About
Moss's Glasses / I'm Afraid They're Not For Sale refers to a meme featuring a screen cap and referencing the a line by character Maurice Moss in the season 4 episode 5 of the British sitcom The IT Crowd. The meme revolves around this scene, shifting words and the images to create increasingly ludicrous situations that often rhyme with the word "sale". In most, the meme's punchline relies on the alteration of the first image, of the woman, to match the word substituted for "sale".

Origin
On the 23rd of July 2010, the fifth episode of season four of the sitcom The IT Crowd entitled "Bad Boys" premiered in the United Kingdom.^[1] At the beginning of the "Bad Boys" episode, Moss, a member of the company's IT department, is fixing the computer of a young woman who also works for Reynholm Industries. She is seen clearly flirting with him, saying "I like your glasses", to which an oblivious Moss replies "I'm afraid they're not for sale".^[2]

The meme was originally created for the Facebook group IT Crowd Ruddyposting® which is a group for IT Crowd fan memes.^[3] As of April 2020 the group contains 94,683 members.^[4]

Spread
After the original meme was posted in IT Crowd Ruddyposting® the content of the group quickly shifted to an onslaught of memes utilising this format. These memes slowly dispersed to other locations on the internet, but have mostly remained within the IT Crowd Ruddyposting®. Within the group much of the posting and most popular posts related to this format for an extended period.

External References