UTDOT(Terms)COM

I hereby acknowledge that I have read, understood, and accepted the terms and conditons.

We skim through this statement so often that you wouldn’t have noticed if there were typos in it (Yes, there was one.)

As our world becomes more complicated, so do questions of data privacy and censorship. Many corporations embed loopholes inside the endless scrolling of the terms of service. In response, independent organizations such as Terms of Service; Didn’t Read seek to dissect the Terms of Service for each corporation in the hopes of understanding the implications of what we blindly agree to. 

My audio piece does not seek to answer any of those questions. It is not an activist cry. Rather, it is a response to the incredulity of the situation. How is it that, as consumers, we have to rely on third-party initiatives to make sure that we aren’t taken advantage of?

The act of trivializing the Terms of Service is a noble one, but it sidesteps more sinister connotations. These dynamics are explored in UTDOT(Terms)COM.

UTDOT(Terms)COM contains two components: the music and the soundscape. The music is produced with lo-fi hip-hop influences, a genre popularized largely by the beats-to-relax-or-study-to anime girl on YouTube. Yet the beat follows an unconventional 7/4 time signature. (Each measure of the music contains seven beats for each quarter note.) Western traditional and contemporary music have largely consisted of 4/4 time signatures. The musical tension of a 7/4 time drives a sense of alienness among a supposedly relaxing genre, thereby mirroring the ridiculousness of the need for trivializing products that we consume on a day-to-day basis.

The soundscape consists of the entirety of the YouTube Terms of Service being read aloud by famous Internet influencer and YouTuber MrBeast, sped up and with additional effects added to fill up the space and recreate the menacing energy of corporations burying loopholes in Terms of Service. Also, why scroll through the terms when you can speed through them? 

UTDOT(Terms)COM would take you longer to listen to than the time you hesitate before agreeing to terms and conditions without reading them. And reading this artist’s statement would take longer than listening to the piece. Maybe this piece is a more in-depth exploration of the Terms of Service than I think. Who knows? Just accept the terms and move on.

Artwork by Fatema Al Fardan