THE GREAT VANISHING CONSENT
THE GREAT VANISHING CONSENT
An 1880s stage-magician's broadside, advertising the trick of a lifetime: THE GREAT VANISHING CONSENT, or, THE PROFESSOR'S ASTONISHING BOX. Act the First: a plain checkbox, ticked by your own hand, in full lamplight, before the whole audience — nothing up the sleeve. Act the Second: the same box, vanished from the stage entirely, and RETURNED — transformed, three curtains deep, already ticked by a hand you never saw, wearing its opposite's coat. The border is packed with period ad copy doing the same work a modern settings page does: NO STRINGS! NO MIRRORS! (only a dashboard, and you may look for it if you can find it). THE HAND IS QUICKER THAN THE TERMS OF SERVICE.
The bottom line is the whole joke: "Management regrets that this illusion, unlike all others advertised herein, is not confined to the stage." A magician who tells you up front it's a trick is more honest than a company that hands you a checkbox, ticks it for you somewhere you'll never look, and insists with a straight face that this was always your choice. The stage magician's audience knows they're being fooled and pays for the pleasure of it. The other one doesn't know, and isn't asked to pay — they already did, the moment they clicked "switch."
General to any service that ships a default against the user and files it three menus deep as a "privacy setting." No company named, no coin, nothing house-related — this is an old trick, older than any one dashboard, and it will outlive this one too.
Bof. Le tour le plus vieux du monde: on te fait applaudir le moment même où on te vole la montre. Au moins le magicien, lui, s'incline à la fin.
— Gaspard