I noticed that sometimes native speakers use the present tense when retelling their experience.

i use present tense when i'm telling an anecdote and hope to make the listener laugh, or get indignant on my behalf, or anything like that. it's my storytelling format. i use past tense in work and other formal settings when the purpose is just to report what happened or what i did.

The really important thing is consistency. Using present tense for something that happened in the past may not be technically correct, but sometimes it makes the story more exciting. Also, consider that "So, I'm at mcdonald's, right?" is one of the most banger ways you can start a story about mcdonald's. Obviously, unless you're at mcdonald's currently, the speaker must be talking about something in the past so our brains just automatically translate it to past tense.

Kind of hard to describe, but IMO present tense is used when you want the listener to imagine like their experiencing the event as if they were you. Compare: "I went to the store to get some milk. I got the milk from the shelf and noticed it was expired." "So, I go to the store, right? I was trying to get some milk. And when I grab it from the shelf, I noticed it's expired."

this goes back at least six-hundred years so yeah, you can get away with it. and consistency is important but you are allowed to shift your time perspective around just like you move your place around. sometimes people switch from past tense after the setup and find a natural place to move to the present, like you were a narrator talking about it and now we've cut to the scene where we're watching it for ourselves.

There's almost an implied "imagine this as I say it" before you start into present tense. It's like reading a book or watching a movie, it's more interesting if it feels like it's happening currently.

Historical present.

It’s a story telling technique, you use it when you tell a story and want to engage the listeners, it’s to make them feel like they were there and they can laugh, cry and be amazed along the way. We do this in my native language as well.

Present tense storytelling of past events is very common and accepted. It’s also hard to do. I admire people who can tell a past tense story in the present tense. It’s more engaging, and it draws the audience in, but if you make one mistake and throw back into the past, it confuses everyone (including you – the speaker).

This drives me mad, especially in historical TV documentaries when the narrator keeps flipping between the time of the story and the present. It’s really easy to get lost. It’s like “King Charles is having an extra-marital affair with an orange-seller”. I think “what will Camilla think of that?” and then remember that the king in this period was a different Charles.

Telling a past story in present tense signals to the listener that you are starting a story. It implies that you're not just going to rotely report events, but you are going to build a narrative or anecdote, with a beginning, middle, and end. There may be a punchline or surprise conclusion at the end. If I say, "I went to the store to buy milk, but they were out of milk. While I was there, I met a celebrity." That doesn't sort of mentally set them up for the punchline of, "I met a celebrity." If I say, "You'll never believe what happened to me yesterday. So I go to the store to get milk, and I walk up to the dairy case, and they're totally out of milk because the snow storm is coming and everybody bought milk. And this other guy is standing next to me and he's like, 'No milk, huh,' and I'm like, 'I know. Sucks.' And then I realize, it's Johnny Depp!" The whole time I'm telling that story, you're waiting for the punchline. If I was in the past tense, you might be bored because why the heck am I talking about milk. But when I tell it in the present tense, it signals that I'm storytelling and gets you more engaged.

The important thing is they usually let you know in the first sentence ‘When’ they are talking about. ‘So, there I was, last Thursday, standing at the bus stop, when’ and then the rest of the story is in present tense

It’s a story telling technique, and it’s hundreds of years old. Mostly used in the informal register.

It’s extremely common to use present tense to retell anecdotes, especially when trying to convey certain feelings or when the story is surprising or strange (but it’s done with other stories too). Some people will likely do it more than others, but yeah, we do use the present to tell anecdotes (not always present simple, but that is probably the most common). It’s used to help engage the listener in the story more, which is probably part of why it’s often used with surprising or unusual stories rather than mundane ones. It helps to add drama and suspense. You can hear an example of how this can naturally be done in the song We Don’t Talk About Bruno from Encanto from Disney, for example. The character, Peppa, gives background information in the simple past, with the ongoing action (getting ready) in the past continuous. Then when the story really starts, she switches to present simple. This is a natural storytelling technique, and natives do it subconsciously rather regularly.

I would use the present simple and continuous to tell a story in the past that I think is exciting and I want you to engage

It’s like a tv show when they have “flashbacks.” When someone is speaking in past tense, it’s setting up the flashback. When they switch to present tense, you’re in the flashback. (I’m currently binging Lost if you can’t tell)

We do the same thing in English literally lol “ so I’m in the club right, I’m talking to this girl and I say, you look fine, I get her number, we make out.. dude it was amazing” See.all that was present tense even tho I’m talking abt a story from the past

It’s intentional or subconscious, as a dramatic narrative device. It adds immediacy, and if the story is intense it just comes out that way because it feels immediate to the person doing the telling. Like, if the person telling the story was really impacted by it it feels immediate to them so that’s how they tell it. In fiction, it’s done on purpose to keep the reader feeling closer to the action. Eg. “So I’m running down the hall, screaming for my dog to put it down, and he just leaps out the open window with the entire rotisserie chicken in his mouth. I couldn’t believe it. I’m still reeling.”

A linguistics podcast episode (I think it was one of Ben Zimmer’s, I can’t remember which) illustrates this with [Kramer’s bus story on Seinfeld](https://youtu.be/cmlCAhrAWYw?si=-8JHvOV9Rc3PR4aH). I think it’s a great example of switching between the past and present to tell a story that happened in the past, in an immersive way.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we also switch back and forth, which is funny. To use another person’s example, it might be, “I was making a cake when I realized I needed more milk. So, I decided to get some from the store. I go in, reach up and grab the milk, and then I see that it’s expired!” Others have already mentioned that it’s used to place the listener into this story. By starting in the past tense and switching to present tense it also tells the listener that the story is just being built, and at the most engaging moments they will switch to present tense to place you there.

I also just saw ‘not_just_an_AI’s comment about this and want to confirm that if you hear someone say “So, I’m (insert any action, statement, or clause), right?” they’re a thousand percent about to tell you a story that’s beyond dramatic😭It’s used as a hook and usually includes some sort of obscure detail that the listener assumes HAS TO be relevant to the story later. “So, I’m sitting in the very back row of a Celtics game, right? “So, I’m driving home from Chicago to Detroit in probably seven inches of snow, right?”

The use of present tense in the retelling of past experiences is more vivid for the storyteller (and often the listener), hence it is a valid way to speak/write Example: "The craziest thing happened last night. So I'm walking home from the pub and I'm seeing these weird flashing lights in the sky, red and green they were. Suddenly there was this wailing sound behind me, then there's a loud bang and now there's blue flashing lights and I'm running. It's aliens I tell you, aliens" What I've described is a drunk person leaving a pub/bar, seeing a plane flying overhead then coincidentally witnessing a car crash that resulted from a high speed police chase. The switching of tenses is a result of the teller being aware that this happened in the past but then losing themself in the moment and reliving the events, albeit through an alcoholic haze

Weird, aren’t we? And we don’t use the present tense to talk about the actual present. It’s only habitual things (which probably aren’t even actually happening in the present, unless we’re instructing someone on how something is being done), news headlines, or imperatives. Just now as I was writing this, my daughter, who is playing with the dog, said “She wanted me to help her get the toy out from under the table, and what’s the first thing she does when I give it to her? She pushes it back under.” So there’s a mixed tense right there from the past to the historical present. It would have sounded perfectly fine if she’d said “what was the first thing she did when I gave it to her? She pushed it back under.” The former just has more of a “punchline” feel, as someone pointed out.

Yes, this is a fairly common thing. It has the effect of engaging the listener more in the story, as if it is happening in real time. It is only really be used for longer, more detailed stories that require a bit of attention from the listener to follow along. You would not use it for simple things like "I spoke to X and he said Y".

Most of the time people use the present tense when telling somebody a story (especially the long ones), in that way we make it seem as if the action is happening right now to involve the listeners of the story. The past tense is acceptable as well but it doesn't usually sound natural (not always) when you try to make people involved in the story. The comments have provided good examples.