Thank You Megan McArdle

When it comes to blogging we know the thoughts of the Founders.

"People believe anything they read on the internet if it fits their preconceived notions." 

-Thomas Jefferson, 1792, On his blog post entitled 'Taking Names and Kicking Ass - How to get others to read your shit'


"I concede to you, sir, in the commenting footrace."
-John Adams after a 1,776 comment war in which TJ would only respond to Adams' comments with the a simple 'I am Spartacus'


That being said the last several days have been less focused on the Founders and more focused on Osama Bin Laden. It's time to return to our roots, at least for a moment.

On May 2nd, 2011 at 6:23pm Megan McArdle published a shitty beautiful, poorly well thought out blog about Fake Quotations. She did not thoroughly researched the topic and made sure to not make haste in posting an article for The Atlantic on the interwebs for millions and millons of internet consumers to enjoy. As of right now there have been over 1,026 comments on the post as well as 135,000 recommendations on Facebook.

On May 3rd, 2011 at 10:13am she published as response to her first article discussing the origin or Anatomy of a Fake Quotation. Thankfully in this article she corrected her previous incorrect statements. Had she not made such corrections we, of course, would have been forced to leave the above paragraph unedited as well. Perhaps even more important is the fact that this second article has 339 comments and 35,000 recommendations on Facebook.

All we can say is Thank You Megan McArdle! You have proven exactly how hard it is for us here at Lost and Founders. Your first article had 3 times as much interest as your 2nd article. Due to the amount of research that you put into the first article (none, being the correct answer). That is almost like the following scenario:

We have a student, let's call her Megan. On Monday you give her a test. She scores 100% on the test. Then all of Monday night we force her to reflect on the test, think about how well she did and any mistakes that she could have made. Finally, Tuesday morning rolls around and we give her the same test. She writes a much more researched response including documentation about her thoughts and further explanation for why she believes such things. She, of course, scores a 33%. Truly amazing! We are dumbfounded at how someone could accomplish such feats without being hit in the head with a hammer, but I suppose in that sense Megan really hit the nail on the head with this article as she exemplifies the struggle to set the record straight.

The hysterical  historical research that we have so selfishly selflessly taken on is dedicated to finding the truth behind the quotes of our Four Fore Fathers. We don't take our job for granted and are constantly fighting off laughter skeptics as we attempt to provide the world with the real quotes, the real stories and none of the bullshit. Once a false quote is out there it takes hours of work, research, marketing, cajoling, facebook posting, tweeting, twittering (yes, those are two different things), typing, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking and lots of other stuff to correct the faults of those before us. But that's what we are here for to set the record straight.