Do you know what's fucking idiotic? The stupid shit people will sometimes try to cover up, and the contexts! Some people are murderers, and they cover up their tracks, and that's common sense, but some people are very ordinary, and they want to cover up the nothingness in their lives as well!
I would understand if it posed a great danger to you, but to get to the point where you lie about small numbers because it seems a bit more convenient to your pride? People talk to themselves in the shower, and even there, they're lying in their little speeches with no audience.
"I have dozens of satisfied clients!", they emulate themselves saying to the new prospective client, knowing very well that they only have 10, and 2 are not satisfied and simply exist in isolation to the problem at hand.
Look, sometimes, there is no point in lying. Many people fall to the trap of lying, because they need to inflate their egos, and they tragically forget that truth is necessary for accurate calculation and diagnosis of problems! Then, when they have a problem, they are unable to realize what it is, until they come, in the back of their minds, to that little point that they didn't want to touch.
It gets absolutely ridiculous when I have a one-on-one student who lies about doing homework or knowing something. I don't fucking care about your image, I care about reality. When you misrepresent it, I misdiagnose you and teach you shit that's irrelevant to you. I have to learn as a teacher, as the public representative of anything I represent, to understand that people lie even when they don't need to and that anything can be a lie.
I've become seriously and inconveniently good at detecting lies. I'm a ticking bomb, ready to destroy my friendships on a click, just because I know a little too much about the people that surround me.
People really don't think that the things they say will come to bite them in the ass a few months or years later. They show their face, their name, their reputation... they show their vulnerabilities. And then, they tell a lie. One foolish, unnecessary, small and simple lie and it gets found out, and boom, they ruined their friendships, business, and life just because they couldn't keep their mouths shut for a second and not care about pride.
Because that's what it is. Pride. Fake mental points that are only useful for advancing the conversation a little bit, creating a small improvement in their subjective perception of themselves in front of someone else, and then that's it, the game is over, everyone goes home, and the lie lingers.
The lie comes back a few days later to screw their lives around, al because of an instant, a wrong choice disguised as satisfaction.
That's why I hate lies, because most of the time, there is no point to them, and yet people risk their whole life and status just to feel a little better for a few seconds or minutes.