You Are Being Monitored… by Them
- Jan 11
- 2 min read
A quiet joke about modern work, modern life, and modern surveillance
There was a time when “being monitored” sounded dramatic.Security cameras. Guard towers. Grainy black-and-white footage.
Now it’s just… Tuesday.
Login times.Activity indicators.Keystrokes.Productivity dashboards.Recommendation engines that somehow know what you were thinking before you did.
The phrase “You are being monitored… by them” isn’t meant to be shocking. It’s meant to be familiar.
Who is “them,” exactly?
That’s the point.
“Them” doesn’t need a name anymore. It could be:
an algorithm
an app
a system
a dashboard
a policy
or someone who has never met you but definitely has access
The design intentionally leaves it vague because modern monitoring is vague. You rarely see the watcher. You just feel the presence.
A green dot turns on. A metric update. A report gets generated.
No explanation required.
Work from home or work from the office — same system
One of the strangest shifts in modern work culture is that location stopped mattering, but monitoring didn’t.
Home office? Logged.Corporate office? Logged.Camera on? Camera off? Still logged.
The tools changed. The desks changed. The expectation didn’t.
This shirt isn’t anti-technology or anti-work. It’s a nod to the shared understanding that today’s systems don’t need to be loud to be effective. They just need to be always on.
Why make it funny?
Because humor is how we cope with things we can’t fully control.
A bright warning sign.A simple message.A line that feels half joke, half status update.
The design looks like something you’d see posted on a wall for safety reasons — except this time, it’s not about forklifts or wet floors. It’s about attention, data, and the quiet background processes running all the time.
The joke works because it doesn’t explain itself.If you get it, you really get it.
Not loud. Not preachy. Just accurate.
This isn’t a rant. It’s not a manifesto. It doesn’t tell you what to think.
It just states a condition.
You are being monitored.…by them.
Wear it to work. Wear it at home. Wear it on a video call and see who notices first.
Because someone always does.
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