Anthony Clemons

The Dune Loop

In the fall of 2005, a little TV show premiered on NBC. The Office, a mockumentary-style sitcom set in the dreary, fluorescent-lit world of a Scranton, Pennsylvania paper company, became a sleeper hit. Its humor was dry, its pacing slow, and its characters delightfully awkward. It’s now hard to imagine a world where Dwight Schrute’s mustard-yellow shirts and Jim Halpert’s knowing smirks didn’t exist. But here’s the strange thing: if you tuned into an episode today, beyond the flip phones and boxy monitors, the people—their clothes, their mannerisms, their tattoos—don’t look all that different from the people you’d pass on the street in 2025.