How do fortune cookie messages get written?

Two of the world's largest producers of baked-in aphorisms don't even have someone on the payroll dedicated to full-time fortune writing

Fortune cookie
(Image credit: Michael Prince/CORBIS)

People often take fortune cookie messages to heart. They crack open the yellow crescent moon cookies that conclude their Chinese restaurant meal, and eagerly hunt for predictions, revelations, and deeper meaning. Many save their favorites, carrying them around in a wallet.

But these often-odd messages are not axioms from the beyond. The epigrams originate in a handful of factories that each churn out upward of 4 million little slips of wisdom a day.

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Karina Martinez-Carter is an assistant editor at Map Happy and a freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work has appeared with BBC Capital, BBC Travel, Thrillist and Quartz, among other publications.