Search Confucius Says (Analects) using the most popular Western search engine
The first result is this ### Confucius say, top 100
The content inside is mind‑blowing
「いいね！」 1
I almost believed it, but thankfully there’s ChatGPT to answer questions and clear doubts!
The situation you mentioned may be related to the following reasons:
- Search engine ranking algorithms: Search engines (e.g., Google) determine result rankings based on page popularity, keyword relevance, and user behavior (such as click‑through rate and dwell time). These “Confucius says” jokes, having been circulated for a long time and heavily accessed and shared, may be mistakenly regarded by search engines as highly relevant to the keyword “Confucius say.”
- Cultural misunderstanding and the popularity of humor: In English‑speaking culture, “Confucius says” has become an entrenched humorous expression that mimics Eastern wisdom, and many sites and content creators categorize these jokes as related content. This pushes genuinely Analects‑related material down in the search results.
- Lack of authoritative content ranking: If you search directly for “Confucius say” instead of “Analects of Confucius” or “孔子曰,” English search engines will assume you are looking for the more popular, non‑academic content. Consequently, joke‑type material more easily occupies the top spots.
- No explicit disclaimer of falsity: The authors of these jokes usually do not state that they are false, because most people can easily tell they are absurd. However, for those unfamiliar with the background or with Confucian philosophy, this lack of a clear disclaimer can indeed cause misunderstanding.
American Confucius