Mute point: why we are all zoomers now
Back in the day, the term “zoomer” had a very specific meaning and significance in the Scottish political lexicon.
It feels as though several lifetimes have passed since the journalist Iain Macwhirter asked his Twitter followers for a precise and unambiguous definition (note: it was in 2015). Here’s a selection of the responses he received:
- A person of an erratic or volatile disposition
- Pretty much everyone on the Jeremy Kyle show
- A mixture of space cadet and numpty
- A certain immaturity of the thought processes
- [no words, just a picture of Pete Wishart]
Well, whatever. We’re all zoomers now.
Some very odd conventions have emerged from widespread use of the Zoom video conferencing app. The one that gives me the absolute shudders is the taking of photographs of Zoom meetings and the posting of them, sans filter, on social media. Mercy!
If I’m in a Zoom meeting with you, please – I implore you – do not do this. The effect is that of an edition of Celebrity Squares broadcast live from a nineteenth century sanatorium.
That said, back-to-back attendance at Zoom meetings has at least taught me a new skill, namely, that of positioning the screen at optimum height whilst simultaneously inclining my head coquettishly, à la Princess Diana, very specifically in order not to expose my neck – which is, after all, now approaching the twilight zone of its sixth decade – to close (and highly) pixelated scrutiny.
This, if I’m brutally honest, is the only new trick that I have mastered in seven weeks (and counting) of working at home.
Gentle reader, do not judge me too harshly, for I have signally failed (a) to bake sourdough; (b) to learn Mandarin on Duolingo; (c) to go from Couch to 10k.
Dammit, I haven’t even *begun* to read The Mirror & The Light. I have been weighed in the lockdown balance, and found wanting.
But what’s this I see, whizzing into my inbox? The Scottish Government’s framework for decision-making on how, and when, we might emerge from confinement.
I like it: it’s a good read. It’s clear, but it avoids talking to you as though you were a five-year-old. In that respect, the author(s) might want to share their secret with BBC current affairs programme makers: but that’s another matter.
The only thing that bugs me about the document is the absence of any fixed end point. I do understand why there can’t be one, I really do, but the desire for certainty is very powerful.
The commitment to a three-weekly review of current arrangements reminds me of nothing so much as the experience of sitting in an airport departure lounge, watching the board click up a 20 minute delay; then, after 20 minutes, a 45 minute delay; after 45 minutes, an hour; and so on, and so on.
This drip-feed effect is much more debilitating than just being told, right off the bat, that you won’t be boarding for another four hours. Once you get over the initial bout of rage, and have a wee moan with your fellow passengers, you can just phone home, tell them not to wait up, and slouch off to the bar.
Still, the promise is there that the lockdown will, one day, come to an end. And I’m looking forward to a future when – I fervently hope and pray – Zoom meetings will become an occasional treat, rather than a daily purgatory.
There are some things I’m inclined to hang on to, mind, when we go back to meeting in person.
First, let’s commit to smiling and waving at each other before the apologies are read out, and again at the end. I’d like that.
And let’s promise ourselves that when we’ve got nothing useful to say we will, without any prompting from the host, put ourselves on mute.
