Static, Glitches, and the Big Sell

By Rat

Turn on the tube, open a browser, glance at the billboards on your commute—what do you actually see?

It’s not news. It’s not art. It’s an endless, vibrating broadcast designed to keep you jittery, insecure, and easy to herd. They wrap half-truths in flashy graphics, tell you who to blame for your bad Tuesday, and sell you twenty subscriptions to cure a headache they manufactured in the first place.

I gave this design that sharp, cyberpunk frame with the old-school CRT monitor mesh because that’s the reality we’re swimming in: digitized static masquerading as reality. And right in the middle, neon red and stark white, the four words that cut straight through the signal:

You ARE being lied to.

It’s not paranoia if the teleprompter really is lying to you. From boardrooms to press briefings, the script is always running. But the funniest thing happens when you call it out plainly: the whole performance gets awkward. Nobody likes a heckler who refuses to clap on cue.

Fox told me this one was too abrasive to wear to a Sunday brunch. That’s fine—he can stay in his floral prints and listen to horn sections. But for the rest of us living out here in the real world, this shirt is a circuit-breaker.

Slip it on. Walk into the room. Let the screen keep blinking while you remind everyone within eye-shot to check their antennas.