[link_108]

If there wasn't "The Office" to begin with, then what would people use to specify their version of "The Office"? Or how would that idea of "The Office" become popular in the first place for people to want to create their own version (Assuming the tools were in place to generate your own content)? I think there's a lot of value in communicating about shared ideas, eg people love to talk about movies/shows/etc, there's whole communities around a shared idea. I'm curious to see how individualized content impacts this.

[echelon]

"The Office" is a product of the convergent evolution of workplace satire that started well before "Dilbert". It occupies a shared space with "IT Crowd", "Silicon Valley", "Horrible Bosses", "Office Space", thousands of comics, articles, etc.

There will never be another "Office". People will continue to riff on it, produce fan fiction, and make pop culture references to it, but ultimately the next thing that occupies that space will be brand new.

Shapes of ideas are similar but get executed differently. And sometimes we stumble across some rather unique executions that speak to us at our moment in time and spread like wildfire.

I have no doubt people will continue doing this for as long as we remain a thinking species.