About: Snowball Lie   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

A lie or deception that takes on a life of its own, spiraling out of the control of the ones who started it and often mutating in the process. What distinguishes a Snowball Lie from a Fawlty Towers Plot lie is that it attracts other characters to keep it alive and expand it, either by explicitly furthering the deception for their own purposes or by sincerely buying into it and carrying it on in the honest belief that it is real -- or to avoid being embarrassed by their "ignorance" or "inexperience". An Invented Individual is a Snowball Lie based around a fictional person.

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rdfs:label
  • Snowball Lie
rdfs:comment
  • A lie or deception that takes on a life of its own, spiraling out of the control of the ones who started it and often mutating in the process. What distinguishes a Snowball Lie from a Fawlty Towers Plot lie is that it attracts other characters to keep it alive and expand it, either by explicitly furthering the deception for their own purposes or by sincerely buying into it and carrying it on in the honest belief that it is real -- or to avoid being embarrassed by their "ignorance" or "inexperience". An Invented Individual is a Snowball Lie based around a fictional person.
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abstract
  • A lie or deception that takes on a life of its own, spiraling out of the control of the ones who started it and often mutating in the process. What distinguishes a Snowball Lie from a Fawlty Towers Plot lie is that it attracts other characters to keep it alive and expand it, either by explicitly furthering the deception for their own purposes or by sincerely buying into it and carrying it on in the honest belief that it is real -- or to avoid being embarrassed by their "ignorance" or "inexperience". Usually a Snowball Lie will eventually grow to a point where it will collapse, either under the weight of its internal contradictions or after some insightful person Pulls The Thread on it. Sometimes, though, a perfect Snowball Lie will show no signs of ever stopping, and its creators will find themselves forced to kill it -- with varying degrees of success, and varying degrees of repercussions to themselves. In particularly ironic situations, the Snowball Lie can become an unstoppable juggernaut that displaces the truth and becomes a new "truth" in its own right. An Invented Individual is a Snowball Lie based around a fictional person. Compare Gossip Evolution and Seamless Spontaneous Lie. Examples of Snowball Lie include:
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