Why would Steve Rannazzisi or anyone lie about surviving 9/11?
Steve Rannazzisi
Steve Rannazzisi  didn't sound like someone putting on a show.
"I was sort of the party starter of Merrill Lynch "  he  said in an interview in 2009. "Until our building got hit with a plane."
Without tears or theatrics   Rannazzisi  went on to explain that  he  was working on the 54th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11  2001.  He  felt the impact of a plane ramming into the first tower and ran outside to see what was happening. When the building began to crumble  "I just started f_ing booking it "  he  told Maron.  He  stopped just in time to turn around and see the second tower collapse.
When  he  and  his  fiancÃ©e â who was supposed to be working in the towers but was still on the subway when the planes hit â got home  they decided to leave the city for Los Angeles  a decision  Rannazzisi  often credited with jump-starting  his  career.
"I still have dreams of like  you know those falling dreams "  Rannazzisi  said.
But  Rannazzisi 's account was no more real than those dreams. This week  the New York Times uncovered that the 37-year-old comedian  a star on the FXX show "The League " was working several miles from the site of the attacks that morning. Confronted with this story  he issued an apologetic series of tweets Wednesday.
 Rannazzisi  isn't even the most famous person to have publicly pretended to have survived 9/11.
In fact  to Angelo J. Gugliemo Jr.   Rannazzisi 's account sounded a lot like one he had heard from his friend Tania Head  the former president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network. Like  Rannazzisi   Head spoke of working for Merrill Lynch on the morning of 9/11. Like  Rannazzisi   she said she had a fiancÃ© who worked in the towers (though he was killed in the attacks).
Like  Rannazzisi   Head wasn't telling the truth.
Though some lies have obvious tangible benefits for the teller  the impulse that drove Head  Rannazzisi and others to make up their stories is more complicated. Neither Head nor  Rannazzisi  wrote books or sought compensation from a survivor's fund. Neither gained any kind of obvious advantage for framing themselves as a victim.
Head  who still hasn't admitted to fabricating her story despite evidence that she was taking classes in Spain on that day  won't say why she made it up. According to his tweets   Rannazzisi  doesn't know.
Psychologist Christopher Chabris  who studies false memory  said that  Rannazzisi 's story isn't a case of someone mistakenly remembering something that didn't really happen. It's about inserting one's self into a narrative that's already getting a lot of sympathy.
The psychology behind that explanation for liars is as complicated as the stories they tell. Neither  Rannazzisi  nor Head is quite a pathological liar â there's no evidence that they have a chronic compulsion to tell falsehoods  other than this one big one. Neither do they appear to have been suffering from false memories (as some psychologists argued about Brian Williams  who inaccurately claimed to have been shot down while reporting in Iraq).  Rannazzisi  tweeted that  he  wished for many years  he  could take back  his  story  knowing that it was untrue.
[TGT] didn't sound like someone putting on a show.
"I was sort of the party starter of Merrill Lynch "  he  said in an interview in 2009. "Until our building got hit with a plane."
Without tears or theatrics    [TGT] went on to explain that   [TGT]   was working on the 54th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11  2001.   [TGT]   felt the impact of a plane ramming into the first tower and ran outside to see what was happening. When the building began to crumble  "I just started f_ing booking it "   [TGT]   told Maron.   [TGT]   stopped just in time to turn around and see the second tower collapse.
When   [TGT]   and   [TGT]   fiancÃ©e â who was supposed to be working in the towers but was still on the subway when the planes hit â got home  they decided to leave the city for Los Angeles  a decision   [TGT] often credited with jump-starting   [TGT]   career.
"I still have dreams of like  you know those falling dreams "  Rannazzisi  said.
But  Rannazzisi 's account was no more real than those dreams. This week  the New York Times uncovered that the 37-year-old comedian  a star on the FXX show "The League " was working several miles from the site of the attacks that morning. Confronted with this story  he issued an apologetic series of tweets Wednesday.
  [TGT] isn't even the most famous person to have publicly pretended to have survived 9/11.
In fact  to Angelo J. Gugliemo Jr.    [TGT]  's account sounded a lot like one he had heard from his friend Tania Head  the former president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network. Like   [TGT] Head spoke of working for Merrill Lynch on the morning of 9/11. Like  Rannazzisi   she said she had a fiancÃ© who worked in the towers (though he was killed in the attacks).
Like  Rannazzisi   Head wasn't telling the truth.
Though some lies have obvious tangible benefits for the teller  the impulse that drove Head  Rannazzisi and others to make up their stories is more complicated. Neither Head nor  Rannazzisi  wrote books or sought compensation from a survivor's fund. Neither gained any kind of obvious advantage for framing themselves as a victim.
Head  who still hasn't admitted to fabricating her story despite evidence that she was taking classes in Spain on that day  won't say why she made it up. According to his tweets   Rannazzisi  doesn't know.
Psychologist Christopher Chabris  who studies false memory  said that  Rannazzisi 's story isn't a case of someone mistakenly remembering something that didn't really happen. It's about inserting one's self into a narrative that's already getting a lot of sympathy.
The psychology behind that explanation for liars is as complicated as the stories they tell. Neither  Rannazzisi  nor Head is quite a pathological liar â there's no evidence that they have a chronic compulsion to tell falsehoods  other than this one big one. Neither do they appear to have been suffering from false memories (as some psychologists argued about Brian Williams  who inaccurately claimed to have been shot down while reporting in Iraq).  Rannazzisi  tweeted that  he  wished for many years  he  could take back  his  story  knowing that it was untrue.