‘The Chair Company’: A Show About the Joy of Computing
▼ Summary
– The TV show *The Chair Company* uniquely depicts the mundane, detailed reality of web browsing and online detective work, a process rarely shown in popular media.
– The protagonist, Ron Trosper, exemplifies a type of user proficient in navigating the less-optimized, public parts of the web, a skill developed before the internet centralized on mega-platforms.
– The show contrasts with common media portrayals that only recognize either “extremely online” social media users or people who cannot use computers at all.
– It highlights how much of the web is publicly accessible but not easily found, requiring skills like deductive reasoning and advanced search techniques rather than relying on algorithms.
– Ron’s digital behaviors, such as meticulously searching site footers, are portrayed as a relatable and invigorating, though dying, art form in an age of walled gardens and AI agents.
The first season of The Chair Company follows Ron Trosper, a man whose greatest adventures often begin not in exotic locations, but within the forgotten corners of the internet. His journey through parking lots and derelict offices is punctuated by a more profound exploration: the deep dive into a website’s footer. This unglamorous section, typically housing sitemaps and legal disclaimers, becomes his digital hunting ground. For Ron, and for many who came of age with the expanding web, this represents a specific kind of proficiency, a methodical, almost forensic approach to navigating online information that much of modern media ignores.
Popular culture often presents two extremes: the perpetually “online” individual lost in social media algorithms, or the person utterly baffled by technology. This show brilliantly occupies the vast middle ground, celebrating the quiet competence of those who know how to dig. It understands that efficiently sourcing and parsing online data is a distinct skillset, honed by millions who remember the web as a place to explore, not just a handful of platforms to passively consume.
The series is acutely aware that while the web is publicly accessible, its most useful information is rarely optimized for discovery. We see Ron’s genuine thrill in the chase. In the pilot, after hitting dead ends with a chair company’s generic website and bot-driven support, he does the “real sicko stuff”: he meticulously clicks through every link in the site footer. He reads shipping policies, FAQs, and terms of service, finally unearthing a buried support email, only to have his message bounce back as undeliverable. It’s a moment of perfect, shared frustration for anyone who has ever gone down a similar rabbit hole.
These depictions of mundane digital proficiency feel like a dying art. The open web of hyperlinks and independent sites is increasingly supplanted by walled gardens where algorithms decide what you see. External links are buried, videos autoplay endlessly, and the simple choice of where to click next is being outsourced to “agentic” tools. The Chair Company argues there’s a specific joy in that manual process, a joy Ron visibly experiences when he’s smiling widest in front of his glowing monitor.
The show finds dramatic tension in realistic human-computer interaction. In one standout sequence, Ron photographs a shirt, sends it to his desktop, reverse image-searches it, finds the manufacturer, uses the site footer to locate a store, copies the address into his clipboard, pastes it into Google Maps, and then drags the destination in his route planner to calculate a detour. It’s a detailed, relatable ballet of tabs and clicks, far removed from the typical TV trope of a perfect, explanatory search result appearing instantly.
Ron’s digital life seamlessly bleeds into his physical one. He ties disparate websites together by noticing a shared, smutty CSS color scheme. He suffers the indignity of cheap Amazon knock-offs. He farms clout from a rescued dog on Instagram. His work is backseat-managed by online detractors, and he’s pestered by a mandatory group chat from a store. The line between online and offline behavior is not just blurred; it’s nonexistent, portraying a life where digital habits directly manifest in absurd, real-world consequences.
This is a show about a man who cannot stop letting the internet lead him into trouble, and who seems to relish it. When Ron twice breaks into homes for information, he’s confronted by “weirdos screaming at him”, a not-so-subtle metaphor for clicking a bad link and being bombarded by digital chaos. The Chair Company might feel like a shaggy collection of sketches at times, but that very messiness makes it the perfect vehicle for its underlying story. It’s a tribute to a specific, increasingly niche way of interacting with the digital world: not as a passive consumer or a helpless novice, but as an active, sometimes desperate, and oddly joyful explorer.
(Source: Defector.com)
