Why do they exaggerate?

Why is it that people exaggerate so much? Asks James Henry.

We of course all know about Cart's silly exaggerations about visitors, boats and volunteers, and now piling it on by the massive number of volunteer hours—which sounds more impressive than its somewhat suspect number of actual volunteers.

Keeping numbers low

The opposite, attempting to keep numbers low, as in the case of the Chinese about its coronavirus outbreak, telling it was just a few thousand (as was repeated in narrowboatworld referring to bats) but this morning it had leapt to 28,339 with 565 deaths when it was realised they were fooling no one, and being from China even that is suspect, very suspect.

Even the BBC main television news exaggerating the building of the hospital 'in eight days' when anyone could calculate in was 10 as the more reliable publishers told.

It seems pointless to me, as they are always found out and it makes themselves look silly—that in fact they are.