Culture

People Are Sharing Their Worst Zoom Fails, To The Delight Of Everyone Working From Home

They still don't beat potato boss.

by Rachael Conaghan  1 April 2020
Zoom

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For those of us lucky enough to work from home, Zoom has become the new normal.

The video conferencing tool is great for those who want to feel a semblance of a connection with other humans, and still get away with not wearing pants in the morning meeting.

But like with all technology, the best part is when people use it in completely the wrong way.

Lizet Ocampo, the department head at an American nonprofit which fights for equal rights and justice, went viral this week after she somehow managed to turn herself into a potato during a meeting.

Luckily Lizet has got as much of a sense of humour as the rest of her team, dubbing herself “potato boss” online.

She told Junkee she had downloaded the filter for a virtual happy hour they had planned on Zoom later in the week, but when she logged onto Microsoft Teams on Monday morning she was very confused to find the default filter — the now iconic potato — had switched on.

“We had a great laugh and proceeded with the meeting. Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out what is going on. I turn off the camera a few times. I end up giving up and just finished the rest of the meeting as a potato,” she said.

She said while the meeting was supposed to be professional, they do often use humour to lift each others spirits — working in progressive politics in America, they often need it.

“The need for laughs and connection is even higher now with the coronavirus pandemic,” she said.

“It absolutely makes sense that something like this would go viral … many who are privileged to be able to work from home can identify with adjusting to virtual meetings.”

Lizet is not the only one to have a Zoom-related mishap — people have been sharing their own fails, to the delight of many.

These aren’t even the worst — there have been videos circulating of people forgetting they’re on camera and peeing in front of their classmates, or showing off their junk. For their sake as well as yours, we didn’t include those.

If you’re in the mood to pretend you’re anywhere other than home, people have also been sharing different backgrounds for you to apply while video chatting.

Oh, and the potato filter came courtesy of a Snapchat lens for PCs and Macs, which you can access here if you dare.