It’s been a year now and we’ve all become used to meeting on Zoom. So, it’s time to take an anthropologic view to the various subtypes of people you meet when you hold a meeting or get together on Zoom.
-The Control Freak-sets up the meeting and invites everybody. Announces the time remaining every 10 minutes until the last ten minutes when they announce the time every minute. Recognize them by the monopolization of conversation.
-The Procrastinator-always shows up late with a vague claim of “had trouble signing in”. Recognize them by the time they get there and constant apologies.
-The Technologically Impaired-shows up on time but has audio with no video, video with no audio, or is accidentally on mute the entire time. Recognize them by the fact that you may be talking to an animal or an inanimate object.
-The Traveller-spends the entire time walking from room to room, causing everyone else to get dizzy. Recognize them by the constantly changing background.
-The Eater-tries to surreptitiously sneak snacks in between comments. Fails. Recognize them by audible crunching.
-The Lounger-signs into the meeting on a smartphone while clearly lying in bed. May fall asleep during the meeting. Recognize them by pillows behind their head and possible snoring.
-The Appearance-Obsessed-spends the entire meeting checking themselves in the thumbnail to make sure they look good. Recognize them by constant changes in facial expression, fiddling with hair, and various head tilts.
-The Experimenter-spends the entire meeting playing with available features, such as changing backgrounds every few minutes and giving thumbs-up to comments. Recognize them by their exotic locale, and the pixilation when the green screen effect fails.
Last week I tilted my laptop about 30 degrees and leaned over during zoom meetings. It looked normal until I took a drink of orange juice and the level of juice in the glass was tilted at 30 degrees.
There are plenty of technologically impaired at my Zoom meetings, but lots of them are 80 years old, and getting them to be able to participate somewhat reliably has been a win.
The OP forgot the Immutables - the ones who chat with others, take phone calls, and all around make noise without realizing everyone can hear. If I am running the meeting I can slap them onto mute, but it is annoying if I don’t.
Me - signs into meeting, then proceeds to spend the whole time browsing the SDMB / Reddit / my phone, or reading an e-book, while trying to make it not look obvious.
The Silhouette. Even after a year they still don’t understand how cameras and lighting work. Their video window is a blinding square of the sunlit window behind them, and their head is an inky blob.
Being retired and lacking a camera and microphone on my computer, I’ve never experienced any of this. Most I ever managed was one-on-one chat, once with my doctor and a couple of times with my granddaughter. Whew!
The Phantom of the Zoom Call: Never enables video, intentionally. Audio is fine, but no one must see his face. Does he have hideous facial scarring? We may never know.
Proud of their ceiling people who have their cameras/laptop tilted so far back that you can only see the tops of their hair, and of course the ceiling.
Me too. The trick is to have two monitors. Put the SDMB window on the monitor with the camera. That way when you’re looking at SDMB it looks like you’re paying attention to the zoom window and whatever the presenter is showing. Put the zoom window on your other screen and only watch it via peripheral vision.
Better yet, put the zoom window on mute and minimized. Then you can eat, drink, and 'Dope without annoyances.
Yep, that’s my modus operandi since I just have one monitor. I never really look at what’s being shared on the Zoom window, but I’ve mastered the art of passively monitoring the conversation in the background and keying in on important points or when they call my name. It’s kind of like how when dolphins sleep, one hemisphere of their brains remains awake
For my phone, I place it next to the keyboard and whenever I need to look at it, I shift my eyes but keep my face aligned with the camera. Hard to detect unless someone specifically decides to put my window on fullscreen.
This is me when I take meetings from the office. I can’t control the way the desk is oriented or where the window is (at my back.) It works better at home because I have light coming in from the front, but I can’t control that either. I thought about getting one of those clip on lights but I figure (hope) we’re returning to the office soon. Might be a waste of money.
