A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

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The magical world of fake Internet quotes

Online it is full of impressive quotes, only a lot of them are made up

The magical world of fake Internet quotes Online it is full of impressive quotes, only a lot of them are made up

On the Internet, it’s very common to come across images featuring quotes attributed to famous people, even though these quotes were never actually said by them. The phenomenon is so widespread that it has spawned a sort of online subculture that mocks it. A prime example is the meme showing former president Abraham Lincoln, who lived in the 19th century, next to the caption: “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet just because there’s a picture with a quote.” But why is there a tendency to always use the same historical or cultural figures as the supposed authors of quotes? The online magazine Dirt offered an interesting interpretation a few years ago: since many people are first introduced to famous figures through the quotes circulating online, they’re more likely to associate them with these seemingly wise sayings – even if the statements in question were never actually made by them. Moreover, quotes signed by figures perceived as universally respected or at least non-divisive tend to be seen as more credible.

Lincoln, for example, is considered a cross-party figure, appreciated by almost everyone, and is therefore seen as the ideal author for impactful quotes. Supporting this proliferation of false quotes are also many specialized online portals, such as Brainy Quote, Quote Wise, Search Quotes, and Quotespedia, which still stand out today for offering massive databases of quotes attributed to famous figures – often without any clear sources. “These portals are the inevitable outcome of outsourcing knowledge to technology,” wrote the American magazine Slate. “The superficial democratization of knowledge isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means that to include the perfect Schopenhauer quote in your paper, you don’t need to have read a single page of Schopenhauer – and you certainly have no way of verifying whether the quote actually comes from the stated source.” These kinds of websites, Slate concludes, “offer a response to the growing appetite for a certain kind of ready-to-consume culture.”

Another particularly representative case of this dynamic involves a character who might not seem closely linked to the phenomenon of false quotes at first glance: Winnie the Pooh. And yet, the teddy bear created by British author Alan Alexander Milne has also become the unintentional author of many phrases he never actually said. The phenomenon has become so widespread that on e-commerce platforms like Etsy, one can find all kinds of items decorated with supposed quotes by Winnie the Pooh, most of which have no connection to the original work. This has led to the creation of a site dedicated to verifying these quotes, called Pooh Misquoted. The phrases attributed to the yellow bear often have a very generic and sentimental tone, which, without knowing the actual publications about Winnie the Pooh, makes it difficult to determine whether they really come from the original character. A notable example is: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

@willowrosehite

How lucky am i to be alive

Second Chances - Gregory Alan Isakov

The statement, as evocative as it may be, has nothing to do with Winnie the Pooh: it actually comes from The Other Side of the Mountain, a 1970s film based on the true story of skier Jill Kinmont, who was paralyzed after a crash on the slopes. Another well-known case is the often-shared dialogue between Pooh and Piglet that reads: “How do you spell love?” “You don’t spell it, you feel it.” This phrase also doesn’t appear in the books or in the most well-known animated versions of the character. Anyone truly familiar with Milne’s work knows that Winnie the Pooh’s language was simple and straightforward, never pompous or excessively philosophical. The reflective or melancholic tones of many modern quotes attributed to him are, in fact, completely foreign to the spirit with which the English author originally conceived the character in the 1920s. The only reliable sources for correctly attributing a quote to Winnie the Pooh remain the two volumes written by Milne – Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) – in addition to the works produced later by Disney: thirteen films and four television series, the first of which dates back to 1966. In none of these appearances does the character use elaborate language or reflect on grand existential themes such as love or death, which are often present in the false quotes circulating online.