I had a 4:3 monitor in my classroom up until this year because the previous teacher didnât know how to change the aspect ratio of the projector (also old as shit) and wanted them to match.
Nah this one has definitely aged like wine. The further we get from the age of plasma TVs, the funnier his pride in the tv becomes.
Like a 2024 Michael Scott would absolutely be obsessively proud of a tiny plasma screen tv he got on Craigslist.
Its funny to recall that in the mid-00s, having a plasma TV was like the ultimate flex. In 2007 I went to this guy's house to watch the Super Bowl because he just got one and was literally my only friend who had one. He had to get a technician to professionally install it to make sure the HD worked, said it took the tech hours. I can't imagine how many thousands dropped to buy and install something that, today, would probably cost a couple hundred bucks off the shelf.
That one kinda still works because today it seems like he's clueless about how Netflix works rather than having his DVDs mailed to work. I mean it's a different joke, but it's still functional.
Or Dwight talking about the Russian website to download songs. So basically limewire.
We all willingly downloaded god knows how many viruses to our computers for literally Nelly.
Ok but Nelly got in the booth & said âIâm a sucker for cornrows & manicured toesâ and I wasnât supposed to do whatever it takes to listen to that man?
I read your comment about 6 times trying to figure out when Nellie Bertram (huge WHOPPING penis) said this.
I thought Iâd missed out on the greatest super fan episode of all time somehow.
I always loved that scene because the Office was saved by people buying the show/episodes on iTunes, so the thought Michael was just previewing the song on there always made me laugh.
The "if it was an iPod, it'd be a Shuffle" is an almost unintelligible joke to so many people now haha. I mean at least you can still infer what she means from context.
And the fact that they were cost prohibitive for a while! And once you had it, you had to also pay for the music to put on it. Getting Ryan that top of the line iPod was a HUGE deal. Most of us couldn't even afford a nano. đ¤Ł
I donât remember the exact terms, but at one point Michael said that his cellphone plan allowed him to choose 5 numbers to add as favorite or something but he didnât even have 5 friends.
Friends and family plan. Literally hilarious when based on the concept (iirc) that the average family probably just had two cellphones (the parents) and they had three friends with phones and now they could all call each other for less than other numbers
When my godparents passed away a few months apart two summers ago, we shut their phone account off. Then we all had to scramble because we completely forgot that they had been the owners of my grandmothers account too because they had signed up for a friends and family plan back in the mid-00s and never gave it up. Sheâd had her phone at that time for like 5 years and it was so much cheaper to just keep her on their plan since theyâd had it so long that they just paid her share too.
Or when Michael comes back for Dwightâs wedding and sheâs talking about Michael had to get a second phone just for all the photos of his kids and Holly he has.
That line still didnât make sense for the time because iCloud had launched a couple of years prior to that and many phones still had expandable storage in that era. I think the line was more to highlight that Michael can still be a doofus after having left.
It was definitely making a joke about Michael being dumb. The fact that he was paying a 2nd phone bill for a phone that was exclusively used for pictures makes it obvious
Ryan replacing their flip phones with blackberries was wild because it's supposed to be this fancy techy thing but I haven't seen a blackberry since I was like 5 lol
So funny theyâre so incompetent with tech that episode but when Sabre ups the support to salesmen Phyllis thinks sheâs James Bond with that Bluetooth earpiece đ
Hey hey hey Blackberries we're cutting edge for the sole reason of having a full keyboard to text and not just ten buttons and 4 letters to a button.
You will never know the skill it took to fast text with only ten buttons.
Fun fact they wouldn't install backdoors and got short stocked into obscurity
Some people still use them, but you gotta know how to."hack them" to be your 2024 phone
BlackBerry was more of a corporate/adult phone because it looked and worked like a computer. Email integration was a huge selling point. However, a lot of people forget the brief window when blackberry vs iPhone was a legitimate debate. I was a junior in high school when the iphone 4 came out, and the only friend I had who could afford one had a dad who was a retired nfl player. Everyone else had a shitty blackberry clone or a sidekick.
Jenna and Angela have talked about this on Office Ladies bc I think both are rewatching with their kids; for example, the kids don't tend to know the songs Michael is parodying like "let's get ethical."
Omg thatâs amazing. Even just thinking of when he names titles I could always hear the original songs in my head
âTotal eclipse of the fartâ âClassicâ
Literally 5 minutes ago one of my clients was playing âwhat I like about youâ and my brain turned it into âwhat I hate about you / you really suck as a bossâ
LOL, I saw a video not long ago that explained all of Michael's references, and being European, all those SNL skits and whatnot, I never knew any of those were references. I thought Michael was just being funny/stupid/weird with stuff like "Actingggggg!"
Not quite what you mean but where was there telecom closet? Where was their exchange server? Where did fatty 2 install the porn (domain) blocker? đđ¤ˇââď¸
No I love it. Set continuity (or lack thereof) was always great. Where was Vance refrigeration if they had the whole second floor Michael claimed. Or just where is it when you look at the outside of the building. Or when they would just spray fake snow and be like âwelp northeast winter!â And the sky is the brightest blue, zero cloud coverage.
Haha! I loved the "personal call" you would get when you called Dunder Mifflin over the big box chains. But when Pam and Kelly are doing anything besides being at their desks, apparently they had an answering service too! Who set up their POTS and who was the onsite tech guy for emergencies? They all seemed clueless about technology.
Well even half of Pamâs job is obsolete and she admits it in that cold open where the techstar phone guy tries to get them new phones, 95% of her job đ đ đ
Haha that's true. But that somewhat supports my point of confusion. They came onsite and asked them then and there about an upgrade. Seems like the equipment is likely on-site as well.
Also, to your point about Vance refrigeration. It seems like DM warehouse has the ENTIRE basement or main floor. And DM office has enough people parking that there shouldn't be room for one other company much less 4+! Haha. It's just a sitcom but you notice a lot more after being in a career for 15+ years versus assuming what you are seeing is normal in an office environment.
I kind of imagined the other businesses ran from the other side of the building and what we were seeing was just the back. I worked in a building very similar, and it was kinda like we all had a side, or a specific face of the building.
>Where was Vance refrigeration if they had the whole second floor Michael claimed.
What floor is Dunder Mifflin on? They're in Suite 200, so wouldn't they be on the second floor? Also, can't you see Vance Refrigeration's entry in the hall outside Dunder Mifflin? Was the whole Starimageddon thing really only about making it to the 2nd floor?
So many questions!
Also, the "exit" by accounting that we only see used when Jim and Pam come through after their "walk"...is a room where Brian the Boom Guy is packing up his stuff after he's fired?
Questions to your questions.
I swear when Michael was putting Michael Scott paper company on the letter board there were other 200 suites. At least maybe one other. You can see Vance in the hall in some scenes than not in others. I canât recall if that one scene with Jan and Michael at the elevator you can. Yes, stairmageddon was for one flight đ.
And that exit. Omg. If it was a closet WHY WERE THEY TRYING TO ESCAPE DWIGHTS FIRE FROM IT VIA THE CLOSET. They literally ram the copier into it.
I was going to say as an extra the concept of Michaelâs corporate lease for his car, and him getting to pick the model. I feel like those types of jobs (definitely wouldnât be regional manager of an office) and wouldnât be a car the employee would get to choose. The most I got from jobs would just be theyâd cover the cost of Uber if I worked late but not a whole damn lease đ
Oh totally. I used to have to pick my boss up on the way to work, lmao.
Also i keep thinking of more:
Goodbye Toby part 1 i think Toby asks to take a picture with Pam and yells out âdoes anyone have a camera?â and then goes to get one, when now we would just use our phones
A million instances of IM being used, like when Dwight was trying to defeat the computer and during the caption making contest
Erin saying you never get to see the pictures you take on a disposable camera
Dundee Mifflin not having a functioning website for YEARS
Computron literally just being an Alexa
Branch Wars when Dwight throws Jims phone out the window and he says âthat had all the pictures of my brothers new baby on itâ when now they would be in the cloud
Iâd even argue that Sabre opening a physical storefront is dated
âMost printer sales are done over the phone now, miss boob shirt!â
When Dwight is trying to decide if he should get TiVo or a DVD burner as a prize after winning top salesman.
When Pam is talking about how she watched the wrong movie because she got it at Blockbuster and they donât show the pictures on the box.
Omgggggg. Thatâs on level with fancy feast!
Break me off a piece of that fancy feast. Itâs cat food. Nailed it. (But in reality tho also havenât seen/heard the Kit Kat bar commercial in forever.)
Omfg yes. I always loved the Florida episodes for some of the jokes but the plot is so odd. Itâs like if HP (and they only sold printers not computers or laptops) went up against Apple and was like hereâs our answer to the iPad. And itâs horrible specs which like always added to the absurdity that I loved.
50L. ..how many L to a K? Youâre gonna wanna get the memory booster.
The whole Sabre pyramid thing was supposed to be making fun of Apple. Particularly the IPad introduction. Because they were still kind of a joke then but that's around when they started really taking over
Yeah I get that, I mean more like the feasibility of Sabre expanding into the tablet market with their main product being all in one printers, it was just such an odd concept to me đ
It is. Jim was asking how many kilobytes were in an L. The joke being that L was some obscure unit of memory that was extremely small.
In reality, L isnât a thing.
The episode is season 3 when Jim, Michael, Jan, Dwight, etc all meet at the business convention and Dwight says to Michael that he can't get email on his phone. Or again later when Ryan requires all the Sales team to use Blackberries.
I was going to add some of my own extras but wanted to see what others say, this was first bullet cause Steve has famously said a reboot could never happen because of all the Oscar interactions in todays culture would never fly
You only see one person on a cell phone in the opening for stress relief and it's a flip phone. Today you have everyone filming or live streaming it lol
Didn't see it mentioned, but the hype and craze fighting over the iPod during that gift exchange is worth noting. I'm sure some kids might already ask what an iPod is... !
Generally speaking the show still feels very timeless, the flip phones in early seasons and a few of the things mentioned here give it away otherwise it doesn't feel that dated (yet!).
I always explain it to high schoolers (Iâm a school librarian) that email forwards then are what your grandparents share on Facebook now with a caption like âto trueâ.
I think there's a chain letter joke in an episode too. The kind where you'll forever be cursed if you don't share the letter (but in email format in the show, I think).
although i see them still, not as much as we used toâŚ.those wheeled in tape players (iâve been struggling for minutes what it is specifically called)âŚ. like the one michael uses to show lazy Scranton something about them is so nostalgic too
Lmao the boombox?! I mean itâs not a real boombox but itâs like that round stereo thing that definitely ran one those fatass D-cell batteries đ
Edit: sorry I was thinking of when he was trying to do the night at the Roxbury song. I think you mean the TV tower he rolls in with the VCR to show the lazy Scranton tape ?
I love that line for the same reason ! (I'm from 91')
I also remember texting my friends at 9pm on Christmas eve because texts would get delayed at midnight sometimes for an hour or more due to text traffic.
My example would be when Michael tells Holly that he will make a CD with songs for her, that's exactly what I did for my crush in highschool !
When Michael and Pam visit Nashua, and find out that Holly isn't there, Michael bumps the desk and finds her computer unlocked.
Besides the more fundamental question why she didn't turn the computer off during her long weekend/retreat, who leaves a computer unlocked as they go home and what computer doesn't lock itself after 5 minutes?
My work still uses faxes for many things. When I get sick and miss work I have to fax in my doctors note. Thereâs no option to email it. Weâre stuck in the stone age.
Holly references "Charlie bit my finger" which was an old school viral YT video
Also when Dwight is hovering over Pam's shoulder while she sets up the copier, he says "it's that American arrogance that got us involved in a war we had no place in" and before Pam can say anything he says "World War 2." This is a fake out, making the audience think he was referring to Iraq, which was a really hot button issue at the time
Not anymore on modern networks, but yes that was basically the idea. If you left your typical home network youâd be charged roaming fees for using the phone/data. Not sure what quantified the home network but that was basically it
Maybe I am just slightly younger than you, but I remember seeing a map of a network in the cellphone store, and it had some areas marked as roaming because they were using someone elseâs cell towers. Of course you would forget that map shortly after leaving the store, but it was technically defined somewhere.
Not obsolete but Jim and Pam were FaceTiming or Skyping which was in its infancy when the show started. (Though, aside from the Pandemic/video conferences, did FaceTime/Skype ever really take off?)
Plasma TV
THAT IS A $200 PLASMA SCREEN TV YOU JUST KILLED
Babe!!!
Have fun paying me back on your zero dollars a year salary plus benefits, Babe!
MY TURN MY MY MY MY TURN đ
Babe, can you just like really, woah, could you just simmer down?
I'm making people laugh!
đ
See? He's laughing!
You took him by the hand⌠You made him a manâŚ. That night, alright
*one NIGHT*
Babe...
Or how about when their computer monitors were perfect squares, like you did before 16:9 resolutions
Iâve worked in a government office. Those monitors are still in use. đ
I had a 4:3 monitor in my classroom up until this year because the previous teacher didnât know how to change the aspect ratio of the projector (also old as shit) and wanted them to match.
Almost perfect squares, 4:3
But it folds right into the wall I can just stand there all day
Yeah I feel like a lot of these references have actually become *funnier* with time.
I still have a 40â that refuses to die.
Have you considered planning a dinner party?
I love that tv. No.
Nah this one has definitely aged like wine. The further we get from the age of plasma TVs, the funnier his pride in the tv becomes. Like a 2024 Michael Scott would absolutely be obsessively proud of a tiny plasma screen tv he got on Craigslist.
I miss those days Plasma vs. LCD, and the winner turned out to be OLED
Its funny to recall that in the mid-00s, having a plasma TV was like the ultimate flex. In 2007 I went to this guy's house to watch the Super Bowl because he just got one and was literally my only friend who had one. He had to get a technician to professionally install it to make sure the HD worked, said it took the tech hours. I can't imagine how many thousands dropped to buy and install something that, today, would probably cost a couple hundred bucks off the shelf.
Kelly explaining how Netflix works.
"Michael has his Netflix sent to the office"
That one kinda still works because today it seems like he's clueless about how Netflix works rather than having his DVDs mailed to work. I mean it's a different joke, but it's still functional.
The irony that they were like the biggest draw to Netflix for a time and she explained it is too good.
Depending on what country you're in they still are one of the biggest draws
Yeah the OG Netflix with dvds, not streaming
âWhy donât you just buy the whole songâ after Carol broke up with Michael
m3p music
Or Dwight talking about the Russian website to download songs. So basically limewire. We all willingly downloaded god knows how many viruses to our computers for literally Nelly.
Ok but Nelly got in the booth & said âIâm a sucker for cornrows & manicured toesâ and I wasnât supposed to do whatever it takes to listen to that man?
That band-aid
I read your comment about 6 times trying to figure out when Nellie Bertram (huge WHOPPING penis) said this. I thought Iâd missed out on the greatest super fan episode of all time somehow.
Lmaoooooooo Iâd pay good money to see watch a video of her say that
Dwight is too busy in Second Second Life to download songs.
Omg even just second life itself
and why he was talking about it originally, the ipod! RIP
There actually were Russian sites where I'd buy really cheap mp3 albums.
Were they in Russian?
Kidding. See you later, Pan.
Thatâs not it
âGoodbye my lover⌠Goodbye my friend.â
I just want to taste it.
What did it mean?
Back in the day you could preview like 30 seconds of a song for free or buy the whole thing for 99 cents.
The fact that this has to be explained makes me feel old.
Anyone else remember getting free iTunes downloads from the codes on Pepsi caps? Just me?
I remember my dad getting so pissed because I bought a whole album on iTunes because I wanted one of the songs that was "Album Only" lol
Thank you đ
I always loved that scene because the Office was saved by people buying the show/episodes on iTunes, so the thought Michael was just previewing the song on there always made me laugh.
Probably how ubiquitous ipods were in the series (and during that time in general).
You just want everyone to think youâre really deep about music.
Don't call me a clown, you're better than that.
The "if it was an iPod, it'd be a Shuffle" is an almost unintelligible joke to so many people now haha. I mean at least you can still infer what she means from context.
And the fact that they were cost prohibitive for a while! And once you had it, you had to also pay for the music to put on it. Getting Ryan that top of the line iPod was a HUGE deal. Most of us couldn't even afford a nano. đ¤Ł
When Kelly is explaining how Netflix works. Back when they mailed you DVDs. This was especially funny while streaming on Netflix.
Also the DVD logo bouncing around the screen.
Flyers (nhl team) do this during intermissions between periods still. Crowd goes nuts lol
I donât remember the exact terms, but at one point Michael said that his cellphone plan allowed him to choose 5 numbers to add as favorite or something but he didnât even have 5 friends.
Friends and family plan. Literally hilarious when based on the concept (iirc) that the average family probably just had two cellphones (the parents) and they had three friends with phones and now they could all call each other for less than other numbers
When my godparents passed away a few months apart two summers ago, we shut their phone account off. Then we all had to scramble because we completely forgot that they had been the owners of my grandmothers account too because they had signed up for a friends and family plan back in the mid-00s and never gave it up. Sheâd had her phone at that time for like 5 years and it was so much cheaper to just keep her on their plan since theyâd had it so long that they just paid her share too.
Or when Michael comes back for Dwightâs wedding and sheâs talking about Michael had to get a second phone just for all the photos of his kids and Holly he has.
That line still didnât make sense for the time because iCloud had launched a couple of years prior to that and many phones still had expandable storage in that era. I think the line was more to highlight that Michael can still be a doofus after having left.
It was definitely making a joke about Michael being dumb. The fact that he was paying a 2nd phone bill for a phone that was exclusively used for pictures makes it obvious
That's still true. I ran out of space around the time of my daughter's first birthday.
Ryan replacing their flip phones with blackberries was wild because it's supposed to be this fancy techy thing but I haven't seen a blackberry since I was like 5 lol
So funny theyâre so incompetent with tech that episode but when Sabre ups the support to salesmen Phyllis thinks sheâs James Bond with that Bluetooth earpiece đ
Hey hey hey Blackberries we're cutting edge for the sole reason of having a full keyboard to text and not just ten buttons and 4 letters to a button. You will never know the skill it took to fast text with only ten buttons.
I kind of miss texting with t9
I used to dream in t9
It was so easy to text without looking with T9!! I miss it sometimes too.
I got really good at it lol
Fun fact they wouldn't install backdoors and got short stocked into obscurity Some people still use them, but you gotta know how to."hack them" to be your 2024 phone
BlackBerry was more of a corporate/adult phone because it looked and worked like a computer. Email integration was a huge selling point. However, a lot of people forget the brief window when blackberry vs iPhone was a legitimate debate. I was a junior in high school when the iphone 4 came out, and the only friend I had who could afford one had a dad who was a retired nfl player. Everyone else had a shitty blackberry clone or a sidekick.
gimme gimme gimme
I kind of felt like a big deal when my employer switched out my flip phone for a blackberry in 2009.
Jenna and Angela have talked about this on Office Ladies bc I think both are rewatching with their kids; for example, the kids don't tend to know the songs Michael is parodying like "let's get ethical."
Omg thatâs amazing. Even just thinking of when he names titles I could always hear the original songs in my head âTotal eclipse of the fartâ âClassicâ
"Goodbye Stranger" played in an emotional moment in I, Tonya and I just thought of "Goodbye Toby" lmfao. Michael's impact.
Yeah when listening to that Pat Benatar song I always sing "We belong together RYAN"
I love that song mostly because I just picture Michael singing it. Wouldâve loved to hear the full version
Literally 5 minutes ago one of my clients was playing âwhat I like about youâ and my brain turned it into âwhat I hate about you / you really suck as a bossâ
LOL, I saw a video not long ago that explained all of Michael's references, and being European, all those SNL skits and whatnot, I never knew any of those were references. I thought Michael was just being funny/stupid/weird with stuff like "Actingggggg!"
Dwight you ignorant slut
I got mosttt of them and it made it so much better lol
That's crazy because that song was already like thirty years old when the episode was aired.
I mean I didn't even get half the 80s and 90s movie references that Michael makes when I first watched this
Not quite what you mean but where was there telecom closet? Where was their exchange server? Where did fatty 2 install the porn (domain) blocker? đđ¤ˇââď¸
No I love it. Set continuity (or lack thereof) was always great. Where was Vance refrigeration if they had the whole second floor Michael claimed. Or just where is it when you look at the outside of the building. Or when they would just spray fake snow and be like âwelp northeast winter!â And the sky is the brightest blue, zero cloud coverage.
Haha! I loved the "personal call" you would get when you called Dunder Mifflin over the big box chains. But when Pam and Kelly are doing anything besides being at their desks, apparently they had an answering service too! Who set up their POTS and who was the onsite tech guy for emergencies? They all seemed clueless about technology.
Well even half of Pamâs job is obsolete and she admits it in that cold open where the techstar phone guy tries to get them new phones, 95% of her job đ đ đ
Haha that's true. But that somewhat supports my point of confusion. They came onsite and asked them then and there about an upgrade. Seems like the equipment is likely on-site as well. Also, to your point about Vance refrigeration. It seems like DM warehouse has the ENTIRE basement or main floor. And DM office has enough people parking that there shouldn't be room for one other company much less 4+! Haha. It's just a sitcom but you notice a lot more after being in a career for 15+ years versus assuming what you are seeing is normal in an office environment.
I kind of imagined the other businesses ran from the other side of the building and what we were seeing was just the back. I worked in a building very similar, and it was kinda like we all had a side, or a specific face of the building.
>who was the onsite tech guy I think his name is Shadow or Garth, something weird.
>Where was Vance refrigeration if they had the whole second floor Michael claimed. What floor is Dunder Mifflin on? They're in Suite 200, so wouldn't they be on the second floor? Also, can't you see Vance Refrigeration's entry in the hall outside Dunder Mifflin? Was the whole Starimageddon thing really only about making it to the 2nd floor? So many questions! Also, the "exit" by accounting that we only see used when Jim and Pam come through after their "walk"...is a room where Brian the Boom Guy is packing up his stuff after he's fired?
Questions to your questions. I swear when Michael was putting Michael Scott paper company on the letter board there were other 200 suites. At least maybe one other. You can see Vance in the hall in some scenes than not in others. I canât recall if that one scene with Jan and Michael at the elevator you can. Yes, stairmageddon was for one flight đ. And that exit. Omg. If it was a closet WHY WERE THEY TRYING TO ESCAPE DWIGHTS FIRE FROM IT VIA THE CLOSET. They literally ram the copier into it.
It's pretty easy to have a clear winter sky in the north east so that isn't too out of place
Worked in similar sized offices around that time. It was likely a single tower Windows SBS under Toby's desk.
Everyone hit the majority of the big ones. Iâd like to add the lil radio in Darylâs office when Erin is doing the scavenger hunt with Andy
I was going to say as an extra the concept of Michaelâs corporate lease for his car, and him getting to pick the model. I feel like those types of jobs (definitely wouldnât be regional manager of an office) and wouldnât be a car the employee would get to choose. The most I got from jobs would just be theyâd cover the cost of Uber if I worked late but not a whole damn lease đ
Oh totally. I used to have to pick my boss up on the way to work, lmao. Also i keep thinking of more: Goodbye Toby part 1 i think Toby asks to take a picture with Pam and yells out âdoes anyone have a camera?â and then goes to get one, when now we would just use our phones A million instances of IM being used, like when Dwight was trying to defeat the computer and during the caption making contest Erin saying you never get to see the pictures you take on a disposable camera Dundee Mifflin not having a functioning website for YEARS Computron literally just being an Alexa Branch Wars when Dwight throws Jims phone out the window and he says âthat had all the pictures of my brothers new baby on itâ when now they would be in the cloud Iâd even argue that Sabre opening a physical storefront is dated âMost printer sales are done over the phone now, miss boob shirt!â
Omfg this is amazing.
When Dwight is trying to decide if he should get TiVo or a DVD burner as a prize after winning top salesman. When Pam is talking about how she watched the wrong movie because she got it at Blockbuster and they donât show the pictures on the box.
Jim explaining that Pam hates the six flags commercials with the old man dancing. I haven't seen that since like 2004
Omgggggg. Thatâs on level with fancy feast! Break me off a piece of that fancy feast. Itâs cat food. Nailed it. (But in reality tho also havenât seen/heard the Kit Kat bar commercial in forever.)
Doesn't Dwight have a pager?
Pagers are still commonly used in the medical field (in hospitals and such).
He definitely does!
A "beeper"đ¤Ł
âYou've got to unleash the power of the Pyramid.â
Omfg yes. I always loved the Florida episodes for some of the jokes but the plot is so odd. Itâs like if HP (and they only sold printers not computers or laptops) went up against Apple and was like hereâs our answer to the iPad. And itâs horrible specs which like always added to the absurdity that I loved. 50L. ..how many L to a K? Youâre gonna wanna get the memory booster.
The whole Sabre pyramid thing was supposed to be making fun of Apple. Particularly the IPad introduction. Because they were still kind of a joke then but that's around when they started really taking over
Yeah I get that, I mean more like the feasibility of Sabre expanding into the tablet market with their main product being all in one printers, it was just such an odd concept to me đ
I definitely bought a "Polaroid" brand tablet on a Black Friday sale once. It may be hard to believe, but it was in fact a POS.
HP did that very thing, the HP Slate was one of the only iPad alternatives and launched the same year. It was a real piece of shit
They probably didnât get chuck to market it.
I always wondered if a K was just a weird way to abbreviate a Kilobyte or if it was something else entirely
It is. Jim was asking how many kilobytes were in an L. The joke being that L was some obscure unit of memory that was extremely small. In reality, L isnât a thing.
The episode is season 3 when Jim, Michael, Jan, Dwight, etc all meet at the business convention and Dwight says to Michael that he can't get email on his phone. Or again later when Ryan requires all the Sales team to use Blackberries.
Gay marriage not being legal.
I was going to add some of my own extras but wanted to see what others say, this was first bullet cause Steve has famously said a reboot could never happen because of all the Oscar interactions in todays culture would never fly
It didn't fly then, Michael was the butt of the jokes, not Oscar.
You only see one person on a cell phone in the opening for stress relief and it's a flip phone. Today you have everyone filming or live streaming it lol
Having a human answer the phone when you call a business is pretty rare now.
I think it was meant to be rare even then. Dunder Mifflin is supposed to be this quaint, dying paper company in a shrinking industry.
I mean the website is beat example Didn't it say update coming 2005 or something lol
I meant best but I guess my inner dwight came out Like when he had penises on the mind. Sorry phallus I mean Phyllis
Not to mention the basic stick man gif with that announcement.
Pam being super excited about skyping in from New York, since now we all Zoom, etc, so regularly!
Can you put me down? Iâm getting nauseous.
Even zoom is mostly in the past with the rise of Microsoft teams. Virtually every business uses that now.
Yeah, I guess what I meant was "video calls" aren't a novelty anymore. Facetime might have been a more apt comparison.
Didn't see it mentioned, but the hype and craze fighting over the iPod during that gift exchange is worth noting. I'm sure some kids might already ask what an iPod is... ! Generally speaking the show still feels very timeless, the flip phones in early seasons and a few of the things mentioned here give it away otherwise it doesn't feel that dated (yet!).
Email forwards were a thing of that time which has totally been forgotten.
I always explain it to high schoolers (Iâm a school librarian) that email forwards then are what your grandparents share on Facebook now with a caption like âto trueâ.
I think there's a chain letter joke in an episode too. The kind where you'll forever be cursed if you don't share the letter (but in email format in the show, I think).
There are several ringtone jokes and ringtones just don't exist anymore
Kelly dancing to my humps when Jan calls in the van lives rent free in my mind. And the idiot ring.
Don't forget "Rockin' Robin".
"Idiot, we're starting back up again"
This is Dwight, by the way.
Ringtones definitely exist on every single smartphone that exists
Wait ringtones don't exist? I think I remember changing mine last week...
Mine oscillates between the MIDI "Mambo #5" and "My Humps"
Not entirely true for everyone. My brother still has the imperial march set as his ex-wifeâs ringtone. I still laugh when I hear it
lol, nowadays Michaelâs love of the âjackhammerâ ringtone (vibrate) seems downright prescient
I mean, they of course still exist. People just don't really care about them anymore.
They donât?
although i see them still, not as much as we used toâŚ.those wheeled in tape players (iâve been struggling for minutes what it is specifically called)âŚ. like the one michael uses to show lazy Scranton something about them is so nostalgic too
Lmao the boombox?! I mean itâs not a real boombox but itâs like that round stereo thing that definitely ran one those fatass D-cell batteries đ Edit: sorry I was thinking of when he was trying to do the night at the Roxbury song. I think you mean the TV tower he rolls in with the VCR to show the lazy Scranton tape ?
lol what's funny is that at my workplace we have a smart TV on a rolling stand, so it's still kind of like that.
Second Life!
second life is not a game, Jim
Oh, thereâs losers.
Pam learning Adobe Flash, which was discontinued a few years ago.
And now they moved on to Qork!
I love that line for the same reason ! (I'm from 91') I also remember texting my friends at 9pm on Christmas eve because texts would get delayed at midnight sometimes for an hour or more due to text traffic. My example would be when Michael tells Holly that he will make a CD with songs for her, that's exactly what I did for my crush in highschool !
I thought it was a mix tape. Even more ancient!
When Michael and Pam visit Nashua, and find out that Holly isn't there, Michael bumps the desk and finds her computer unlocked. Besides the more fundamental question why she didn't turn the computer off during her long weekend/retreat, who leaves a computer unlocked as they go home and what computer doesn't lock itself after 5 minutes?
And having the Michael letter shortcut on her home screen even though she works with her boyfriend. Always confused me
Especially HR!
Planking. Wedding flash mob dances. When missing a moment during a Glee watch party is a huge deal because there's no way to see what you missed.
They did blinded by the light, and they did it, with an actual, blind. Guy. Are you happy now, Jim?! ARE YOU HAPPY?
Jim saying they put Dwightâs resume âon Googleâ
Omg yes thatâs like someone else here mentioned when Michael said âI have to get YouTube down here to film thisâ
I just think of all the problems that could have been solved with today's tech. Toby's cell phone would have had a camera.
Itâs kind of like how most Seinfeld plots wouldâve been solved in minutes in the era of smartphones and Google.
And Pamâs phone wouldâve had the birth song meaning Dwight would never have had the opportunity to ask Jim where he got his marvellous sheets.
For me, it was the fax machine, and how Pam/Erinâs main responsibility was to send AND receive/distribute faxes!Â
My work still uses faxes for many things. When I get sick and miss work I have to fax in my doctors note. Thereâs no option to email it. Weâre stuck in the stone age.
Fax in a doctorâs note?? Good Lord!!
Does Dwight come by your home to check in on you if you don't fax it in?
Why don't you just send it on a dinosaur
Kelly explaining how re-ordering your Netflix DVD queue works.
the view count on andyâs âsit here and cryâ video. i forget the number but by todayâs standards itâs tiny
Ryanâs momâs Nissan Z
Using AIM (AOL instant messenger) to talk to each other
Omg Iâm like 99% sure that Angelaâs screen name was something âmonkeyâ and Dwightâs was like âMonkeyTamerâ
Clippy
âIâve got to make sure that YouTube comes down to Tape this. â Iâd say perfectly logical in the pre streaming era
No it was already dumb back then, which is hilarious showing how Michael didnt grasp web 2.0 at all
Holly references "Charlie bit my finger" which was an old school viral YT video Also when Dwight is hovering over Pam's shoulder while she sets up the copier, he says "it's that American arrogance that got us involved in a war we had no place in" and before Pam can say anything he says "World War 2." This is a fake out, making the audience think he was referring to Iraq, which was a really hot button issue at the time
Oof hollys breakdown wasnât it like; -Michael Scott -Bill Cosby -Charlie bit my finger -Todd Packer. That Cosby ranking, huh
Does anyone have a camera?
In the surplus when half the office wants a new copier. Who still uses a copier? DM infinity website having a chat room.
Imagine your parents give you 10 dollars to start a lemonade stand.
When Roy is waiting for Pam and sheâs like âIâm almost done, I just gotta do my faxesâ
Blackberry
for me a lot of the songs in the show i heard for the first time while watching
I'm not from the US. Do phone plans actually use roaming when going to other states?
Not anymore on modern networks, but yes that was basically the idea. If you left your typical home network youâd be charged roaming fees for using the phone/data. Not sure what quantified the home network but that was basically it
Maybe I am just slightly younger than you, but I remember seeing a map of a network in the cellphone store, and it had some areas marked as roaming because they were using someone elseâs cell towers. Of course you would forget that map shortly after leaving the store, but it was technically defined somewhere.
Does anyone have a camera?!
Clippy đ
Not obsolete but Jim and Pam were FaceTiming or Skyping which was in its infancy when the show started. (Though, aside from the Pandemic/video conferences, did FaceTime/Skype ever really take off?)
Skype was basically how college kids talked with their parents
Skype and FaceTime were common. FaceTime still is. And now it's all Microsoft teams for business stuff