At this point in my internet life, I've been conditioned to just assume that everything I see is fundamentally "fake" in some way, either made up by some guy or computer generated in any number of ethically or practically dubious ways. But Windows 10's desktop background, with the blue light bursting out of a Windows logo suspended in a void? That was real, baby, that actually happened.
The design was a collaboration between Microsoft and the artist GMUNK, and it's not like it was a secret or anything: There's been a post on GMUNK's website and a YouTube video of the thing in motion up online for nearly a decade. But I think we're all so conditioned to disregard or otherwise devalue so much of what we see, why on earth would anyone spare a thought for a corporate branding exercise destined to be replaced with videogame concept art or something anyway? I never consciously said "surely this image is CGI," I simply blanked out the default Windows 10 desktop background the way I might do to an advertisement or garbage post on Reddit.
