I think this is great!
There are so many fake Buddha quotes on social media.
Now there is a service where you can look a quote up to see if it is fake or not:
Hey there. I’m glad you discovered my site. I don’t always get it right, so please let me know if you see anything that’s in need of correction.
16 Likes
Of all the main religions, it seems like Buddhism is the one most often misquoted and misrepresented.
I wonder why?
I’m guessing you mean in the context of social media posts and not history. 
In regards to social media westerners are the dominant demographic of users. The superficial misconception they have of the Buddha is as a yoga school, record shop being who is the ultimate nice guy who has something to say about everything. Usually truisms expressed in fortune cookie parlance.
The English-speaking world was mostly introduced to the Buddha via “The Light of Asia”— itself loosely based on a Mahayana retelling of the Buddha’s life.
I think two factors are most significant: 1) the large size of the canon makes it hard for non-specialists to recognize fakes quickly and 2) the lack of a central authority makes it difficult to suppress “heretics” . Both are probably a good thing, all told. But it does mean there’s a lot of “counterfeit Dhamma” to sift through
6 Likes
Hello Bodhipaksa,
I’ve been enjoying your Fake Buddha Quotes website, an invaluable (and amusing) service to the Buddhist community. A couple days ago I sent you a link to a particularly charming example of the genre, via the Contacts form on the site. When I clicked the [SEND] button, my message was still on the page (where I would expect it to disappear, and there was no notice that it had been received. But there was an alert:
“It appears your submission was successful. Even though the server responded OK, it is possible the submission was not processed. Please contact the developer of this form processor to improve this message. Learn More (link to Handling Form Submissions).”
Did you receive my message? I see the link I sent you is no longer good; the image apparently has been removed from the server. I can send you the image directly, if there’s an address I can send it to.
Andrew Main
Santa Fe, N.M.
Hi, Andrew.
I’m sorry that the contact form wasn’t working for you. I didn’t actually receive your comment, so please feel free to email me at bodhi @ wildmind.org. (This also explains why I haven’t received any hate mail in a while! I thought maybe the internet was getting politer!)
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
6 Likes
I thought maybe the internet was getting politer
- the Buddha, probably
4 Likes