This story has gone around the world: some computers were stolen from a Vancouver office, and a few days later the photo above was uploaded to flickr… to the account of the previous owner.
I posted this at flickr, but thought I would include it here as well:
To .eti: this is all a Rorchach test, as you noticed.
Most people jump to the conclusion that he is either the thief or know the computer is stolen. But do we really know? (It is possible, although admittedly unlikely, that he could be a visitor, using the computer innocently.)
And from there, they project all their ideas of what such a person is like, as seen in most of the comments above.
We have a story that he is (a) a thief and (b) not very technologically literate, (c) which is taken as meaning not very intelligent in general, so see him as stupid, a moron, and so on. All of this may be accurate, but the truth is, we don’t know.
What if we instead had the story that he just saved a child from drowning, or rescued a family from a burning house, or gave $10,000 to a good cause? How would we see this picture then? Probably quite differently. Maybe now, he looks caring, reflective, warm, someone you wouldn’t mind getting to know.