaming, became aware I was dreaming and then became aware I was losing the dream. On each occasion I pulled up my hands to attempt stabilization, but I had ZERO fingers and in one case only partial palms. I immediately slammed my palms together and began to rub them. Almost in the same instant I lost the dream world. (on a third occasion I never even made it this far as my real hands were moving in the real world and I woke instantly). So I'm in the void, I've been there before just rub your hands and wait and a new or similar world will return, I've returned from a few voids (and I don't count them as separate lucid dreams, they are part of the same dream including both worlds and the void). But what happened next was super lame I could feel my fingers and palms at first (even tho I saw ZERO fingers when I lost sight), I could hear my fingers rubbing they sounded super loud in fact, and I could feel the friction, and I was still 100% lucid, the problem was that after a few seconds I began to have my dream hands paralyze, and soon I could only move a few fingers against my left hand, in the end I was rubbing only my pinky finger against my paralyzed dream hand, I refused to give up but eventually I would lose, in the final 2-5 seconds I seemed to be lurching between dream and real paralyzed body. Once in the real world, I just move the tips of my fingers to break paralysis usually, but in these cases I seemed to lurch about (either in the dream, or the real world). All my 15+ minute dreams have involved surviving the void, I hope I'm not going to go thru this garbage again, I'll have to start using words like unparalyze now, dreamscape return now. In each of these two dreams I had just become lucid, and had failed to stabilize early.

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Originally Posted by cooleymd

See if this sounds similar Dawn.

I have been caught between dream and real body on two occasions.

To start out with I was fully lucid, I was dreaming, became aware I was dreaming and then became aware I was losing the dream. On each occasion I pulled up my hands to attempt stabilization, but I had ZERO fingers and in one case only partial palms. I immediately slammed my palms together and began to rub them. Almost in the same instant I lost the dream world. (on a third occasion I never even made it this far as my real hands were moving in the real world and I woke instantly). So I'm in the void, I've been there before just rub your hands and wait and a new or similar world will return, I've returned from a few voids (and I don't count them as separate lucid dreams, they are part of the same dream including both worlds and the void). But what happened next was super lame I could feel my fingers and palms at first (even tho I saw ZERO fingers when I lost sight), I could hear my fingers rubbing they sounded super loud in fact, and I could feel the friction, and I was still 100% lucid, the problem was that after a few seconds I began to have my dream hands paralyze, and soon I could only move a few fingers against my left hand, in the end I was rubbing only my pinky finger against my paralyzed dream hand, I refused to give up but eventually I would lose, in the final 2-5 seconds I seemed to be lurching between dream and real paralyzed body. Once in the real world, I just move the tips of my fingers to break paralysis usually, but in these cases I seemed to lurch about (either in the dream, or the real world). All my 15+ minute dreams have involved surviving the void, I hope I'm not going to go thru this garbage again, I'll have to start using words like unparalyze now, dreamscape return now. In each of these two dreams I had just become lucid, and had failed to stabilize early.

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Your experience does sound familiar to me but its sort of different from the being in bed and paralyzed experience because my body is not dissapearing. I never managed to move my hands in waking life from the dream before but I understand what you mean by the void and I don't see them as another lucid dream if its in the same lucid dream either. Surviving the void is indeed tricky for me too. I think sometimes rubbing hands can work but it is not easy cause you have to try to focus on something you see or think about something so it can appear and use your voice, if you can, to bring the dream back. I've never been in the void for a long long time though because it either changes to another scene, I wake myself up or my mind wakes me up. Also, I think the void is the strongest when your near the end of the last dream for the day so there's no point to stopping it.The characters and scenery are less stable and weak at that point based on my experience. Maybe that's why you kept trying to escape it?

On the flip side.....This is just a thought, but maybe people are holding back the real extreme LD's, Obe's, and the 'I have no idea what just happened' stories for fear of what people would think? I know I have a few I couldn't even tell my best friend, around a campfire, drunk. I'm sure everybody is holding back some amazing 'off the chart' experiences.

I'm sure there are probably many people, who have done this, over the years. Ultimately, as with anything online, the only thing we can really do is hope that people are telling the truth about their experiences. I would think that the people who have taken an interest to this kind of thing respect it enough to put some effort into it. Even the smallest lucid experiences can carry as much weight as some of the most fantastical dreams, to someone who is honestly pursuing LD proficiency, so just being around this community would, I hope, expose anyone to the types of experiences that would make it so that they didn't feel that had to lie in order to feel accomplished.

In the end, though, you never really know. It's a lot like reading a blog about someone's daily life. Sure, they could be telling some great, real-life experiences, but how would the average reader be able to tell? But what would be the payoff? The lucid dreaming community is so niche that I would imagine a person who just wants recognition for false accomplishes would probably seek out a more mainstream arena. Of course, not in every case, but I wouldn't understand the reason for being here long enough for telling incredible dream stories (which so many of us have on a daily basis) to actually accomplish anything. It would be incredibly time-consuming, and for someone who isn't actually spending said time logging their own, real, experiences and accomplishments, it would just be kinda sad.

yeah.....unfortunately, you have a liar on every board......or at least one who embellishes.....its because some people out there have more of a "life online" than they do in the "real world".....
online you have total anonymity behind a username and you can be anything or damn near anyone you want to be,
you can be a hero, you can be the coolest, the smartest, the best looking, whatever, and in reality you could be a mutant living in some cave with internet access...

i've seen it before, people getting exposed for lying about themselves or their accomplishments......happens sometimes.....its sad, and it should never get that serious...but it happens...

i've never been that type of person, thank god,....because i am happy to be able to express my frustrations and get help from people who i would otherwise would not be able to ask, had there been no internet.....
plus im not a loser in real life, so theres no need to make a a digital persona....lol