Mobile Carrier's Rate Plan Fine Print Too Complex, Acquired by MoMA as 'Labyrinth of Madness'

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York announced on the 8th that it would welcome the latest rate plan explanatory diagram created by a major Japanese telecommunications carrier as a permanent acquisition of contemporary art. The work is titled “The Plan Z: Substantially Existing.” The art world was shaken as it was recognized for perfectly visualizing “agnostic anxiety in modern society” through layers of conditional branches and a swarm of annotation characters (※) unreadable to the naked eye.

At first glance, this work looks like just an enlarged view of a contract pamphlet. However, curator Miranda Jobs passionately argued, “This is not just a document. It is the surrealism of capitalism.” What was particularly praised was the conditional branch diagram for discount applications. Mutually contradictory conditions — such as “three family members joining simultaneously,” “bundled with fiber-optic internet,” and “if you have been to the moon within the past six months” — are intricately intertwined, forming an “infinite corridor” with no logical exit. This quality, critics agreed, generates the work’s extraordinary artistic value.

Furthermore, the annotation area occupying the lower two-thirds of the work is breathtaking. The vast disclaimer printed in 1.5-point font looks like beautiful gray noise from a distance, but when viewed through a microscope, countless philosophical provocations are hidden within — such as “※ however, only for the attractive” and “※ upon cancellation, a gratitude fee, not a penalty fee, will be collected.” This information black hole absorbs the reader’s reason and neutralizes any effort to understand the contract’s contents.

The carrier’s PR representative, credited as the work’s author, commented with visible bewilderment upon receiving the honor. “We simply tried to explain everything carefully so our customers would not be misled, covering every possible contingency. If as a result it reached the ‘domain of god’ that surpasses human cognitive ability, then it is an unexpected miracle.” They insisted that this bewilderingly complex plan design was not “intentional obfuscation” but rather “runaway excessive honesty” — and that contradiction only deepened the work’s irony further.

On the opening day of the exhibition, bizarre scenes unfolded throughout the venue. Viewers who stood before the work muttered one after another, “Why is this month’s bill still so high?” and “Data… the data is dying,” then collapsed on the spot. The museum hastily installed oxygen cylinders and a makeshift “two-year lock-in cancellation counter” in front of the exhibition room. Though measures were taken to reduce the psychological burden, desperate cries of “I can’t find the cancellation button” refused to stop.

The exhibition is scheduled to run for 24 months — the same binding period as the contract itself. New York critics have been thoroughly impressed by the immersive art experience, in which a 9,900 dollar penalty fee is incurred for leaving outside of the designated renewal window. Can we actually decipher this modern myth called “effectively zero dollars”? Or do we have no choice but to silently offer up our bank accounts for automatic withdrawal?

Stakeholder Comments

• MoMA Chief Curator: “Just as Picasso deconstructed perspective, this rate plan deconstructs the ‘purse strings’ all the way to the quantum level.”
• Major Carrier PR Representative: “Since it has been recognized as art, starting from next month’s invoice, we will add $0.03 to the universal service fee as a ‘viewing surcharge.’”
• Mathematician: “Even the supercomputer ‘Fugaku’ would take 300 years to solve this rate calculation formula. It is beautiful chaos.”
• Viewer (male, 30s): “While staring at the words ‘free for six months,’ before I knew it, I had hallucinated all my assets being absorbed into optional add-ons.”
• Sales Agency Staff: “We don’t fully understand it ourselves when we sell it. We’re signing contracts based on feeling and passion.”
• The ‘※’ Mark in the Contract: “Outshining the main text — that is our aesthetic. Small in size, but our presence is galaxy-class.”
• The Cancellation Button: “You’re a hundred years too early to come looking for me. I’m waiting deep in the dungeon of the website, on the fourth level.”
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Official: “We began analysis to issue a corrective recommendation, but after three staff members went insane, we resolved to process it as art.”
• AI Assistant: “In response to the request ‘Summarize the plan,’ I have initiated a self-destruct sequence.”
• Passing Elder: “Back in my day, a telephone just meant picking up the receiver… Today it’s like deciphering a grimoire.”

International Expressions

Haiku

• Restrictions lift now / Penalty fees dance through air / Cold winter sky clears
• “Substantially” / Insisting on a zero’s / Weight — how crushingly
• Lost deep in the grove / Of options, as autumn dusk / Falls quietly around
• Where could it be, the / Cancellation button hides / Deep within the fog
• Like the stars above / Annotations illuminate / The monthly billing
• Data dwindling down / My heart too grows thin and frail / Long autumn night falls
• Even migrant birds / Switching carriers are caught / Straight inside a trap
• Family discount / Conditions never align / Back to being alone
• Spring breeze drifting by / New plan deepens once again / The enduring mystery
• Eternal contract / Renewal cycling onward / Cicada summer rain

Kanji / Chinese Characters

米近代美術館収蔵 携帯料金図狂気迷宮 割引条件無限回廊描 注釈文字肉眼不可 解約不能事象地平線 実質零円哲学的詐欺 過呼吸続出芸術体験 二年拘束違約金発生

Emoji

📱📉💸🌀😵‍💫🏛️🖼️🆘🚫🔚

Onomatopoeia

Guru-guru, kuru-kuru (the sound of thoughts spinning in circles) Don! (the sound of the final bill amount confirmed) Chima-chima, zoro-zoro (the way annotations keep multiplying) Sheen… (the silence of searching for the cancellation button) Gaku! (the sound of knees giving out and collapsing) Hyuu-doro-doro (the eerie presence of a ghost plan)

SNS

• #MoMA #MobileCarrierArt #Incomprehensible
• So a contract becomes art lol — that’s genuinely too avant-garde
• About the time I went to the museum trying to cancel and ended up charged a penalty fee
• That font size on the annotations is right at the legal limit, isn’t it?
• So the “substantially” in “effectively zero dollars” was a philosophical term all along… chilling
• Had a hyperventilation episode while viewing but couldn’t get through to the support center
• Banksy made this, right? There’s definitely a theory
• Next carrier switch will happen at a museum — we’re in that era now
• #PlanZVictimsAssociation
• Contemporary art has truly come this far. The direct attack on the wallet is something else.