Friday, March 03, 2006

Terms And Conditions

While cruising sites looking at design and HTML I ended up on one of those pseudo-spammy rebate sites. They offer coupons and other discounts off online purchases, in order to drive business to certain vendors. It's good advertising and the "victims" do actually "save" something approximating money. Of course, it encourages them to buy more than they would in the first place. Capitalism: ain't it a fine thing?

But anyway, this post is not about economics, politics, or marketing. It's about being not human.

If you read the Ebates Terms And Conditions you will see that the first one insists:

1. You must be an individual, 18 years of age or older.

Fair enough. We wouldn't want to be giving children any deals, would we? But perhaps the punctuation is a bit misleading. Does their insistence on me being an individual relate to free will? Do they only want to give discounts to libertarians? Or perhaps it's a Prisoner reference, as in "I am not a number, I am a free man!"

The second condition is lovely:

2. Members must be human...

What? You have to be human, and an individual, and at least 18? They sure aren't giving these deals away, are they?

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