What do you do when you meet someone who is a complete phantasist?

Tweet

Today I was talking to a guy and I soon realised he was actually living in some kind of phantasy world. Not sure if you will be familiar with these kind of people, but I have met a few in my life so I reckon they must be quite common. Basically he spent the whole time telling me stories that were either completely fabricated, or had a pinch of truth in them, with a big twist of exaggeration to make it more interesting or to make him sound like some kind of superhero. I think these kind of people's stories tend to follow a Hollywood film style plot, something that you would see in a movie, but you know could never actually happen in real life. They tell it with such conviction that they actually seem to believe it themselves, while you know that what they are saying is not true. The worst offenders are the ones that take plotlines from the most popular films and just put themselves in place of the hero. That's just laziness! For example one of the many stories this guy today told me today was that he dscovered he had an identical twin brother that he met for the first time while he was on holiday. They didn't know each other even existed, their parents seperated when they were very young, his dad kept him and his mum kept his brother. So they deicided to play a trick on their parents by switching places - him going to his mum's and the brother going to his dad's. I thought to myself this story sounded familiar... then it dawned on me, he's just basically told me the plot of a film I watched a few years ago called the Parent Trap! When he first started talking to me I was actually genuinely enthralled in what he was saying. Slowly the realisation set in and I was becoming more and more dissapointed, with no way of shaking this guy off, I was going to have to pretend to care for the rest of the day. When I'm in this situation I just don't know what to do. Usually I just go along with it to save their embarassment. But it annoys me because I feel if someone is lying to me then they are just wasting my time, especially when I am busy and have work to be getting on with. I also think that they must think I'm some kind of idiot for beleiving the rubbish that's coming out of their mouth. I know some people pick them up on every single detail, and tell them straight that they are lying. But my thinking is that these phantasist people are probably a bit wrong in the head so whatever you say will never change them anyway. I know he will be boring me again tomorrow so just wondered if anyone else has experienced these sort of weirdos and any tips for making it bit more bareable?