Knowledge is Power

We know about the monitor, not the man.

You can learn a lot about a man from his monitor, but the first thing you learn is that that man owns a monitor. The second thing you learn is that maybe he doesn't own a monitor and maybe he's just at a job where he's supplied him with a monitor. The third thing you learn is that whoa, this office building has security guys, and man they're fast!

What I'm getting at is you can learn about a man from his monitor but you can never learn who he truly is.

Take this AOC 22" 1080p LED-backlit monitor for example. What do we know about the guy who buys it? We know he or someone he knows has got eyes. We know that he or someone he knows has the internet. But we don't know much beyond that. We don't know if he's a good man or a bad man, unless he puts post-it notes on his monitor saying, "steal money" or "help old lady across the street," respectively. And even then, he'd have to show us the post-it notes, so they might be fake.

The monitor doesn't tell you his natural hair color, or his dyed hair color, or who makes his hair dye, or if he maybe makes his own hair dye like a weirdo. It doesn't tell you what his dad's like, not at all. It doesn't tell you if he's ever been to the moon, although he probably hasn't, unless he's, like, Buzz Aldrin or something, but this AOC monitor doesn't even tell you that!

Worst of all, though: it doesn't tell you the names of any of his pets. Because if you knew those, you could probably guess his password. And if you knew that, you could log onto his computer and use all his Spotify tokens. Wait, that's how Spotify works, right: via a token system?

Anyway, monitors.

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