Last updated October 17, 2026
The Backfire Awards (backfireawards.com, the site) is a free website run by [Goat Farm legal entity name], a [state of formation] [entity type] (Goat Farm, we or us). These terms are a legal agreement between you and Goat Farm.
By using the site, you agree to these terms, our community guidelines and our privacy policy. The community guidelines are part of these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the site.
Anyone may read the site. You must be at least 13 years old to nominate, comment, vote, report, sign up for the newsletter or use our forms. If you are 13 to 17, you need a parent or guardian's permission to sign up for the newsletter or send us your email address, and your parent or guardian agrees to these terms for you.
The Backfire Awards recognize inventions, products, policies and decisions that solved one problem and caused another. People can nominate them, vote on them and comment on them. Many nominees are real, named people, and some are alive. The founding nominees summarize published history.
The awards are commentary. Being nominated, listed or awarded is not a finding that anyone did something wrong, broke a law, or acted in bad faith.
Both scores are opinion and entertainment. They are not statements of fact about any person, company or organization. Nominations and comments posted by users are the views of the people who posted them, not of Goat Farm.
Nominate decisions and their effects, not people's private lives. Only nominate people for public work, such as inventions, products, policies and plans. Private individuals cannot be nominated. Leave out claims about a person's motives, character or private life. Stick to effects that are documented, and mark debated evidence as "Still contested."
You may not post anything that:
You also may not use bots or scripts to vote, post or report, or try to get around the one-vote-per-browser limit or the spam controls.
Your posts are anything you submit: nominations, comments, names, Murphy stories and other material. You keep ownership of your posts.
By submitting a post, you give Goat Farm a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, display, publish and distribute it, to edit it for length, format, labels and clarity, and to feature it on the site, in the newsletter and on our social media accounts. Non-exclusive means you can still use your post anywhere else. Royalty-free means we do not pay you for it. The license lets us keep a post up after it is featured, and lets us keep backup copies for a reasonable time after removal. If we credit you, we use the first name or display name you gave.
When you post, you confirm that:
Comments appear right away and are public. Nominations are reviewed before they appear. Do not post anything you want to keep private.
We try to keep the site accurate, and the founding nominees are based on published sources. Mistakes still happen. If you think something on the site is wrong or unfair, use the Report button on the entry or email [contact email]. Tell us what is wrong and, if you can, point to a source. We will review it and may correct, add context, or remove it. If you are the subject of a nominee, we will give your request prompt attention.
We are not required to monitor what people post, and we do not check every post. We may review, edit labels or formatting, decline, hide or remove any nomination or comment, at any time, for any reason or no reason. A comment that gets three reports is hidden until a moderator reviews it. We may block a browser or connection from posting if it breaks these terms. Our decisions about moderation are final, but you can ask us to look again at [contact email].
If you believe something on the site infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):
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Your notice must include:
If your post was removed and you believe that was a mistake, you can send a counter-notice to the same agent. It must include your signature, the removed material and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe it was removed by mistake, your name, address and phone number, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if you are outside the US, any district where Goat Farm may be found). We remove the posts of people who repeatedly infringe.
The site links to other websites and uses outside services. The newsletter, The Weekly Oops, is run by Beehiiv. The Murphy and shop waitlist forms are run by Tally. We also post on social media platforms such as Instagram, and nominees may appear there. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies, which apply when you use them. We are not responsible for other websites or services.
The shop page has a "Pre-order" button that leads to a waitlist. Joining the waitlist is not a purchase or an order. Nothing is sold and nothing is charged through the site today. If we start selling products, separate sales terms will apply, and you will see them before you pay.
Goat Farm owns the site, including its name, the Backfire Awards name and logo, the Goat character, the design, the Oops Score, and the text and images we create. You may share links to the site and quote short parts of it with credit. You may not copy the site, use our names or logos to suggest we endorse you, or sell our content without our written permission.
The site is provided "as is" and "as available." To the extent the law allows, we make no promises of any kind about the site, including that it will be accurate, complete, available, secure or free of errors, or that it is fit for a particular purpose. Nothing on the site is legal, scientific, medical or financial advice.
To the extent the law allows, Goat Farm and its owners, staff and moderators are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits or data, arising from your use of the site. Our total liability for any claim about the site is limited to one hundred US dollars ($100). Some places do not allow these limits, so some of them may not apply to you.
If someone makes a legal claim against Goat Farm because of a post you made or because you broke these terms, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and losses from that claim, including reasonable legal fees. We will tell you about the claim, and you may help defend it.
You can stop using the site at any time. We may stop you from posting, remove your posts, or change or shut down the site, at any time. The sections on your posts, opinion, disclaimers, liability limits, your responsibility for your posts and governing law continue to apply after you stop using the site.
We may update these terms. When we do, we will change the date at the top. If we make a significant change, we will also post a notice on the site. If you keep using the site after a change, you accept the new terms. If we add sign-in or accounts, we will update these terms before that happens.
These terms are governed by the laws of [governing state] and applicable US federal law, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any legal dispute about the site or these terms will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in [venue county and state], and you and Goat Farm agree to those courts' jurisdiction. Before filing a claim, please email us so we can try to resolve it. This does not take away any rights you have under the laws of the place you live that cannot be waived by contract.
If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term right away, we can still enforce it later. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. These terms, the community guidelines and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and Goat Farm about the site.
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