LIVE Zoom, LAUGH at the absurdity of it all, LOVE your schadenfreude.
Say what you want about online learning, but Zoom classes are fucking funny. If you’d told Socrates future students would be sitting at home taking classes using a book with moving-pictures that featured their teachers also at home, he’d probably ask whether women were taking these classes too. Zoom classes aren’t fun, so can you blame students for showing up as a silent black square? Turns out, students have been busy using Zoom wrong in every cooked way possible.
So, this week at Craccum, we asked students to send in their Zoom fails, fuck ups, shenanigans and hilarities—and you guys were more than happy to spill. Check out your fellow Zoomers’ confessions, maybe while you’re in a Zoom class! Just make sure to check that your mic and cam are off—don’t want Panapto to immortalise your sympathy cringes.
Mic drops making you want to drop out
Come on guys, this isn’t your first rodeo! No wants to hear your girlfriend play fortnight in the background, or your Messenger popping off cause you’ve actually got a social life. Turn those mics off, otherwise you’ll end up like some of these students.
“Someone [was] on the mic while going to take a shit.”
“I thought I was muted when a reel played ‘your little pussy belongs to me.’”
“Forgetting to mute myself before starting to vacuum my whole apartment.”
“Thought I was on mute and was coughing from vaping and then a random messaged me telling me to turn my mic off. Didn’t even say please either. I boosted from that class a few minutes later and haven’t gone back since. Now I’m a week behind.”
“Someone had their TikTok playing at full blast while unmuted for a solid five minutes in the first tutorial for a class, and the tutor just kept introducing themselves and pretended it wasn’t happening in the background.”
“My friend and I attended a Zoom tutorial together but neither of us had prepared for it, so for the most part of the tutorial it was us just chatting shit, but the tutor unmuted us without us knowing. We quickly muted ourselves when we realised, but we had no clue how much time had passed (and how much of our conversation everyone else heard).”
Laptop lights, camera (optional), action!
Cameras on or off? That is the question. That worn-out line aside, another overused line is your tutor asking students to please turn their cameras on. Not gonna happen mate, I’d rather be a faceless creep than expose everyone to me still in bed ‘cause I woke up a minute before the Zoom started.
“Everyone on my Zoom watched me whack my entire iced coffee across my desk.”
“Accidentally had an anatomy chart of Lightning McQueen from Cars as my background.”
“Accidently saying ‘fuck’ in a Zoom lecture when I realised my camera was on and having to relisten to myself on the recording.”
Lecturers: Not just a friend, but a Zoomrade too
When you’ve got lecturers who’ve been around so long that the real life Kate Edgar was probably their flatmate, online learning is not on their side. But we few students of this garbage institution who still show up to online classes don’t make it easy for them either. Sure, lecturers make bank but they don’t get paid enough for the shit Zoom is putting them through.
“I was in a Zoom student and lecturer forum and you could hear some guy vaping with his camera off, like fatty cloud-type hoons. A lecturer kept asking if they were okay but you could see the students knew what was up.”
“Prof tried and failed three times to get us the correct link so we all sat for 30 mins+ with no class.”
“I fell asleep (with my camera off). It was so embarrassing because my professor would have private one-on-one office hours you can book after the lecture has finished (but on the same call). So there I was on the Zoom completely asleep, everyone [had] logged off except one student who was trying to have a private conversation with the professor.”
“A student in my tutorial accidentally sent a private message to the entire class, announcing that they had woken up five minutes before the tutorial started (like, same though), and the tutor had a chuckle.”
“[Someone was] talking shit about the class and [didn’t realise] the lecturer could see.”
“My lecturer for a course tried to put us in breakout rooms in a live Zoom lecture, and the moment she brought it up all you could hear was the sound of people leaving the call rapidly.”
Keep your nastiness at hom—oh, wait
I get it, you’re at home all day and society is collapsing outside—no wonder you’re horned up. But do you really think your Zoom class is the best place to get a bit freaky or to hit up a random classmate who DMed you to turn off your mic? Every hole might be a goal, but Zoom does not mean get a (breakout) room.
“There was a Zoom-boomer in my Stage One Educ lecture, and he was so downbad he started flirting in chat with the women in the class.”
“Was so bored on a Zoom tutorial once I started masturbating to pass the time and since it was marked participation I couldn’t leave. I only stopped cause they put us into break out rooms and the tutor was in ours.”
“I accidentally texted my mobile number to the whole group and then some creep started texting me.”
“I started having sex with my girlfriend while my Zoom class about disasters played in the background. We kept going even when he started talking about hundreds dying in the Napier Earthquake. Not gonna lie, the paranoia that the Zoom would fuck up and turn on the mic kinda made it hotter.”
“I was in a live Zoom lecture and we had a special guest lecturer that day—unfortunately, I missed essentially everything he said in the class. After he introduced himself, my boyfriend started going down on me—thank god my camera and mic was off, but I’d never have expected to orgasm to a guy talking about Spotify algorithms”
So yeah, Zoom lectures suck. It doesn’t hit the same to come late to a Zoom class versus walking in 10 minutes after your Contract Law lecture’s started cause you wasted time picking a fucking HOT outfit no one cares about, not having done the readings, and only to go on Instagram the entire time. But, students are making do and man, we are doing it so wrong. As long as people keep fucking up on Zoom, I’ll keep showing up (only if it’s marked participation though).