The omnipresent disclaimer – required vs. needed

 

This section has two disclaimers:

• The first is the legally required one. It talks about my credentials, relinquished responsibility, and ways I make money with this site.
• The other is a ranting (i.e. not needed) one. It talks about the same things as above but in a way that makes sense to me.

 

1. The required disclaimer

 

I, Bianca Aguglia, the owner of and writer for this website, am not offering anyone any advice nor recommending any course of action through any of the content I create on this site and related social media platforms, nor am I qualified to offer anyone any kind of advice or recommendations. I’m simply expressing my own personal, biased opinions and talking about my own personal, biased choices with the goal of showing how an average person (i.e. me) deals with life. Therefore, I disclaim any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for any consequences my content might have in/on the life of anyone who consumes it.

I, Bianca Aguglia, the owner and writer for this website, am also disclosing here that I’m using affiliate links for some of the products or services I talk about on this site. These links allow me to earn an affiliate commission from each completed purchase without affecting the price the buyer pays for the product.

 

2. The (not) needed disclaimer

 

Now that the legal disclaimer is done, I’ll tell you what I actually think about most disclaimers: they are an insult to all human intelligence yet a consequence of it and its darker side.

They’re an insult because no rational human being needs to be told to not blindly apply everything they read, watch, or hear. We, human beings, are smart enough to know that. It’s one of the first things we figured out when we left behind our prehistoric ape dwellings and became humans.

Mothers in all corners of the world and in all languages have many variations of that piece of wisdom, which can be summed up into something like this: “Just because your friends decide to jump off a cliff,” they tells us, “you don’t jump also. You stop, think, and decide if it’s a cliff you’re prepared for. Then go do your thing but don’t come complaining to me about your bruises.”

So we’re smart enough to know already what not to do. No need to insult our intelligence with foolish warnings. Still, disclaimers have become legally required because some of us have been using that said intelligence to get others to pay for their mistakes.

See, mischievously smart as we are, some of us figured out that we can try all sorts of jumps and, if we’re not happy with where we landed, we can blame the fools who talked about jumping or even jumped themselves and lived to tell the tale, and make them pay for our “emotional and material losses.”

I love humans and I’m always in awe at their ingenuity. That doesn’t mean I’m not often disillusioned by it. The paragraphs above describe a pathetic application of that ingenuity. Just because it’s a smart way of doing something wrong, that doesn’t make it less wrong. 😉

Now, I do realize that there are times when we are purposefully tricked into doing things we shouldn’t be doing. Diet pills that don’t work and might even be dangerous enough to kill us. Investment opportunities which are nothing more than carefully planned fraud. Online dates with imaginary people. Still, even in those situations, the person who jumps should assume all responsibility for their actions. As long as nobody’s pushing them off cliffs, nobody but them is responsible for all broken bones and dreams.

That doesn’t mean that the trickster, the peddler of snake oil shouldn’t be held accountable. They should. They should be made to refund all money charged for their oil (plus a hefty interest to that – a tax on their ill-intended actions) and sent to jail to pay for their mistakes and reflect on ways of bringing out the better sides of their human nature going forward.

But in the end, it’s the person who jumps. The person who reads about a new diet program and decides to try it. The person who watches a fool’s prank and gets hurt re-creating it. The person who rollerblades through a store and falls. The person who drinks hot coffee and spills it on themselves. The person who buys into a get rich quick scheme and gets poor fast instead. They are the ones responsible for their actions. Others might have baited them. But it’s them who bit the bait.

So yes, disclaimers packed with confusing legal terms have become a necessity even if they insult our intelligence. That’s why I put one on my website also. But now that I’m done ranting, I’ll give you my personal, heartfelt, non-legal-terms disclaimer. One that is implied in everything I post, but made it’s not always made clear enough.
 

Always think for yourself. Keep in mind that I’m just a fool and am not qualified to give you any advice. Keep in mind also that, if you click on some of the products or services I talk about in my posts and decide to buy them, I earn a commission on each sale.

 

That’s the short version of it. The longer version is superfluous  but I decided to add it here because it was important to me. Here it is:

 

I’m just an average human being. Most of my knowledge (which isn’t much to begin with) is knowledge I learned on my own. Not in college. Not through professionally taught courses. Just from books, videos, and other sources I chose on my own and customized to my own way of learning and applying things.

I don’t have any diploma that entitles me to tell you what to do. Even if I did, I would never do so. I believe that all human beings should take all advice with many grains of salt. Then, like Bruce Lee said, “listen to advice, take the good, discard the bad, and make it [what you learned] your own.”

On this website, social media platforms, and other mediums I only express my opinions or showcase my creativity. That’s the main reason I started posting online. I never intend to give any advice.

Another reason I post online is that I do intend to earn income to pay for all my needs and many of my wants. Some of that income is from affiliate links. (My affiliate links are just links to products on Amazon. They have a special code in them that was custom created by Amazon when I signed up for their Associates program. If you buy a product through any of my links you pay the same price as if you searched for it on Amazon. The difference is that, with affiliate links, I earn a commission from each sale.)

I will never recommend you buy anything though. I’m a minimalist and own very few things myself. It’s a choice I made several years ago and I love it. So I don’t recommend you buy anything but, should you already want to buy some of the products I talk about, then I don’t feel bad about recommending the affiliate links.

I’ll finish this ridiculously long disclaimer on disclaimers with my favorite disclaimer. It comes from author, anatomical physiologist and exercise therapist Pete Egoscue and his book Pain Free – A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain. Pete starts by saying that legal disclaimers have become obligatory parts of health books. The disclaimers always advise readers to consult their doctors before starting whatever program is being offered and warn them that “the author and publisher disclaim any legal responsibility for adverse consequences.”

After that is where the disclaimer becomes brilliant.

“As I did in my first book,” writes Pete, “I will again urge readers who feel they need the disclaimer’s protection and counsel to close these covers and leave the pages unread. My working principle as an author and exercise therapist is that the most important consultation is the one a person has with him- or herself. Health care starts with personal responsibility. Any disclaimer that suggests otherwise does a great disservice.”

So thank you for being here. Thank you for reading all this. But, if you are one of the people who needs a disclaimer, please close your browser and forget everything you read for me. Otherwise, please feel free to hang out longer. I’m curious about your thoughts and your opinions also. I promise to listen to them entirely at my own risk.