Zoombombing

I had barely heard of Zoom, let alone Zoombombing.

To distract from the bleakness of the pandemic, I helped a friend organise a virtual pub quiz. It was pretty elaborate: we had 80 people taking part and teams arranged as carefully as a wedding table-plan. After far too much time organising we were finally ready to go. And then.... 15 minutes in, we were zoom-bombed.

It started innocently enough - someone playing too-loud music. Then more trolls arrived, writing offensive racist messages in the chat, and taking over the screen to share explicit images. We managed to throw them out, but then it happened again.... and again, and again. Finally, when we worked out how to disable the screen-share function, they resorted to dropping their trousers and filming themselves ‘up close and personal’.

It was hilarious and awful and surreal: all these adults ready for wholesome fun, forced to watch teenagers wave their willies around. But at least we could say we were part of the zeitgeist.