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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhere Did All Your Zoom Friends Go?
New York TimesOne day last year, Julie Gauthier went on Twitter with a confession to make. Unpopular opinion: I dont have zoom fatigue and I miss zoom happy hours and game nights, she wrote. I feel more isolated now than I did when friends all took time to chat online at the beginning of the pandemic.
Ms. Gauthier, 30, had been scrolling through old photos and found a screenshot of one of the virtual happy hours shed had with friends in the early days of Covid restrictions. At the time, living alone and working remotely as a software engineer in rural Coventry, Conn., the self-described extrovert seized every opportunity for human contact she could get.
Virtual trivia nights? She was in. Mask-making over Zoom with members of a local makerspace? Why not? She made a new best friend out of a stranger she met at an online meetup for tech workers, and when another friends band began broadcasting porch concerts over Facebook Live, Ms. Gauthier streamed the show on her TV and got all dressed up as if she were there.
...snip...
By the time she stumbled on the old Zoom screenshot filled with the faces of friends she had scarcely seen since it felt decidedly less so. It still does.
...snip...
Three years since the pandemic was declared, many of the apps, platforms and digital tools that Ms. Gauthier and millions of others relied on to stay connected are struggling, shrinking or shutting down. Zoom has slashed 15 percent of its work force. Epic Games killed off the group video app Houseparty in late 2021, and even Metas Portal devices, which after years of challenges surged in popularity in 2020, got the ax last year.
Ms. Gauthier, 30, had been scrolling through old photos and found a screenshot of one of the virtual happy hours shed had with friends in the early days of Covid restrictions. At the time, living alone and working remotely as a software engineer in rural Coventry, Conn., the self-described extrovert seized every opportunity for human contact she could get.
Virtual trivia nights? She was in. Mask-making over Zoom with members of a local makerspace? Why not? She made a new best friend out of a stranger she met at an online meetup for tech workers, and when another friends band began broadcasting porch concerts over Facebook Live, Ms. Gauthier streamed the show on her TV and got all dressed up as if she were there.
...snip...
By the time she stumbled on the old Zoom screenshot filled with the faces of friends she had scarcely seen since it felt decidedly less so. It still does.
...snip...
Three years since the pandemic was declared, many of the apps, platforms and digital tools that Ms. Gauthier and millions of others relied on to stay connected are struggling, shrinking or shutting down. Zoom has slashed 15 percent of its work force. Epic Games killed off the group video app Houseparty in late 2021, and even Metas Portal devices, which after years of challenges surged in popularity in 2020, got the ax last year.
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Where Did All Your Zoom Friends Go? (Original Post)
brooklynite
Mar 2023
OP
dalton99a
(81,568 posts)1. Kick
bamagal62
(3,269 posts)2. I miss some of those groups.
I had 3 live model drawing/painting groups that I
Did during covid. (Only one was in the same city where I lived at the time.) 2 of those groups are gone now. It couldnt replace the real
Thing, but it was fun.
Runningdawg
(4,522 posts)3. She's certainly not alone.
dembotoz
(16,826 posts)4. zoom has not gone away.
it is growing up and into an amazing business product.
perhaps less social but more business.