COLUMN: Bamazon

DISCLAIMER!

The following morality tale is a work of fiction. It is merely an imaginary anecdote to serve as a valuable lesson why one should never ever cheat the system. Any resemblance to any person, place, and/or newspaper columnist should be considered pure coincidence. This fictional story in no way constitutes or should be construed as an admission of guilt, wrongdoing, or liability by any party.

Once upon a time long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a smart youthful prince of a man who was beloved by all. Let's call him... Shawn.

About a year ago, Shawn was hanging out at his house watching TV with his friend, umm, "Felissa," who had been raving about a show that she wanted Shawn to check out. There was just one problem, and it made Shawn very, very sad.

The program in question was on a streaming service that Shawn didn't subscribe to. Let's call it, oh I dunno -- Bamazon Rhyme. This bummed Shawn out a great deal. You see, Shawn was a pop culture junkie. In fact, some townsfolk in the village went so far as to accuse Shawn of "wasting his life in front of the TV." Shawn didn't care. He wanted to see ALL the shows.

"No problem," said Felissa. "I can just log onto my account from here."

Within minutes, Felissa had synced her Bamazon account with Shawn's TV, and the two had a great afternoon channel-flipping and geeking out.

Time passed and Shawn forgot all about Bamazon Rhyme -- until the night Shawn happened to catch the Emmy Awards, where nearly every top prize went to something on Bamazon. Grr. If there's one thing Shawn hated, it was feeling like he was missing out on something special. But sadly, even though Shawn had few complaints with his station in life, he wasn't exactly rolling in expendable income. He already had subscriptions to Metflix, Hooloo, and Zpotify. He just couldn't afford Bamazon Rhyme.

But the lure of these award-winning shows simply proved too much. Here he was, sitting at home, while others were probably enjoying quality Bamazon programming like the Fabulous Ms. Faisel. How could he call himself a pop culture expert when he hadn't seen a single episode of Phleebag? That's when Shawn made a bad choice.

In a moment of pure pop culture weakness, Shawn may or may not have called his old friend Felissa up and asked to use her Bamazon Rhyme account.

Was this illegal in the fictional world in which Shawn and Felissa lived? Who's to say, other than perhaps a team of highly-paid entertainment lawyers? Bamazon Rhyme members get to stream on three different devices, and Felissa only used ONE. It might be legally fine for Shawn to temporarily lay claim to one of those extra devices with Felissa's permission. Shawn had to admit, though, that it was probably a grey area at best.

But Shawn had no time for internal debates about fairness and morality. He was too busy watching Phleebag. Hooray!

Several months passed. Shawn had only watched his bootleg Bamazon Rhyme shows for about a week before moving on to the next trendy show that came along. But last week, something tragic happened. There was a new novel he'd been looking forward to reading, so good ol' Shawn hopped onto Bamazon's website and quickly ordered the e-book.

Later that night, he opened up his Bamazon Kindle... but there was no book there. "What the...?" pondered Shawn. In his mind, he was already composing the indignant e-mail he'd fire off to Bamazon's tech support line in the morning. First, though, he logged onto the Bamazon website to make sure his credit card processed, and that's when he saw it.

"THANKS FOR YOUR PURCHASE, FELISSA!"

OMG. When Shawn used Felissa's account to watch Bamazon Rhyme months ago, it logged him onto Bamazon as HER and never logged her out. A really nice friend had done him a solid favor, and he had just repaid that favor by accidentally sending her a book -- worse yet, he had just unknowingly charged it to HER credit card! Shawn had made some awkward apologetic phone calls in his day, but never one like, "Hey, I just bought you a present! Umm... and you paid for it!"

Thankfully, Felissa was kind and forgiving and not too upset at her unwittingly purchased "gift." Thankfully it was a cheap fantasy novel and not something embarassing like "How To Talk To Women" or "Stop Picking Your Nose In 10 Easy Steps."

Moral of the story? Don't be a Shawn. Don't use your friends' streaming services. And if you DO, log out before you accidentally spend THEIR money. And whatever you do, you probably shouldn't write about it in a widely distributed newspaper column. Thankfully this was all a work of fiction and clearly never happened in the real world.

On a completely unrelated note, Dear You-Know-Who, my apologies again for you-know-what. I'll pay you back soon.