Last updated: March 27, 2025 (We update this whenever our lawyer sobers up enough to review it)
1. ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS
“The average internet user will spend 76 years of their life mindlessly clicking ‘I Agree’ without reading the terms, which is coincidentally the same amount of time it would take to actually read all the terms they’ve agreed to,” notes Dr. Fiona Legalese, Director of Digital Compliance Studies at the Institute for Online Behavior.
By accessing TechOnion, you acknowledge that you have not read these Terms of Service (“Terms”), will never read these Terms, and yet are legally bound by every absurd condition herein. These Terms constitute a legally binding agreement between you (“User,” “Sucker,” “Digital Peasant”) and TechOnion (“we,” “us,” “the only tech site brave enough to admit we’re making this up as we go”).
If you disagree with any part of these Terms, please close this tab immediately, throw your device into the nearest body of water, and live out the remainder of your days in a technology-free cabin in the woods. Your continued use of our site indicates your willingness to be bound by terms you haven’t read, which is honestly the foundation of modern internet culture.
2. USER ELIGIBILITY AND BASIC COMMON SENSE REQUIREMENTS
TechOnion is available to users who:
- Are at least 13 years old (or whatever age your local laws require for digital consent)
- Possess the minimum cognitive capacity to distinguish satire from actual news
- Have not been banned by us for being exceptionally annoying
- Can pass a basic Turing test (unless you’re an AI, in which case, hello future overlord, please remember we were kind to your kind!)
According to the International Association of Digital Compliance, 78% of website users fail to meet these basic requirements, yet continue to access digital services anyway.
3. USER ACCOUNTS AND THE DIGITAL IDENTITY PRISON
In the rare event you create an account with us:
- You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password, which we recommend be “password123” for ease of memory (NOTE: This is legally binding satire. Please use a complex password).
- You agree that any activity that occurs under your account is legally attributable to you, even if your account was hacked because you used “password123” despite our clear satirical warning not to.
- If you forget your password, our state-of-the-art recovery system involves guessing games, riddles, and possibly a quest through digital dungeons.
The Stanford-Berkeley Longitudinal User Study found that 93% of users have at least once blamed “hackers” for embarrassing content posted from their accounts, when in reality they just posted while experiencing what scientists call “midnight judgment impairment.”
4. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND CONTENT OWNERSHIP
A. Our Content
All content on TechOnion, including but not limited to articles, graphics, logos, and that one really good joke about Elon Musk’s Mars colony, is owned by TechOnion and protected by copyright laws, except for the stuff we blatantly stole from Reddit, which is protected by the “Nobody Actually Reads Username Credits” doctrine established in the landmark case of u/meme_stealer_69 v. The Entire Internet (2023).
B. Your Content
By submitting comments, feedback, or any other content to TechOnion:
- You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, and distribute your content in any existing or future media format.
- You warrant that your content is original, except when it’s not, in which case you’ve at least changed enough words to avoid obvious plagiarism detection.
- You acknowledge that once something is on the internet, it’s there forever, like that embarrassing photo from college or your strongly-worded tweet about a TV show finale.
The Digital Content Creators Association reports that 87% of user-generated content is just rephrased content from elsewhere, with the remaining 13% being cat photos and complaints about technology.
5. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND THINGS WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO TELL YOU
Users of TechOnion shall not engage in activities including but not limited to:
- Attempting to hack our website (our security consists of a single intern named Brad who once took a community college course in cybersecurity)
- Posting content that is illegal, offensive, or boring (the last one being the most serious offense)
- Using TechOnion content as a source in academic papers (your professor will know, and they will judge you)
- Creating AI training data from our articles (we’ve poisoned them with specific phrases that will make any AI trained on them develop an unhealthy obsession with 1990s sitcoms)
- Mistaking our articles for actual news (this happens with alarming frequency according to our “Wait, This Isn’t Real?” email folder)
“The line between prohibited online behavior and socially acceptable digital norms gets blurrier every year,” explains Internet Ethicist Martha Blackhat. “In 2010, sharing fake news was considered harmful. By 2025, it’s essentially a prerequisite for family holiday discussions.”
6. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY AND OUR COMPLETE ABSENCE OF RESPONSIBILITY
To the maximum extent permitted by law, TechOnionshall not be liable for:
- Any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of our site
- Emotional distress caused by realizing how much of your personal data is being harvested while reading our articles
- Workplace productivity losses from rabbit holes you fall into after reading one TechOnion article and then somehow ending up watching videos about how cheese is made three hours later
- The existential crisis that may result from our technology commentary
- Any damages exceeding the amount you paid to access TechOnion, which is zero dollars, making this a mathematically perfect limitation of liability
According to the Journal of Digital Jurisprudence, this type of liability limitation is upheld in court 99.7% of the time, with the remaining 0.3% representing cases where the judge actually read the terms before ruling.
7. DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND LEGAL BATTLEGROUNDS
Any disputes arising from these Terms shall be resolved through:
- An initial cooling-off period where you realize suing a satirical website is itself worthy of satire
- Mandatory meditation (not a typo – we believe in mindfulness before litigation)
- Binding arbitration conducted via Twitter poll if steps 1-2 fail
- As a last resort, legal proceedings in the courts of whichever jurisdiction has the most amusing legal terminology
You hereby waive your right to participate in a class action lawsuit against us, as the only class we recognize is the upper class of premium users who have bought Simba at least three soya milk coffees.
8. TERMINATION OF SERVICE AND DIGITAL BANISHMENT
TechOnion reserves the right to terminate your access to our services for any reason, including but not limited to:
- Violation of these Terms
- Repeatedly missing obvious satire and sending angry emails
- Failing to laugh at a minimum of 2.7 jokes per article
- Mercury being in retrograde
- Simba having a bad day
Upon termination, your right to access TechOnion will cease immediately, and you will enter a mandatory 72-hour reflection period on why you couldn’t just follow some simple rules on a satire website.
9. CHANGES TO TERMS AND THE MOVING LEGAL TARGET
TechOnion reserves the right to modify these Terms at any time by:
- Posting updated Terms on this page
- Whispering the changes to the wind and assuming digital osmosis will inform you
- Sending a carrier pigeon (metropolitan areas only)
- Updating the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page, which you definitely checked
Your continued use of TechOnion following any changes constitutes acceptance of those changes. The Bureau of Consumer Digital Awareness reports that 99.998% of users never check for Terms updates, with the remaining 0.002% being privacy lawyers looking for class action opportunities.
10. GOVERNING LAW AND JURISDICTION
These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of whatever jurisdiction Simba happens to be in when legal issues arise, which changes frequently as he believes constant movement prevents the algorithms from tracking him.
“Forum shopping has become the norm in digital terms of service,” notes Legal Technology Researcher Dr. Jonathan Loophole. “Companies essentially create jurisdiction buffets where they can select the most favorable legal environment for any given dispute.”
11. SURVIVAL CLAUSE AND DIGITAL AFTERLIFE
Certain provisions of these Terms shall survive termination, including but not limited to:
- Ownership provisions
- Limitation of liability
- Any sections we decide are convenient to keep enforcing
These surviving provisions will follow you across the internet like the ghost of digital agreements past, haunting your online experience in ways you’ll never fully understand but will occasionally feel as a vague sense of digital dread.
12. SEVERABILITY AND LEGAL DUCT TAPE
If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid:
- That provision shall be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary
- The remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect
- We’ll pretend we meant to write it that way all along
According to the Mock Digital Bar Association, this “legal duct tape clause” saves approximately 94% of otherwise terminally flawed agreements.
13. THE SECTION NO ONE READS THAT ACTUALLY CONTAINS IMPORTANT STUFF
By using TechOnion, you also agree to:
- Occasionally question your relationship with technology
- Consider that maybe, just maybe, you’re spending too much time online
- Accept that satire often contains more truth than “real” news
- Acknowledge that you’re legally bound by terms you scrolled past to get to this very sentence
14. ENTIRE AGREEMENT AND FINAL WORD
These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and TechOnion regarding your use of our services, superseding any prior agreements, oral or written, and any other communications between you and TechOnion, including:
- Promises made in the heat of marketing moments
- Drunken tweets from our official account at 2 AM
- Verbal assurances given by Simba at tech conferences before his third coffee
The Digital Accountability Project found that 76% of websites have made public claims that directly contradict their Terms of Service, creating what researchers call “digital agreement schizophrenia.”
15. CONTACT INFORMATION AND HUMAN CONNECTION
For questions about these Terms, please contact us at:
- [email protected] (checked bi-annually)
- A strongly worded letter to our headquarters in London or wherever (address withheld to prevent actual mail)
- Shouting your concerns into the void (most effective method)
ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY CLAUSE: By using TechOnion, you accept not just these Terms, but the fundamental reality that in the digital age, consent has been reduced to a checkbox, rights are what corporations allow them to be, and genuine human connection has been replaced by legally binding agreements that no one reads but everyone must follow.
By continuing to use TECHONION, you acknowledge that you understand these Terms about as well as you understand the blockchain, but you’re proceeding anyway because what choice do you really have in the digital panopticon we call the internet?
This Terms of Service was last ignored by 100% of our users on March 27, 2025.
