They say love makes the world go round, but a crush, especially one who doesn’t reciprocate your googly-eyes of affection, can quickly turn into a dizzying chase. We’ve all been hopelessly head-over-heels for someone who stomped all over our hearts with spiked shoes, at least once in our lives. But in the process of our infatuations, we have all transformed into better, cooler, more exaggerated versions of ourselves, doing everything from wearing makeup to dotting our ‘i’s with hearts to knowing 10 different dance styles and even learning how to speak their native language.
While there’s no denying that most of us are guilty of some crazy shit for a crush, we tried to understand just how many hoops people are willing to jump through for this fleeting but all-consuming attraction. VICE spoke to some people who bare all about the craziest things they’ve done to impress:
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“Told her that I had cancer, with only limited time on this planet, and that nothing would make it more worthwhile than hanging out with her.”—Siddharth*, 33
“I helped my crush shoplift boots for the girl he was actually dating.”—P.D, 21
“My school crush was already dating someone else. So, to get them to break up and increase my chances with her, I started a rumour that she was having a scene with our much-older but attractive teacher, and the whole school believed it.”—Abhishek*, 28
“I pretended to be someone else just to talk to her. It worked for like 10 days.”—Omkar, 20
“I cleaned up his puke.”—Sharon, 20
“I coloured my hair red because my crush mentioned in passing that he was into redheads.”—Harmony*, 22
“I wasn’t into pink Floyd, but my crush loved them. I memorised all the lyrics to an entire album and learnt the history of the band just so I could drop facts and make him think I was cool. I got over the crush pretty quickly, but the love for the band stayed.”—Aashna, 23
“Uploaded photos on Facebook of a fake party—that is, it never happened—with me skimpily dressed up with my friends, just to impress a crush. It’s so sad in retrospect, because we did things like holding deodorant bottles pretending it’s beer.”—Rachita*, 29
“I forced myself to suffer through four seasons of Sons of Anarchy even though I hated the show, so I could dictate the lines in front of my crush, who loved it.”—Manisha, 27
“Snorted a line of MD for the first time to show him that I knew how to party.”—Mahima*, 21
“Went on a train last minute without a ticket to meet a boy, and ended up standing next to the bathroom and sleepily dodging the Ticket Collector all night.”—Nidhi, 29
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