I love high-resolution, high-refresh-rate gaming monitors, but the thin, black rectangles of modern displays no longer excite me. Maybe it's because they are now ubiquitous displays and I've grown accustomed to them, or maybe it's because I've reached an age where I'm hopelessly nostalgic for the past. I'd rather scroll through the tweets of CRT Bot, a Twitter account I stumbled across over the weekend, shouting "AESTHETIC!" to the sky and endlessly gazing at pictures of old monitors and TVs.

CRT Bot is a very simple Twitter account; it seems to tweet 5-10 times a day, with many of the photos showcasing retro games and high-end monitors. There are many pictures of Sony BVM and PVM monitors, which are more or less the highest quality CRT displays ever made. They were designed for professional (P) and broadcast (B) use, cost thousands of dollars, and were capable of much clearer images than the average CRT (more about these in an article I wrote half a century ago).

However, these are not the only monitors featured in CRT Bot. It's an eclectic collection of cool old PCs, ugly old PCs, ads, chunky 90s laptops, disassembled TV tubes, and more. There's the occasional non-CRT in the mix, but that's okay. It's a delightful mix of the ugly and the beautiful, with the occasional ancient pop culture titillation.

I think the CRT Bot serves to make a strong case for the old CRT aesthetic, and old technology in general. Sure, there are plenty of beige monitors out there. But every few tweets, a new TV or monitor appears with all kinds of buttons and dials, adding texture and character to the hardware design. Where once the idea of today's sleek, thin TVs seemed impossibly futuristic, we now dream of being able to press a damn physical button to do something, knowing that it comes with a slow, "smart" interface.

Try telling me that a Sharp X68000 or Twin NES doesn't look cool as hell.

Anyway, follow the CRT bot. It's good for your eyes.