Protect yourself from Liability by Creating Your Own User Agreements

cover image: Interdimensional Passport, 1997, paper and gel medium on plywood by Jonathan Zap

In this litigious era it is important to protect yourself from frivolous or otherwise unwarranted lawsuits. Corporations do this by having you consent to user agreements that typically contain several pages of legalese that few people ever bother to read. Since persons (as well as corporations) are still legally considered to be people, there is no reason why you can’t employ your own user agreements before having any sort of financial, digital or sexual transaction with other people or entities.  Ideally, these user agreements should be long, comprehensive and include lots of obscure jargon.

For example, here is the user agreement I just created for beta testers of my fantasy epic, Parallel Journeys:

Participating in the beta-test means that you have read and understood all of the following warnings and agreed to all specified conditions.

Participants must be comfortable with explicit, written accounts of consensual and nonconsensual interdimensional travel and reality-distortion effects. Consult your physician immediately if you experience symptoms of any kind including, but not limited to, any of the following: tiredness, a hyper/restless feeling, distractibility, listlessness, a sense of vague unease, boredom, irritability, eye strain, free-floating or financial anxiety, nausea, cardiac arrhythmia, an erection lasting three or more hours, vertigo, seizures, disruptions of your menstrual cycle, anomalous parasitical infections or mutation formations, implants of unknown origin, spontaneous metamorphosis of any kind, matrix instabilities or anomalies of any kind, sudden changes in identity such as a sudden and/or unexpected shift in sexual orientation, religious affiliation, age, gender, name or other personal attributes. Any indication of incarnation distortion such as an abrupt alteration of name, marital status, social position, citizenship or historical situation (e.g. sudden changes in the names of nation states, calendar anomalies, discontinuities in local and/or global culture). No statement in this document has been evaluated by the FDA, and no statement herein is intended to replace or countermand the advice of your physician. Any resemblance to a person or entity, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Users are expected to be in reasonably good health, to have a normal legal status and to be fully covered by comprehensive health and liability insurance plans, policies and networks and to be fully compliant with all aspects of Obamacare and its agents, panels, website and czars. All instructions and warnings must be read very carefully and thoroughly comprehended by adult users or by the legal guardian(s) of any minors before undergoing the beta test experience. A fluent and thorough knowledge of the English Language is assumed. Users must be securely seated or standing on a stable surface while undergoing the beta test experience. Prudent precautions related to the individual circumstances of beta testers, such as avoidance of electrical or fire hazards, refraining from the improper storage of biohazardous materials, etc. is expected. Beta testers are required to be in full compliance with all local, federal and international ordinances, rules, regulations, guidelines, treaties and proclamations. If a multi-national federation, global hegemony or new world order of any sort is in effect, or emerges during the beta test, users are required to take full responsibility for their level of compliance with all global mandates, drone surveillance, authorized implants, required tattooing, branding or other form of identity marking, and to fully cooperate with all requests, instructions or orders of such a global entity, either as written or announced declarations or communicated in any way by any and all of its authorized agents whether those agents be human, canine,  reptilian, viral, robotic, digital or analog avatars, holographic officials, human-animal hybrids, genetically modified organisms, implanted hallucinations, drones, fully-armored cyborgs, chimeras, pretas, incubi/succubae, mind parasites, active/passive/seemingly neutral hungry ghosts,  archons or form-shifting AIs composed of liquid metal, nanobots, ionized gases, activated stem cells, free-form bio fluids or other ideoplastic materials. The management of Zap Oracle, nor any of its agents or subsidiaries, shall be held responsible for any risk to the health, personal safety, psychological condition (including cognitive and affective alterations of a temporary or irreversible nature), financial or legal status, citizenship, genetic viability, temporary or irreversible alteration of matrix orientation or coordinates, identity or incarnation stability, of any person, agent or entity who participates in this beta test. All the materials, texts, images and subliminal codes and symbols employed in this beta test are subject to international copyright. Unauthorized reproduction, use or performance of this material is explicitly forbidden except by being granted prior written permission by Zap Oracle or its authorized agents. All rights reserved.

Since few people will ever read your user agreements I suggest that you make them comprehensive and full of unsettling clauses and obscure terms.

In case you want to participate in my beta test (and approved the agreement), here’s the link: Parallel Journeys Beta Test