Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire!

The first choice is correct. Rise above. Damage control leads to the kind of situation in Disney's 'Fantasia', with all those walking brooms.

Also, put yourself in your 'friend''s place. If somebody came up to you and said "Psst, did you know (x) is a real scumbag", you'd be skeptical at least, and at most think there was something wrong with the tale-teller, right? So why would other people be different?

ignore and rise above is always my modus operandi, and your friend is right but if you could do it weell yuo should have your sweet revenge you should invite them (not your friend the big fat big old ugly old stinkin old dirty old

stupid face liar)over and stuff them full of cakes and chippies and dont do it in the fun slumber party way, do it in the cruel andf unusul puminshent way and fudge saucse and isce dream and candiea ns syrup out of the squeeze bottle and make them watch meg ryan movies back to bak until they cry like anything.

and the n call the m a big fat liar.

maybe subltle amounts of each? ie damage control, ignoring AND evil revenge?

Personal experience this past year has taught me to rise above it, as difficult as this may seem at first. Railing against it only seems to strengthen it, somehow. I've lost a few fake friends along the way, but fake friends I can quite easily live without.

Also, remember it's a pretty piss-poor life that doesn't make enemies every so often. Small comfort, but works sometimes.

i'm all for the idea that if you totally ignore the liar and don't dignify the lies with an outraged response, they'll go away. this is incredible hard to do, however, and i've never learned the trick! i think that if someone truly is your friend they won't believe the lie, or if they do they'll at least ask you for your side of the story and then base their responses on having heard both sides. if you're going to get outraged it's best to vent on a friend who you know doesn't mind and who trusts and believes you in the first place. friends = useful safety valves!

I think I have a piss poor life. No one ever goes around telling lies about me. Except the pinefox re: my transcendental attractiveness, and he's not really an enemy.

But yeah, I'd have thought the whole 'rise above' thing is a broadly a good plan, if only for the sake of your own mental health. But maybe the best policy of all would be to tell people THE TRUTH but not go on about it too much in a ranty kind of way.

Rise above it - and then six months or a year later, when all has died down, slander the fuck out of the bastard.

A few years back, someone told a really vile lie about me to deflect attention from their own irresponsibility. I went through the ranting stage (which *always* happens the first time you've been lied about) but later realised that wasn't such a wise move. Far better, if appropriate, is to tell the person who is telling the lies that they're obviously not clever enough to get on by telling the truth and their deceit is just a piss-poor substitute for intelligence.

I ignore slander, roll my eyes, sigh and get on with life while inwardly plotting to fuck the liar's life up - i have lost fake friends, my true friends have always rallied and set the record straight while i attempt to defuse my inner gangsta.

Pete tells people my mum is Syrian (for reasons best known to him) when in fact she is from Stamford Hill. However I like this lie as it makes me seem more exotic (if that's possible) so don't really mind.

You catch them out, lying yourself if necessary in order to do so.

Yesterday, my grandmother rang me eight times in three hours (to tell me she'd heard from my Mum and Dad, who are on holiday at the moment). I did not pick up the phone because I knew it would be her and last time she called it was to tell me Uncle Ralph won't be sending me a cheque for Christmas this year, but I should keep sending him Christmas cards because he doesn't have long left and there might be something in it for me at the end. I was in no mood to talk to her again. Each time she called, I waited until the ringing stopped, then dialled 1471 and lo, it was her. I called her in the evening and pretended our phone had a display showing the past eight callers... "and seven of them were you! Why didn't you leave a voice message so I could call back?" She told me she left it to ring and ring and no voicemail clicked in. LIAR! I had a voice message of her putting the phone down. She stammered a bit and made excuses, but she knows I caught her out, silly old bird.

The lies about me are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty trivial stuff that I hope I will be able to rise above.

However, the lies about my mother are far more serious allegations which have seriously affected her career. In the Real World, she could sue for libel and sue her employer for discrimination, but unfortunately, the Church is exempt from all those niggling little things that most corporations have to face. Poo. Don't know what to do in a case like that.

As you say trying to defend it can be pointless or even seem as though the lies are true. Your friends must know you well enough to realize that the person is lying, no? It all depends of course. If the stories s/he is telling are obviously made up, then people will eventually realize he's lying. Is it harmful? If it isn't, then I just ignore it. He (or she) is probably jealous.

I'm still confused by Madchen's answer. What does it have to do with the discussion?

Her grandmother lied. But Lucy had to employ a lie (about supa caller display) to trap the lie - a dubious moral position given the two wrongs don't make a right. If you lie to it brings you down to their level.

Its like superheroes and murder.

When two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

Heh - now that's a philosophy I can live with.

This is one of those "living well is the best revenge" situations. Don't dignify the lie with a denial unless someone asks about it. Don't make it pub conversation. Move the fuck on. People are really much more interested in what you do in the future than they are in what you did in the past. Even if people believe you do have some heinous secret haunting your past, if you're good & dedicated at what you're doing now they won't care. Don't let the lie define you.

As DQ says, the liar is the one in trouble here. they have to go through the day knowing what a miserable malicious scumbag they've made of themselves, never knowing when the guillotine of truth will fall on them and their sordid plot. Besides which, they've lost your respect and friendship - maybe punishment enough when you think how much those things are worth.

Bloody hell, Fritz in OTM shocker!

according to Rod and Tod, lies make baby jesus cry.

Rise above it, ignore it, definitely. Problem is, I get so paranoid about my friends being my friends I quite easily think they're insulting me all the time, and then I feel horridness towards them. What am I meant to do then? (stop being paranoid, probably, come to think of it).

Fritz can be my doctor anytime. What he said was so true.

And let's just say that the people who get lied TO don't have a particularly easy time EITHER and what is called "damage control" just continues to fuck about with them else there will come a time where they have to say STOP and not even bother to care any more.

Is Fritz really a Doctor though. That's the kind of lie I can't abide. Especially when I'm being operated on (which is luckily never due to me being U).

(I'm not dignifying that with a response, Pete.)

This all applies very well, and is very sound and good advice when it comes to lies on a personal level, but what about the professional level? Let's pretend we're not dealing with Church here for a moment, and think. Can anyone think of a case where lawsuits and libel charges and the like have actually had a positive effect, and not blackballed the leveller as some sort of troublemaker?

My mum may have to *move* because of this crap, if she wants to continue in her chosen career. Is that really fair?

My neighbour, the fantastic Dr Wild, sued the U of M for defamation of character in the early '70s and won something like $40 million (it was a Guinness Book of World Records entry until about 1995). He was working on ultrasound detection of cancer and the researchers working on cancer drugs thought they would have their profits undercut if his work was allowed to continue (I *cannot* get started on this or I will be really pissed off). So they trashed his lab and got his grant revoked. It took 10 years but he got his own back with bells on.

I think pretty much with libel cases those successfully sueing (ie clearing their name) are generally seen in a positive light. Unless its Tom Cruise, and the libel case is petty.

The only ones I ever seem to remember are the unsuccessful ones (like Oscar Wilde and Mick Jagger) but then again, in those cases, though the individual was innocent of the specific crime in question, they were guilty of the offense in general.

I suppose it depends what you want. If you want a million dollar settlement, or if you *really* want to work in that field, and fear being blackballed.

I sympathise with the fear of being blackballed, but in the end if you don't do something about it in a professional situation you allow it to happen to other people (look at the Jonathon King thing similar sort of idea). Anyway if someone is deliberately lying about your competance or related issues in a professional manner this is as damaging as being blackballed - Suzy's example shows that.

In personal situations ignore, in professional situations sue (or take whatever necessary steps under company rules, tribunral etc.)

Your Mom's situation is infinitely more difficult, no question. But, not knowing the specifics & at the risk of over-simplifying things, if she's in the right she ought to fight it. As Pete says, not fighting it is akin to sanctioning it. It could be that if she can demonstrate that she has an organized battle plan and the will to expose the sordid infighting, the church might be prepared to make amends before things get too messy and public. On the other hand, churches do have the resources and the mindset to close ranks, ostracize, and bully your mom and her potential allies into submission. It sounds like they're already going down that road. She'd better be well-prepared to really go to war if she wants to fight. My heart says that she should show those hypocritical bastards that they don't have any right to push her around. My head says a public fight could be very hard on your Mom, whether she wins or not.

Fritz, exactly. I think in my mum's case, her head is winning.

It must be awful for her - I mean it's not like she's an architect and can just pack up and move to a new firm, she's in a situation where the very source of her ethics is behaving in opposition to those ethics.

Any of Jeffrey Archer's cases must have been good for somehow landing the bastard in prison where he belongs (unfortunately to write more books but here's idealistically hoping no one'll buy them anymore). Private Eye/Have I Got News For You - always sued, goes either way but when they do win the point is proven. Not strictly along the same lines but the Robert Maxwell case was good for exposing his awfulness and trying to get the money back.

To tell you the truth, I would ignore it completely. Gale

This happened to me once. It's all a bit more complicated when you only have the one 'friend' in your living situation in a new city and the rest of the people around actually knew her first and as such are not your friends to begin with, you don't even know about it for six months or so, you have no clue why everyone new that she's introducing you to has literally zero interest in getting to know you any further - what a lovely shock when you find out later that they believe that they already *know* everything that they need to. Not even a chance for damage control. Seems it really burned her ass when one of her best friends decided that he loved me anyway. Of course, as a means of damage control on her end she just made sure that he was ostracized too. Lovely girl... I just can't imagine why we don't speak anymore.