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Cheating Just to Look Good
We get why people cheat to make more money, or why they lie to avoid bad consequences. But what about an amateur runner inventing a whole series of marathons so he could appear faster than he actually was?
The things we’ll do for status. Fascinating article by Brian Klass.
It turned out that Kip had not only invented the race, but had also fabricated 28 other athletes who didn’t exist to make it look real—and even went to the trouble of creating runner profiles for each of them on a running results website called Athlinks … The Kip caper poses a puzzle: why do humans expend so much energy on seemingly pointless deception—and why is such behavior likely becoming more common over time?
