Exaggeration: Effects

Just as the causes of exaggeration are abundant, so are the effects. While exaggeration is our own little effective way to "show" and not "tell", or rather "tell" and not "say", it is also crippling to our society. Exaggeration can raise our expectations, cause anxiety and worry, create panic, and end lives, even, if used incorrectly. The worst effect of exaggeration would probably be the fact that it creates anxiety or worry. How many of us can say that someone has never come up to us and said "Oh man, the math test today is so hard, I studied for like 2 hours last night and I'm pretty sure I flunked". Well, if someone tells you that in the morning, you're going to be worried about that test all day, and not only distract you from your other classes and possibly doing your homework in your study hall, but will also lead you to only be able to think "Oh man, I'm dead, I'm going to fail this." Exaggeration can put one in a negative mind set, so instead of saying "Ok, I'm ready for this test", you're most likely thinking "Oh God, I don't remember any of this!" Now say you're finally in your desk, and the test gets handed out, and it's one of the easiest things you've ever done. Now you've spent all day worrying, not focusing in class, and instead of getting homework done in study hall, you were busy studying for a test that you would have done fine on without studying.

Another effect of exaggerating is that it can ruin things. Either people can hype them up too much, or criticize them into oblivion. Both of these things are devastating to society. Say you're really excited to see a movie, you don't know much about it, but you're still excited. Then your friend sees it and is like "Oh man, that movie stunk! It was so bad, the special effects were so fake and the acting was terrible and I'll NEVER see THAT movie again!", well, chances are you'll not go see that film. What if, though, it turns out that that becomes your favorite film, or makes you realize something important about your life. The same goes the opposite direction, what if someone hypes up something so much, and then when you finally experience whatever it is that was being hyped up and it's not nearly what you thought, but, had someone not hyped it up, then you may have enjoyed it a good amount. Comments like these can ruin experiences that we may have otherwise genuinely enjoyed.

As far-fetched as it sounds, exaggeration has the potential to end lives. At some point in your life, you or someone you know, may or may not be planning a sky-diving trip. So you decide to do some research on it by asking around, and the first person you ask, who you trust a good amount, says "oh yeah, there's like a zero percent chance of anything bad happening when you sky dive, trust me, you'd probably have a better chance of having a whale fall out of the sky!" and then you do go skydiving, with the company that your "friend" recommended, and one member of your party's chute doesn't open. It's only after the fact that you do the research you initially intended to and you discover that the company your friend recommended to you has a very unimpressive record, with someone dying once a month with them. Had you known that, you would not have used that company, but because of someones believable exaggeration, you did, and someone was paralyzed. Now, these are very rare situations and you'll probably never encounter them in your life, and if you do encounter one, well, you won't exactly live to tell the tale ;-)

Further, what is an effect of all the above effects, is that you may be brandished a liar. If someone believes your exaggeration, and then what you said is wrong, that person is less likely to trust you, and tell other people to not trust you. If that trend continues we will end up having an (even more) untrusting society. In this day and age, there is not much more to depend on other than trust, so that is something very important to us.