“Turn on your camera,” my friend said, when she called me the other night for a spontaneous Zoom chat. We wrest control of the exposure we fear, making it into something sharp, edgy, memetic - something we can, in turn, judge others for.)Īt what point are Zoom backgrounds accepted as a part of the new normal, incorporating themselves into our daily lives the way we incorporate memes, reaction GIFs, hashtags, emoji, and countless other staples of modern digital life? Is the Zoom boom temporary? Will people eventually return to an existence that is much less reliant on Zoom chats, Netflix parties, Discord nights, and every other technology-infused form of society that’s keeping so many going right now?Īt what point does a Zoom background cease to be a Zoom background and become a sign of how well you’re able to remain social during a crisis? If you turn off your background - or, worse, your camera - to leave your window perpetually dark, are you in denial? If your Zoom background is no background at all but your actual, real-life surroundings, does that still count as an aesthetic choice? Or is it a refusal to engage with the zeitgeist? Is no Zoom background a sign of angst, a sign of edginess, or a sign of nothing at all? Zoom backgrounds help us stay connected to the world and each other, while allowing us to hide a bit of whatever anxiety might accompany video chatting from home. A custom Zoom background protects us from that unwitting reveal and shifts the focus to the background of our choice, especially if it’s particularly eye-catching, clever, or witty. We’ve all become aware that our living rooms and bedrooms might betray too much - and that the people we’re chatting with might be searching our surroundings for secrets. Today, those glimpses are an intimacy the pandemic has forced us to share. (An unspoken element of work-from-home video chats, for those who’ve experienced them in the past, has always been the judgments we make of our colleagues’ daily lives, based on the glimpses we get into their personal spaces.

FUCK YEAH MY FAVOURITE PART OF THIS WEIRD NEW REALITY IS SEEING INTO STRANGERS’ HOUSES DURING ZOOM MEETINGS AND CLASSES AND JUDGING THEIR CHOICES AND LOOKING OUT FOR PETS- Nadine von Cohen April 8, 2020

Weird backgrounds for zoom