The It Crowd The Internet Is Coming Online

He warns of a “series of tubes” and a beast that will consume their business model. The solution? Hire a team of “dynamic, go-getting” individuals (read: two random guys from the pub) to build Reynholm Industries’ very first website. What makes this episode so brilliant—and painfully relevant—is its hyperbolic take on corporate technophobia.

It is a single, static HTML page. On it is a pixelated JPEG of a hand shaking another hand, with the text: the it crowd the internet is coming

What does the internet look like for Reynholm Industries? He warns of a “series of tubes” and

The episode nails the absurdity of non-technical management. The two “dynamic” hires are Moss and Roy, our beloved basement-dwelling IT department. Their solution? A single, blinking GIF of a “countdown” that reads “THE INTERNET” followed by an animated “.gif” of a spinning globe. The comedic tension is masterful. The entire office dresses in black-tie attire for the “Launch of the Internet.” Denholm prepares a speech. There is champagne. There is a velvet rope. The episode nails the absurdity of non-technical management

And then, Moss hits “Upload.”

Jen, the “Relationship Manager” who knows nothing about computers, asks the obvious question no one else will: “So… what do we do now?”

In 2007, the internet wasn’t new. Amazon was over a decade old. Google was a verb. Facebook was already colonizing college dorms. But to the “C-Suite” executives of legacy companies? The internet remained a dark, magical forest. Denholm’s speech—full of apocalyptic reverb and dramatic pauses—mimics every boardroom meeting from 1995 to 2010 where a CEO finally realized they needed an “online presence.”