Fake Cry
How do you feel when you see someone crying? You probably want to do anything you can to help him or her feel better. The act of crying elicits an empathetic response in many people, so if you know how to do it at will, you have a certain power. While fake crying is never something you should abuse, the resourceful are smart to make it part of their repertoire. This skill is sure to get you far in people's hearts... as long as you're convincing!
Contents
Steps
Think of Something Sad
- Close your eyes and imagine a sad event. This method is used by many actors who are able identify so strongly with the sad situation they are portraying that they cry with tears that seem to flow from true emotions. You can emulate this technique by simply thinking of something very sad, so sad that it makes tears spring to your eyes. It's different for every person, but here are a few examples:
- The death of someone quite close to you.
- A really bad breakup
- Something you aren't able to talk about with people
- Being bullied
- A Sad Moment You have been through.
- A horrible event that happened.
- The death of a pet or something close to you.
- Old sad memories or someone you really miss.
- The thought of summer ending and the next school year beginning.
- Block out other thoughts and focus. In order for this to work, you have to really focus on the sad thought and temporarily convince yourself that it's true. Think of the inevitability of this event occurring; if it hasn't yet, it will. All good things come to an end, and life is as sad as it is happy. Focus, focus, until you feel tears begin to flood your eyelids.
- Crinkle your brow and frown. Composing your face with the sad expression it takes on when you naturally cry will cause you to feel sadder.
- Droop your head down a bit. This will give you the appearance of being sad, but since your face is obscured, you'll have a bit of time to get the tears going without your face being so closely scrutinized. You don't want people to see your face go from blank to bawling in an instant - they'll be suspicious.
- Pause for a few moments to let the tears collect. Don't open your eyes yet; wait until you've got a good collection of tears under your closed lids. A slight dribble of water could be mistaken for sweat instead of tears. Continue dwelling on the sad thought.
- Release the flood. You'll know the method worked when you feel your throat constrict and have the urge to let the tears flow. Open your eyes so that they stream down your cheeks. Remember to keep the expression on your face downcast and sad. Try to hold onto the thought for as long as you need to, until you're finished crying. Don't get too carried away, though - the point is to fake cry, not get completely overcome with emotion! Stay in control.
Open Your Eyes
- Open your eyes wide. This technique is good if you just need to look a little teary, but you don't necessarily need a waterworks display. As the air dries the surface of your eyes, your eyelids will want to blink to moisten them. Don't let them close. The longer you hold them open, the more tears you'll produce.
- Fan your eyes to produce more wind and dry your eyes out faster.
- If you're in a dry, dusty area, even better. Your eyes will produce tears to clear the dust away.
- Be careful not to let anything dangerous get in your eye. If the wind is whipping sand around, for example, you could cause eye damage.
- Hold them open if necessary. If your impulse to blink is unbearably strong, you can hold your eyes open with your fingers. This doesn't exactly look natural, so you probably don't want to use this technique if you're trying to actually fool someone with your fake crying.
- Don't hold your eyes open manually for more than a few seconds; again, your eyelids blink to protect your eyes, and you don't want to prevent this reflex from happening to the point where you could cause yourself harm.
- Be sure not to touch your eyeball with your fingers; eyes can easily become infected when they come into contact with dirt and bacteria found on hands.
- Close your eyes tight to push out the tears. After you've held your eyes open and let the tears collect a bit, close your eyes to squeeze them out. You should have enough water to produce one or two good-sized drops.
Use Menthol
- Get some methylated chapstick or chest rub. This petroleum jelly-textured substance is sold at drugstores, and is commonly used by people with colds to help open the sinuses and nostrils.
- Put some rub on a clean tissue. You can put some of the rub on a tissue well before you plan to fake cry. Place it in a plastic baggie and put it in your pocket or purse so that it's accessible when the moment arrives.
- Rub a dab under each eye. When it's time to cry, pretend that you are overcome with emotion, then use the tissue to apply just a little of the mentholated rub under the bottom lash line of each eye. Its proximity to your eyeballs will cause your eyes to begin producing tears. Be very careful not to get any of the rub inside your eyes, as this will cause pain and a burning sensation.
- Keep the tissue near your eyes until they begin producing tears. It may take 30 seconds or so. In the meantime, make crying noises.
- The mentholated rub has the added benefit of looking shiny on your skin, so even if you don't produce a lot of tears, your eyes will look wet.
- Take a number of deep breaths to also make it sound like you're crying.
Eat a Hot Pepper
- Get a fresh habanero or jalapeno pepper. If you're extremely sensitive to peppers, a seedless jalapeno might be strong enough to cause your eyes to start watering. If you're a fire eater, you'll need a hot one.
- Use gloves when you handle hot peppers. It's well known that touching a hot pepper and then touching your eye will cause irritation and tearing. This means you could skip the next step and simply touch the inside of a pepper and put your finger in your eye, but the pain probably isn't worth it.
- If you don't have fresh peppers on hand, habanero or another hot sauce might do the trick.
- Chopping a white onion is another good substitute for hot peppers. Just make sure it's white, since this type of onion emits the chemicals that cause people to cry.
- Eat the pepper right before you're ready to cry. Remember that a little goes a long way, especially when it comes to habaneros. Eat just a little chunk of the pepper, letting it roll over your tongue and against the roof of your mouth before swallowing. If you don't feel your face turning hot, eat some more.
- As always, furrow your brow and frown to make your fake crying act seem believable. In this case you should keep your mouth closed so the person for whom you're performing doesn't see the pepper chunks inside.
- Try not to make your chewing motions obvious. If necessary, you may need to chew the pepper before you face the person watching you "cry."
- Discreetly eat more pepper to continue the act. If your face stops producing sweat and tears before you're ready for the scene to end, find a way to eat another chunk of pepper. You might cover your mouth with a handkerchief while you bring the piece to your mouth, or excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and eat it there before returning with fresh tears.
Use Eye Drops
- Squirt eye drops in your eyes. Pull the skin below your eye down with one finger, and use your other hand to squirt some drops into your bottom lid. This method produces tears that look quite real, but getting the timing right is tricky, since you have to bring the bottle to your eye right before you want the tears to flow. It's a great method to use if you're fake crying for a photo shoot, but it's not very effective if you're trying to fool someone in person.
- Affect the right expression. Since you don't have to work hard for the tears using this method, you'll need to make an extra effort to look like you're crying. Be sure that your eyes, forehead, and mouth look like they do when you cry.
- If appropriate, try "crying" tears of joy instead of tears of sadness when you use the eye drops method. This way you won't have to work as hard to look sad; you may find it easier to look ecstatically happy.
- If you can find an excuse to turn away for a minute, put the drops in your eyes when the person for whom you're performing can't see your face. You'll have to be quite sly to pull this off.
Tips
- Yawn again and again, until you feel tears come to your eyes.
- Nonchalantly hold your eyes open for as long as you can until they really start to water, then shut them really tightly to let the tears flow.
- Make yourself yawn, and try to hold your mouth shut.
- Listening to sad music can help bring emotions to the surface.
- Breathe in and hold your breath for about 10 seconds then breathe out.
- Blinking quickly aids in tear production and should be considered. Take note that this will not work by itself.
- To let the tears come out, make your eyes burn.
- Do not often use this technique to get your way. If you are considerably desperate to do so, fake crying may help, but using it too often is a sign that you are unassertive.
- Sometimes when you do a handstand against the wall for 10 seconds, and come down and look in a mirror, you look like you've been crying for 3 hours.
- Think of a sad event in your life and then hold your eyes open for 30 seconds.
- Shake in unison with crying noises.
Warnings
- Make sure you do not abuse this technique and that you do not use this to manipulate people you care about. Once they find out you are faking, they will stop believing you.
- Be careful with the mentholated salve method because if you get it directly in your eye, it will be extremely painful and may damage your eyesight. Make sure you wash it off afterwards.
- Once people find out you're faking everything and your tears aren't real, you will not be believed any more, and may even get in trouble.
- This also can happen when you're lying about someone (at your school for example) and you're trying to have someone else get the blame for hurting you.
Things You'll Need
- Methylated salve.
- Tissues.
- Eye drops.
- A hot pepper or white onions.
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