There are some people in this world who find nothing more interesting than themselves--and they simply refuse to believe that anyone else could possibly feel otherwise! For people like this, nothing is more unbearable than the sight of another individual as the center of attention, even for a brief moment—and there are no lengths that they won’t go to in order to get the spotlight back where they feel it belongs. Here are 42 wild stories of some of the biggest attention hogs that people have ever seen.
1. The Long Road to Recovery
There was a girl in my college program who would constantly say outrageous things to try and get attention. During orientation week, she told people that she was recovering from brain cancer (which she wasn’t) and that she was partially deaf (which she also wasn't).
2. Woman Down! Woman Down!
On a high school field trip, a girl in my class faked falling unconscious after she was hit by a bottle cap. She even did the whole dramatic "dying swan" thing where she touched her forehead with her wrist, moaned slightly, and slowly lay down on the ground without hurting herself on the cobblestone pavement. It was literally like something out of a movie.
3. Self-Deprecating Attention
I hate to admit it, but the biggest attention hog I ever saw was...myself as a kid. Back in early elementary school, during art class, I used to intentionally talk smack about my own art just to get a bunch of compliments from other students out of sympathy. My teacher eventually noticed what I was up to and told me to stop.
4. The Aunts Go Marching
I have an aunt who knowingly put herself into insulin shock at my sister’s wedding because no one was paying attention to her. Then, as if that’s not crazy enough, she did it again at her mother’s funeral! Both times were complete with ambulances and doctors involved.
5. Hitting the Dislike Button
Anyone who "checks in" at the hospital on Facebook is automatically a huge attention hog.
6. Fishing Expedition
I know someone who often posts pictures of herself on Facebook with captions like "OMG, I'm soooooo uglyyyy!" If that’s not fishing for attention and compliments, I don’t know what is!
7. Sing, Sing, Sing
There was a girl who used to be part of this group of friends who I saw on the odd occasion when I was a teen. I only ever met her twice, but on both occasions she started to full-on sing super loudly whenever everybody else was talking and not involving her in the conversation.
8. Time for a Checkup
My ex is the biggest attention hog that I know. When I told a friend to go check up on her because she kept posting comments about self-harm on her social media, she immediately posted a long and dramatic rant about how I was obsessively stalking her. Bro, I literally just checked on you. Calm down!
9. Oh, When Will the Dying End??
I knew a girl in college whose father had allegedly died on at least six separate occasions over the span of one semester. Like, we would be hanging out, then she gets a call, then she drops the phone, her eyes go red, and the waterworks and wild stories would start.
10. Pointing Fingers
My ex-girlfriend was always an attention-seeker and, when we broke up, she claimed that I assaulted her. When that allegation got cleared up and she found herself completely ostracized from our entire social circle, she went quiet for about a month...and then decided to claim that it was actually the disabled kid in our class who had assaulted her.
She was utterly relentless.
11. Oh, That’s Rich!
There's a girl in my college classes who claims that her dad owns a huge professional soccer team. Which one you ask? Unfortunately, she doesn't remember their name. This same girl claims to be dating one of the LA Lakers, but can't give his name out to the public. She is also apparently talking to someone who's in the NFL—you know, just to keep her options open.
She says that her dad works at a local steel factory and that she can’t tell anyone where all of his extra money comes from, because he gives her hush money. She then called another girl in class out for "lying to fit in". How ironic!
12. Breakfast in Bed
My brother is a huge attention hog and drama queen. He had this girlfriend during his sophomore year of high school. When she broke up with him, he ordered a pizza and told the delivery guy to come inside the house and bring it right up to his room—as he was in no condition to come downstairs due to the breakup, he explained.
13. Batting for the Other Team
There was a chick in my high school who faked a pregnancy, claimed to do illicit substances in the restroom with her buddies, and then told people that I was the father of her child. I am quite positive that I have never slept with with her, considering that I am gay.
14. She’s Got Some Beef
My sister came out as a vegetarian during a dinner with our entire extended family—at a steakhouse. This dinner had been a semi-regular event for years, so she had fully planned for it to happen that way. Needless to say, it caused a big stir—and the spotlight was officially on her for the rest of the night. Mission Accomplished.
15. A Star Isn’t Born
The biggest attention hog that I ever saw was a woman on this British TV show about bad moms. This person would frequently force her daughter to randomly sing and do her cheer routine in public places because "You never know who's watching, people get discovered on the streets every day!"
16. Crying Over You
In high school, there was this one girl, a semi-popular cheerleader if I remember correctly, who took pictures of herself crying and posted them on Facebook with captions saying that her grandmother had just passed on. She had, no joke, an entire album of pictures of herself crying, taken from many different angles. It was really freakin’ weird…
17. Loyal Followers
My high school ex posted a picture of a blade next to his wrist on Twitter after I broke up with him for cheating on me and being a pathological liar. He told all of his followers to message me and demand that I talk to him or else he was going to kill himself. I hate that I was young and dumb, but unfortunately his scheme worked and we ended up back together again.
18. This Story Makes Me Angry
There’s no one more irritating than my friend who always posts things on Facebook like “I’m so angry!” or “I’m so upset!” Then, when asked why in the comments, he responds with “I don’t want to talk about it!” That guy is a huge attention hog!
19. Breaking Noose
This girl in eighth grade pretended that she was “depressed” and wanted to end her life to get people to feel bad for her. She was fairly popular so everyone believed her and felt bad for her. She got all kinds of attention for it. Meanwhile, around the same time, there was this other kid in the same grade who was actually depressed and had tried hanging himself on a doorknob in the back of our class when no one was looking one day.
In an odd way, he actually became popular because of the incident. Well, the fake-depressed girl was having absolutely none of it. She would not sit back and allow some other student to take her spotlight away. She decided to attempt the same hanging stunt one day in class, fully expecting someone to stop her in the process...
Except for the fact that no one noticed her doing it until she was passed out and had to be rushed to the emergency room.
20. The Brave and the Bold
My sister-in-law is a huge attention hog. When her dad was getting remarried, she told everyone at the wedding ceremony that she had cancer, but that she had come to terms with it. Everyone thought she was so brave and praiseworthy. The only problem was that she had never actually had cancer…
21. Ghosting Gone Wrong
My fiance has been my best friend since we were kids. Once, in high school, he was dating a girl who decided that, after scaring the heck out of him by trying to cuff him to a bed against his will, she was going to threaten to kill herself if he ever dumped her. About ten years later, I ran into her at a party. She was there with her husband and infant son.
It was typically not the kind of party that one would bring a baby to, but whatever. She then proceeded to tell me about how she and my fiance never technically broke up since, being 15 years old, his answer to "If you dump me, I'll kill myself" was to just stop talking to her. Because of that, she argued that they were technically still together and that she was therefore "cheating" on him with her husband—making her son a b*stard.
It was all his fault, she complained in front of a crowd of stunned and confused people. She was 100% serious, and she also told me to tell him that she wanted an apology for this inconvenience that he caused. The crowd was captivated, and she was loving every second of the attention. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.
22. Here Kitty, Kitty!
The biggest attention hog that I know is my cat. He just shamelessly lap hops around the room to find the best one—and he loves trying to get us to fight over him.
23. A Shot in the Dark
In high school, my buddy was seeing this girl who told everyone that she had recently gotten shot. I asked her to see the wound, and she pulled her shirt down a little so I could see her shoulder. You know what was covering her alleged wound? One single cartoon-themed, self-administered bandaid. Yeah, that seems legit...
24. This Is My Stop!
An attention hog that I know once threw himself face-first out of a moving car (not going very fast), because he had seen his ex holding hands with another guy.
25. Never a Dull Moment
There was this girl in college would constantly try to get attention by saying things like "Oh, my boyfriend just dumped me!" or "My new boyfriend beats me!" or "I’m gay!" or "I’m not gay!" or "I own a signed Kurt Cobain bass guitar!"
26. She’s Not the Only One Rolling Her Eyes...
I worked with a crazy girl who was an aspiring “actress". She claimed to have health problems and would fake passing out in front of groups of people whenever she felt wasn’t getting enough attention. It always made me smile how she’d dramatically roll her eyes before dropping to the floor—and how she miraculously always managed to land safely.
What an obnoxious attention hog!
27. Shut Your Face, Grandma!
My grandmother always has to make everything about herself. Always. Literally everything, no matter the person or situation. And if the convo ever switches to where it’s briefly not about her, she gets visibly annoyed and you can see the gears turning in her head as she tries to figure out how to get the focus back onto her.
She constantly re-tells stories that she’s already told thousands of times about back when she was younger if she can’t think of anything recent. If I have to hear one more time about how she was prom queen back in 1951, or valedictorian of her ten-person eighth-grade class, or how everyone loves her down at the grocery store, I swear I’m gonna lose it!
28. Wait Your Turn
On the day of my wedding, my sister spent the entire reception wailing about how it wasn’t fair that I was the one who was getting married first. We were both well under 25 at the time, and she took another nine years to meet a decent fellow.
29. What a Selfish Purrr-son
My roommate's cat passed on last week. When she told her coworkers about it, one lady proceeded to start telling a story about a cat that she once knew—that never even lived with her—and about what it was like on her when it perished five years ago. She got so worked up that she started crying, and the entire office started consoling the coworker instead of my roommate—whose cat had just died the day before!
Unbelievable…
30. Picture Perfect
Everyone on social media who posts the caption, "Hey guys, am I doing this right?" followed by a picture of something awesome, is a huge attention hog. Don’t lie—you all know someone like that!
31. Wardrobe Malfunctions
The biggest attention hog that I ever met is my sister-in-law. At our wedding, she did everything she could to steal the attention away from her sister (i.e. the bride). She wore a dress that she’d had altered to be both extremely low cut and extremely short-skirted. Then, whenever no one was paying her any attention, she kept "accidentally" dropping things so that she'd have to bend over to pick them up.
32. I Told You I’d Do It!
Somebody at my school once threatened to kill themselves, then pretended that they actually attempted to go through with it by walking around with fake bandages the next day like it was a matter of pride. Ugh.
33. You’ll Never Guess Where I Was!
For attention, my brother once pretended that he wanted to kill himself. My family took him to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation anyway, just to be safe. The doctors determined that he was perfectly fine. Nevertheless, he kept his hospital bracelet on for about a month so that everyone at his school would see it.
34. Keep a Song in Your Heart
I used to work with a woman who was a pretty good singer. The problem was that this talent went to her head. As a result, she would constantly go around singing in everybody's face after proudly announcing what a good singer she was. It got very annoying, very fast.
35. All You Need Is Love
In my opinion, the biggest attention hog of all time was the guy who shot John Lennon. He had no real reason for doing it, he was just a deranged fan who basically wanted to become famous. In doing so, he deprived the entire world of one of the most beloved musicians of all time—and deprived a perfectly good and peaceful man of the second half of his life.
36. Two Events for the Price of One
My uncle is an attention hog to the extreme. Even at my grandmother’s funeral, he couldn’t just let it be about her. He decided to get married—yes, to literally get married—to his trailer park trash fiancee...in front of his mother’s casket during the viewing! Yes, you read that correctly. I wish I could make something like that up.
It was not announced, nor was it planned or talked about with the rest of the family. He simply rolled into the church with his own priest and his nutjob of a fiancee in a wedding dress. They walked up and stood hand in hand in front of her casket as the entire church stared at them with their jaws on the floor. How do you react to something like that?
He then yelled out, “I know this is sudden, but I wanted to make sure that my mother saw me and twatface get married. I know this is what she would have wanted". They then proceeded to have a three-minute speed service wedding. That low life, piece of garbage couldn’t even let his mother be the center of attention at her own funeral??
I don't even know how someone could look themselves in the mirror again after something like that.
37. Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children??!!
I have an acquaintance who posts something along the lines of, "Hey, look at what my kid did today! AREN'T MY CHILDREN ADORABLE?!" on Facebook pretty much every single day. No offense to the children, but I’d say mama is a bit of an attention hog…
38. The Girl Who Cried Epilepsy
The biggest attention hog that I ever met was the girl in my college class who found out that my good friend had epilepsy, and couldn’t stand the idea of someone other than herself receiving sympathy for something. So, she started regularly doing these exaggerated tremor gestures and pretending that she had epilepsy too.
She then began to fake full-on seizures all the time for all of the years that she was there with me, which was a huge pain in the butt because I would have to play along and treat them like real ones. She even pulled this once during a power outage, for a chance at the most attention possible. She did it so often that it got to the point where a 9-1-1 dispatcher once hung up on someone calling it in because they knew it was this girl.
39. A Shocking Report
By far the worst attention-seeking ploy I have ever seen someone attempt was when a girl at my school claimed that she was assaulted and that the guy got sent to prison for it. She went around showing everyone a paper copy of the police report—but it just seemed to look odd to me for some reason. I ended up Googling the case number and discovered that she had photoshopped her name onto a report of some other person’s assault case while completely making her own story up.
Everyone I know cut all ties with her after that. What a psycho!
40. The Silent Treatment
I knew a girl who pretended to have cancer in high school. Only her best friends realized that she was full it. The rest of us believed her and showered her with sympathy and attention. We were all shocked beyond belief when it came out that she had been faking it all along. Today, none of us have spoken to her in over four years.
41. A Crafty Wait to Hog the Spotlight
My sister brought a bunch of her homemade crafts to show off at a family dinner that was supposed to be to celebrate my engagement. The whole thing was caught on film.
42. Finding a Common Interest
A girl who I lived with in college once got herself hit by a car on purpose—just to try and gain the attention of her crush, who had recently been hit by a van. That girl wasn’t just an attention hog, she was all kinds of weird!
43. The World Does Not Revolve Around the Greenback
I was on a tour of Europe with my first wife and her mother. I believe we were in France and mother-in-law was really angry that stores wouldn't take her dollars. A few places (large department stores) would do a dollar exchange at the cash register, meaning that if she was buying 30 Euros of something and the exchange rate was 30 Euros = 50 dollars, they would take her $100 bill, convert it on the spot to the equivalent in Euros (in this case 60 Euros), give her the purse, and then the change of 30 Euros.
She was furious, thought she was going to be ripped off, made a huge scene, and wanted to call law enforcement, the US consulate, and 9-1-1, which isn’t even the emergency number in France. She wanted to pay in US dollars and get change in US dollars. The best part of the story? Back in the US, she worked retail at Macy’s. So I ask her, “When French people come into your store, would you take their Euros?”
Her reply: “Why should I? That's America, we are American, we use dollars; why can't they learn to use dollars just like they learned our language?” She was totally serious. Yes, she was not that bright.
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