The Terms and Conditions Conundrum

I think the readings on Terms and Conditions touch on common human behavior. Thinking of signing up for a service as a video game, you have chosen your avatar, password, given your email, but then before you can start on your gaming adventure you must face the first obstacle in your way the terms and conditions. Once you have defeated the terms and conditions monster keeping you from your adventure you are rewarded by being allowed to access what was on the other side of the monster. I think the quick nature people exhibit when filling out terms and conditions is because they accept the process as the inevitable, the faster they get through it the faster they can get to their “adventure”. I think people trust companies to have terms and conditions that users would be fine with, which leads users to accept terms with the belief that they don’t need to read them because they know what they say. I try to read terms and conditions but get fatigued from the length. I also don’t always read updates to terms and conditions. I think the social experiment did a very good job of illustrating the need to read what you sign. It also made me think, why do we show our lawyers contracts but not terms of service? Is it because they are so many of them? Or because they are “harmless”? Or that we trust companies?