My worst mishap on Zoom
Alright here we are the day after Valentine’s Day in the year 2021. We’re still in a pandemic. It’s gray as fuck outside right now and we’ve gotta double-mask it so we don’t catch the new variant of COVID-19. Cool cool cool.
On the bright side, we’ve got vaccines, though the distribution is kinda slow. Alright, not ideal but that is something. We’ll take it! Suck it, 2020…we’re almost out of this thing kind of. So that said, why not discuss my worst Zoom mishap of the pandemic?
It all started last year when the beginning of the end began for all of us. Isolation was a new thing. So was the idea of wearing a mask everywhere. We didn’t know how long the virus could live on surfaces, how safe it was to go to the grocery store, or if touching a gas pump was a potential death sentence.
But what we did know is that isolation was going to suck, that everyone in Tiger King was going to be horrible and that Michael Jordan was going to take everything personally in The Last Dance. Additionally, we knew that we weren’t going to let a deadly disease stop our dating lives, damn it. That’d be blasphemy.
Enter Zoom speed dating.
Let’s take the non-traditional mechanism of speed dating and combine it with the MVP of pandemic work-from-home tools, Zoom. What could go wrong? Well dear reader, that is a great question. Let me take you there.
My Zoom speed dating experience started off as lovely as you could imagine. We had a dapperly dressed host along with his equally lovely dog friend. Said host introduced the concept and instructions, stating that each man would have their own breakout room and ladies would cycle in for two minutes each.
Two minutes is a very short period of time in general but two minutes to decide if someone may be a potential partner? That’s impossible. But here we are with this concept of speed dating. As someone who’s done this in-person and virtually, I don’t like speed dating either way. But when the alternative is isolation and swiping on dating apps, what’s the risk of going on a Zoom with some strangers? Enter the complexity (read: it’s not that complex just not super intuitive?) of the Zoom chat feature.
Our host instructed that we should tell him directly via Zoom chat if and when we like someone. Simple enough. I went on my first two dates. Liked the second girl. Cool, let’s tell the host. No problem. Done. Let’s go on the third date. Whoa, this girl’s really great. Too bad she’s in D.C. and I’m in Stamford. Oh well let’s tell the host you like her, too. Wait what just happened? Why does the chat dialogue say “Everyone”?!
Annnnd that’s when the host chimed in “Remember! When you tell me you like someone, make sure the chat is selected to just me!”
Holy shit I just messaged the whole group that I like so-and-so. It’s hard to make yourself feel more alone when you live in a one-bedroom apartment and you’re supposed to isolate yourself from people to prevent the spread of a deadly virus, BUT I just managed to figure that one out.
I consider myself a pretty tech savvy guy. I learned everything I know on my mom’s Compaq Presario, where I burned many a mix CD, built several Geocities sites, set up an Apache web server, and ran the gamut of Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire. I know how to do shit is what I’m saying. But using the drop-down box to select the intended recipient of my Zoom chat message…nah that was too much. I failed. I failed myself, the girl in D.C. and the greater Zoom speed dating community at large. How embarrassing!
As the zoom dating event ended, the host told us he would email us the next day letting us know if we matched with anyone. Part of me held hope that maybe my miscue would be seen as endearing and the lovely woman from D.C. would be into a second virtual date. But alas, unsurprisingly I received zero matches the next day. She swiped left if you will.
Here’s the thing. I’m grateful to not be in the virtual meeting annals of “Poor Jennifer” or the cat lawyer guy. And at this point, I doubt anyone on that speed dating Zoom even remembers what happened anymore. There’s really no moral to this story…just more content for the Internet and a reminder to pay really close attention to who you’re sending DMs to on Zoom. Stay safe, friends.
