15 people share the most elaborate thing they've seen someone do for attention.

Everyone craves attention at some point.

But some people are more aggressive about receiving it than others.

In a popular Ask Reddit thread, people shared the most disturbing or elaborate things they've seen someone do for attention, and the list goes some strange places.

1. From OP:

During my Junior year of high school, some complications began to arise with an acquaintance of mine. She was a seemingly nice girl, and I have held multiple conversations with her.

One day during our study hall period, she came into class crying. I felt as though I should comfort her, so I did. I asked her what was wrong and she explained to me in great detail.

She had been receiving messages from an anonymous phone number saying some incredibly rude things. Some going so far as to say things like 'I will murder you and your family you anorexic whore' things that just shouldn't be said.

I read through these messages and offered her my shoulder and tried finding out who the person sending me messages was. I figured out that it was being sent through an application on the Ipad.

A multi-media messaging application. I ran out of anything helpful at this point and realized that I would be best just to advise her to allow police involvement (some of the threats were very graphic).

So she did. I soon saw her friends and entire lunch table being pulled into the Office by local police officers. Day by day her friends were having their devices searched in an attempt to find the perpetrator of the messages.

This was to no avail, and the police ran out of suspects. As time went on, she began to grow increasingly desperate and sad during her period(s) with me. I would always invest myself emotionally into her issues just to try to help her through.

(Bullying sucks). I wasn't the only one helping her, throughout the weeks many of my friends were deeply invested and trying to help her through it all. Several days later, it all came into light.

The person behind all of the torment (albeit clearly exaggerated) was her. That's right. This girl was sending these vile messages to herself. Faking crying and being hurt in front of 36 students every day.

Calling me and telling me that someone was outside of her house and almost having me call 9-11. It was all her the entire time, making up this intricate story for the sole purpose of getting attention.

Did I mention huge police and detective involvement? She has since moved schools and gone off of our radar. She left a void of rage in her place. The feeling of being used and manipulated by this girl is not a good one. Everyone involved felt used.

TL;DR B**ch faked being hardcore bullied and had police investigate her own self-bullying, she skips town.

2. From Obieousmaximus:

A person my wife went to school with had posted that her boyfriend asked her to marry her. Later that night she said she dumped him and moved to Vegas with her old boyfriend.

My wife and I started looking through her profile and saw that she had the most beautiful daughters. We keep looking and notice different girls that she stated were her daughters, looked different.

I tiny eye the images and sure enough they are Stock images on various websites. She had a picture of a beautiful office with a beautiful view and a mansion of a house. All these images were stock photos...really really sad.

She still posts photos of her 'daughters' and they are all from different websites.

3. From RothKyle:

I have two stories from my high school.

This kid, who we'll call Zak, has been in my class since kindergarden. He has always been slightly...off, to say the least. He never made too many friends, was a little socially outcasted, the whole works.

I always felt kind of bad for him and invited him to my house for play-dates when we were in elementary school, but he was kind of a dick so I stopped trying. High school comes around. He still has one, maybe two friends.

He's a stereotypical bully. Pushes people into lockers, tries to start fights in the hallway, yada yada yada. Around sophomore year (year 10), he starts hurting himself to get attention. He became THE definition of an attention-whore.

He would walk into lockers, walk through the hallway hitting himself in the face with a textbook, spit in his hands and slap himself in the face, and he once even went as far as purposely breaking his leg so that people could sign his cast.

(He actually went up to random people that he didn't know, hand them a sharpie, and tell them to write something nice on his cast. Afterward, he'd call that person a f*g/slut, then walk away)

To my knowledge, he didn't have any sort of mental illness that would explain these behaviors. He was just...f*cked up.

2) This one girl, 'Mary', would try her best to sleep with as many people as possible. Then, after every person she slept with, she'd cry wolf and say it was rape. She accused, to my knowledge, five or six different people of rape.

Probably more. That stopped working after a while. So she faked breast cancer and told everyone she was going through Chemo. When people noticed her hair wasn't falling out, she laughed it off and told everyone it was a joke.

(This REALLY pissed me off because my dad had breast cancer. Not something you f*cking joke about.) When people stopped paying attention to her, she faked pregnancy. Twice. The first baby never showed, so she told everyone it was a joke.

The second baby, apparently, died in her womb when someone elbowed her at the homecoming dance, even though she was about three weeks into her lie, and the baby would've barely begun forming yet.

About three months before graduation she got knocked up and was legitimately pregnant with a drunk mistake. She decided to keep the baby and accused the dad of rape. I f*cking wish I was kidding.

4. From ada42:

There's the guy who dresses flamboyantly--you know, pirate stuff, renaissance gear, flagons and cloaks, etc, etc. Now, I don't care how people dress. Honest, I don't. In fact, I usually like those kind of clothes.

But this guy's existence--his outfits, coupled with his personality, merged with everything else he says and does, is dedicated to one task: attention-whoring. When he enters a room, he needs people to know he's entering the room.

So when he's down the hall, he will make noises: wolf howls, evil laughter, exploding noises, whatever. When he arrives at the door, he will kick it open and continue laughing loudly. All eyes must be on him.

He is obsessed with shoving his Ipod in people's faces so that they can listen to his KWIRKY MUSIK OMG HE LISTENS TO DANNY ELFMAN sh*t. In the middle of a conversation?

Ipod in face, 'GUYS, I LISTEN TO DANNY ELFMAN.' Trying to do homework? BOOM, IPOD! 'GUYS, I LISTEN TO DANNY ELFMAN. GUYS, DO YOU F*CKING UNDERSTAND?' On the phone with a parent?

'I LISTEN TO DANNY ELFMAN. LOOK AT HOW ALTERNATIVE I AM.'

And he ain't even a freshman or some sh*t, nope, this is a grown-a*s man who probably cries internally when no one is interested in him, him, him, and only him.

Back to his outfits--If someone doesn't comment on one of his props or costumes, he will draw attention to it and prompt a response.

'Hey, did you see my new awesome skull necklace? It's a skull ON A NECKLACE. Jesus Christ I am so f*cking out of the norm that someone should make an indie rom-com about me.'

'Hey, guys, did you notice I have a CLOAK? Do you see anyone else who has a cloak? Nope. But the cool thing about cloaks is, you can SWISH THEM. Look at me swish this cloak, how cool am I?!?!?!?!'

Some people will comment 'Wow, why are you wearing all those layers? Aren't you hot?' And he'll go 'Nah, I like this.'

No, you don't like this, you have a pathological need for attention. You are sweating your balls off, you are terribly uncomfortable, but you need to be omgkwirkiez. He even eats in the most attention-whoring, disgusting way.

One time, he had spaghetti and he was just slurping the f*ck out of it, and I'm like, dude, you're 25, you are slurping spaghetti. And he knows he's slurping spaghetti.

He wants other people to know he's alive, and existing, and that everything he does needs to be theatrical because if there's one person not paying attention to him, he ceases to exist.

And I know that this is probably some deep psychological issue that was caused by his parents' blahdyblahblah or something.

But at a certain point it's like, put your issues aside and treat yourself like a f**king person, not a cartoon character, and stop being so damn annoying.

Christ. I have a lot of anger.

5. From I_TRUST_NOONE:

A kid from my old high school licked a puddle of puke from a special ed student for 5 bucks.

6. From phalseprofits:

The only people that did this while I was in high school were so ridiculous with their claims that no one really cared, let alone believed it. This one girl, Ellery, used to claim that she had like 8 siblings, including a twin sister.

She said that her twin was homeschooled, which is why we never saw her at school.

She then told everyone how her boyfriend (who is also mysteriously attending a different school and she had no photos of) had surprised her by taking her to NYC to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from a penthouse suite.

7. From brittanymaxx:

I used to have a friend who would make up stories to make her sound more interesting. She told she had a job at the staples center (in LA) and that she was dating Jordan Farmar when he was on the Lakers.

I didn't follow basketball so I didn't know who he was. She made up stories about them hanging out and meeting her parents. She showed me pictures of him that she supposedly 'took at his house.'

Come to find out she got the pictures off of Google and she worked at Home Depot not the staples center.

She was overweight, not attractive, and would say anything to make herself seem better than you. When brought up later she would say she didn't remember saying that.

TL;DR: friend lied about where she worked and said she was dating Jordan Farmar. Had googled pics that she said she took and hung out with him.

8. From victoryfanfare:

My sister's new boyfriend, who she hadn't known for long and was 21 to her 16 years, managed to convince her (and a lot of others) that he had cancer and was probably going to die in a few years. Huge drama.

The now-ex boyfriend's fatal flaw was trying to convince my mother, who had been a nurse 30+ years at that point and is a survivor of cancer herself. Nothing in his treatment plan matched up, so she did some digging.

The truth is he has Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which he claimed could turn into something else which was like cancer. Yeah, whatever, Julian.

9. From redheadlive:

One of my friends and her best friend pretended that she had a heart condition and it could be life-threatening. I didn't really want to question it because her parents had just split at the time and mine were breaking up too.

I found out they had both lied to me by overhearing it before class. I sat outside the entire time with one of the teacher's assistants. Changed how I saw everyone.

Nothing as extreme as the police being called but it is one of many experiences that have made it hard to see the truth in people's stories. TL;DR People be crazy.

10. From shirty987:

Girl in high school was an aspiring actor and attended workshops and whatnot to further her acting abilities. Told everyone at school she met an actor from an Aussie show and they were going to move in together.

She went over to his apartment and had dinner and everything. But it was nothing romantic, they were just really good friends. She often got texts from him asking how she was doing.

Then she got a part on his TV show and was probably going to become a recurring character. But the episodes she was in wouldn't be aired for another couple of months.

Throughout all this, she became a mega b**ch who only talked to the 'cool' group who had previously ignored her. Eventually, the truth emerged. Her cousin had been sending her the text messages.

And had never met the actor or gone for an audition. It was all made up but incredibly successful in getting her friends.

11. From Maybe_for_a_dollar:

I know a girl that has been faking cancer to try and get attention. She first pulled it when her husband was in Afganistan. He was allowed to come home for emergency leave to deal with the upcoming surgeries and taking care of their two children.

After three days at home, he discovered she had been lying through her teeth. He returned to his deployment immediately.

Ever since then, it was been a constant misdiagnosis of where her cancer has been located. A few months ago it was in her heart and this week it is in her ovaries. She got a hysterectomy at 28 to cure this latest round of cancer. This b**ch is crazy.

12. From agentstartling:

My best friend in middle school told everyone she was having a huge birthday party complete with djs and bands because her parents were so rich. She could not stop talking about it.

But she never invited anyone because she said it was family only or something like that. Later that year, she stopped talking to me because I bought a shirt at a thrift store. She continues to be popular and 'rich' throughout our school years.

Fast forward to our senior year of high school, I find out she's lived in a trailer park the whole time and was never rich, just lied and treated people like s**t to make herself feel better.

Fast forward to now, she had a baby with some random old dude and still lives in the trailer park.

13. From Intoxicated_Ant:

When I was in year 10, I had a friend who was a bit, weird. People to this day will still call him crazy-'namehere'. Anyway, he loved the ladies, except the ladies didn't love him. He would always have a internet girlfriend.

To the story, one day he tells me he is going to write a fake ransom letter to his parents to get some money to buy one of his internet girlfriends a new Macbook. Might I mention, a ransom letter was his first thought to get money.

I laughed, thinking he wouldn't do it, and left it at that. The next day he tells me that he did it and his parents are freaking out. He tells me that made a threatening letter from a mysterious kidnapper.

The letter detailed a threat to kill my friend if his parents didn't make leave a large sum of money in a bin in a local park. I was a little shocked by this, I told him he was crazy and that his parents probably thought it was a hoax.

Three days after making the letter, the police show up at school. They come into our class and escort my friend out. I didn't see him till the next day. He was a bit quiet, but I finally got the information out of him.

Turns out the police had taken his computer and printer. Cracked his windows password, found the ORIGINAL SAVED file of the letter and matched the paper and ink to his printer.

No charges were laid and I believe he had to pay for the police resources used.

There is another story that I can't be bothered about how (when he was about 16) flew interstate to try and meet another one of these internet girl riends, only to be called a freak when he got to her door and he then spent the night in a park.

14. From amperx11:

I had a friend I met in middle school. She would always tell people she got bit by a great white shark. She constantly wore shorts (no scar tissue obviously and both legs intact) and you could tell she'd probably never even seen a shark in person.

She turned out to be a compulsive liar and is now engaged to my ex-boyfriend, who cheated on me with her. They deserve each other.

15. From cldumas:

In high school, I was friends with a girl, E. She was kind of a friend from convenience, she likes me and didn't have a lot of friends so I hung out with her in school to avoid being mean. One day she texts me out of the blue, completely freaking out.

She asks me what day it is and starts talking about things that happened a year ago like they just happened. I'd heard things on TV about sudden amnesia brought on by stress so I told her to go see a doctor. '

She was going to a different school by this point so I didn't actually see her, but I caught her up on a few things by text and she told me she went to a doctor but there's nothing they can do.

I wanted to help her so I texted her boyfriend and best friend at her school and let them know what happened. This goes on for a few days, I felt like she wasn't getting the help she needed so I seriously considered calling an ambulance to her house.

After maybe three days of this she texts me saying that she made it all up, she thought that she could start over by pretending to forget the past year, and she didn't think I'd tell anyone. I told her to f*ck off and we've barely talked since.