
Anatomy of a Fake Quotation - bjonathan
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/
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timr
_"He tweeted it to his 1.6 million Facebook followers, and the rest was
internet history."_

When your name becomes a verb that can be applied to your competitors'
products, is it good, or is it bad?

~~~
kristiandupont
I know that Lego spends substantial resources to avoid the term "lego"
becoming a noun simply meaning toy-brick. I guess their analysis must show
that it's a bad thing.

~~~
Empact
The trouble is one can lose their trademark protection if the trademark comes
into common use as a generic term.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark>

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rauljara
Very insightful analysis as to how quotes get mangled. I feel like the only
thing "new" about this event is how quickly it happened. The retweeted quote
is so in keeping with Dr. King's beliefs it is no surprise that so many people
would attribute it to him. In contrast with the real quote, though, it is
really clear just how much more eloquent a rhetorician Dr. King was. Every
time I read (or reread) him, I'm blown away. In my mind, the saddest thing
about this is that people who don't realize the quote isn't really a quote
might walk away with the impression that he wasn't as amazing a writer as he
was.

~~~
hugh3
_The retweeted quote is so in keeping with Dr. King's beliefs it is no
surprise that so many people would attribute it to him._

Except if you think about MLK's life you'd think "What the hell context would
this have been in? Who is this dead 'enemy' who killed 'thousands'?"

The (fake) quote does come across to me as a bit too holier-than-thou. It's a
form of cost-free conspicuous po-facedness to which you set your facebook
status to mark yourself as being morally superior to the less sophisticated
USA-USA chanting crowd. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing MLK would have
said, because MLK wasn't all that into "Hey look I'm better than you" type
announcements.

There's a scene in Return of the Jedi where the Super Star Destroyer crashes
into the Death Star. Everybody else on the bridge cheers, but Admiral Ackbar
looks sad and bows his head, acknowleding the awfulness of the loss of life
even if they _were_ evil enemies who were trying to kill everyone. The listed
quote is propagated by Ackbar wannabees with a George Lucas level view of what
being morally sophisticated looks like.

~~~
kelnos
So then how do you express the sentiment? I felt very uncomfortable hearing
about the "celebrations" occurring after bin Laden's death. How do you say
something like, "dude, death sucks, no matter who's on the receiving end of
it," without coming off as playing the moral-superiority card?

On a side note, your post has a bit of a holier-than-thou feel to it.

~~~
innes
I think it's a property of the sentiment itself, rather than the quote. But
that's just me - I like it when evil people meet their comeuppance; I thought
it was good that OBL was executed, although I'm not the air-punching, brewski
chugging type. If I were to find and post a quote indicating my sentiments, no
doubt there'd be people thinking I was a dick; it's not going to keep me awake
at night.

~~~
hugh3
My feelings were similar. On one hand it _is_ perfectly normal and natural to
be happy to see justice served at the end of a gun... we humans are social
creatures, and the desire which we have to see wrongdoers punished is a normal
and natural part of our emotional makeup.

On the other hand, as a civilized person I think that _actively_ glorying in
the death of an enemy is a bit unseemly. So I felt a bit of quiet
satisfaction, made a few pithy comments to mark the occasion, and poured
myself a glass of my most expensive whisky.

So basically in answer to the grandparent question: I think the appropriate
response is to keep quiet about it. Let other folks express their own feelings
about this historic occasion without feeling the need to elevate yourself
above them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I also think it unseemly; especially when the enemy is one of circumstance and
in a better world...

But this guy? He killed men, women and children to make a political point. He
sacrificed his own, to make his point. He sat back in his mansion, rich and
pampered, paying to have people killed.

I admit to a little glorying, to an unseemly degree. Just this once.

~~~
lukeschlather
>But this guy? He killed men, women and children to make a political point. He
sacrificed his own, to make his point. He sat back in his mansion, rich and
pampered, paying to have people killed.

The same could be said about thousands of people on both sides of this war.
Personally, as long as there are people willing to take his place, I'm not
rejoicing one bit.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Wait - really? Implying me and you too?

Consider the strike force on this one: volunteers, entered under enemy fire
and Arrested the bodyguards they encountered, found the guy and disabled the
young woman guarding him by wounding her in the leg; retreated with his body;
had to blow up the disabled helicopter but first Dragged the Enemy Bastard's
personal bodyguard to safety(!), then left all while under fire.

There's a word that describes all that, but its not 'terrorism'
its...wait...let me think...Heroism! Yeah, that's right.

~~~
lukeschlather
Bin Laden was a bad person, sure. But there are a lot of bad people in this
world. Why was he specifically killed, and why is he singular in his ability
to motivate Muslims to terrorism? Why is he going to be any less effective in
his death than in his life? I just don't see the value in his death.
Terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq have no shortage of leaders, or
of new recruits. The only real purpose I see in his death is making a new
martyr - much more powerful than the hunted man who died.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
A dead martyr has no money. So there's that. The rest remains to be seen.

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jaysonelliot
How ironic that it was Penn Jillette, debunker extraordinaire, who ended up
spreading the false quote.

~~~
splat
There's nothing ironic about a skeptic being wrong if he admits his mistake
when presented with evidence to the contrary. (Which Penn Jillette did.)

~~~
joshfinnie
"There's nothing ironic about a skeptic being wrong if he admits his mistake
when presented with evidence to the contrary." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

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tokenadult
This is a follow-up article to an article previously submitted on HN.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2508819>

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foresterh
"It's amazing in a time when so much information is so readily available to so
many people, false information is so readily accepted."

-Foresterh

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cmiles74
It's funny, I was looking to attribute the quote...

"Man is mortal. Socrates is a man, therefor Socrates is mortal."

Most of the Google results credit Woody Allen! :P

I believe the correct author is Aristotle.

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georgieporgie
This was written in a wildly confusing manner.

Summary: Jessica Dovey, a Facebook user in Japan, wrote the first sentence.
She then tacked on an MLK quote. People then treated both her sentence and
MLK's sentence as if they were one, continuous MLK quote.

Unless I managed to still misunderstand...

~~~
Jach
That's what I got out of it. I also concluded that we need better English
grammar education in this country so people don't mess up quotes like that. :)

