I feel no need to lie to anyone. I'm proud of my achievement. I'm honest about how I spend my time (however the hell I want to). I figure if anyone takes a tone about it, they're just jealous.
But I'm a bit older than some of you (I was 49 when I retired), my kid is out of college, and I have a receding hairline and a good bit of gray in my beard. So I guess it's a bit easier for people to fathom a retired 50-year-old than a retired 35-year-old.
I lie.
Here's the thing that took me way too long to realize. People are generally self interested, think they're smarter than average, give themselves way too much credit for their various wins, and pawn off all responsibility for their various failures on other people, and are invested beyond any rational degree in their own ego mindset.
In line with your point, To say that you retired at 32, regardless of the circumstances will invoke a good deal of jealousy and vitriol in a good majority of people. Look at the comments section on *every single* FIRE article. They simply don't care that you rented a room in a home until you were 31, hadn't eaten out in 2 years, and forewent a car, cable, smart phone etc.
If you did it, and they didn't, then unless you had some sort of fortuitous luck you are head and shoulders doing better than them, more long sighted, and to put it bluntly smarter. So therefore you must have had some fortuitous luck in their mind. Since they've already decided that, that is the angle I play. To not do so will merely anger them, and not change their mind. And in my experience (what took me to the 'too long to learn' point...) agreeing with people's mindset is far more valuable in making them useful to you than trumpeting from every roof top that "I retired at 32 and you can too!".
No no. When I'm going through customs to the US with no job, I say I have money, and was lucky/fortunate to land a great job, and then was unfortunate to get laid off, which put me in a really fortunate position to take things slow.
No sir I was not smart. I was lucky. That's the end of it. The only difference between me and you is the musings of the great goddess fortuna.
Now, if I don't need something from someone, and they annoy me, then the "you're stupid and I'm not, that's why you get up at 7am to work, while I'm still getting drunk till 7am" scythe comes out. You may be proud of what you've accomplished. A good many people hate you for it and believe to the depths of their hearts it should have been them.