Fear of Disclaimers can come in many forms. This Fear can often appear suddenly and when you least suspect it. You might be hearing or reading about why adopting a dog can be a great idea. Dogs have fur, they are cute, they clean up after themselves and can learn cool tricks to impress your friends. Then quickly get bombarded by a million things that could go horribly wrong very quickly. For example, Sarah McLachlan (the amount of spell-check needed for that name was incredible) starts telling you about how dogs make great companions and starts holding up cute pictures. Then she quickly reminds you if you don’t adopt this one right now, she will personally throw it into a flaming pit in Hell. Might be exaggerating that one a bit, but you can’t deny advertising works. Let’s take a look at some other classic disclaimers and why you should Fear them! Before we do, it’s important to give a shout-out to Carol for the inspiration of this post! It’s always great to hear from the Things I Fear Community. If you have your own idea for a post or want to write one yourself, send a message on Facebook or use the Contact page on this very website. Wow!
Warning: Fear of Disclaimers Ahead
Disclaimers are one of the most common elements in the advertising industry. Much like Hydrogen or Sodium are common elements on Earth. You can’t even order a sandwich from your favourite processed meat establishment without needing to digest a thesis (pun intended) about how the sandwich is not guaranteed to even be edible. There is often more fine print to read and figure out everything something is not than a clear understanding of what you are getting yourself into. It’s actually an impressive skill for some people who are able to very quickly read paragraphs of disclaimers in an advertisement while smiling people are dancing in the background with their friends. These disclaimers can be important though as they are often the difference between getting lunch and realizing your coupon actually contains a legally-binding clause indicating you must now work there and are obligated to pay for everyone else’s sandwiches. Always check the fine print.
The medical industry is full of these disclaimers and might single handedly be the reason for why you should never trust anything. Ever. Let’s take the example of those Shingles commercials. You know the ones. Where someone is walking around a park and suddenly their skin is essentially engulfed in flames and falling off the bone. Then they are in a hospital room needing to remortgage their homes just to have their own bed pan. It’s a really dark, morbid scene. Then you see the same person waltzing around, headlining a show in Vegas flipping pancakes for sold out stadiums thanks to the power of a random-name-generator sounding drug. All the while a man is quickly reading off a million reasons why you should never take this drug including the fact it can cause the very condition you are trying to cure.
No Sarcasm Was Harmed in the Writing of Fear of Disclaimers
Here’s the good thing about disclaimers and quite frankly having a Fear of Disclaimers itself: it makes you pause and not just take things at face value. That’s a good thing. You might otherwise end up in a situation where you instantly regret something you just bought. You can save a lot of money by actually paying attention to what something is rather than just buying it because someone told you to. Speaking of which, you should check out the Things I Fear books available on Amazon. Buy a copy (or ten) today and you can receive a new car!* Or you might end up in a situation where you believe everything you read on the internet. That’s a bad place to be in. So it can be a good thing to take a moment, read/listen to a disclaimer, then make an informed decision. Disclaimers are designed to warn you about the things that could happen, not will happen. It’s a way to protect a company from making a claim that may not necessarily be entirely true. Sort of like saying you’re 35 in your online dating profile.
*car is not guaranteed with purchase. In fact, you might owe me a car instead. You can buy a copy of the book though, that would be nice and really help support me! Just don’t do it for the car thing. That’s insane. Literally the exact reason we’re talking about disclaimers!
