Zoom has become the great meetinghouse of our society during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to our Zoom seminars and lectures, we have attended Zoom orientation, Zoom fitness classes, Zoom weddings, Zoom birthday parties, Zoom doctors’ appointments, the list goes on.
More often than not, though, we join these gatherings and are faced with a wall of muted blank boxes—a smattering of names and pronouns with maybe a face here and there. This week, we at the Nassau Weekly asked our community members:
“Why is your camera off?”
- I’m taking a step back to do the work
- My cat has climbed atop my keyboard and perfectly aligned her asshole with my webcam
- My five-hour risotto is the perfect level of creamy—gotta eat it right off the stovetop while it’s hot
- I am undercover for the KGB
- The service in my submarine is terrible
- Goth gf tied my leash to the radiator
- I’m taking a shower
- Scared of my own reflection
- My entire wall is photos of Dean Dolan
- Completing a dark ritual to save my grade in the class
- I’m running a marathon and the sweat broke my camera
- The cast of Cats is in my room.
- Eisgruber just offered me a beer and I have to turn around and tell him no thanks, I’m trying to learn about the Thirty Years War
- I’m trapped in the belly of the Whitman Whale
- I am pissing on the JFK bricks in 1939 hall
- I take my classes from my Samsung Smart Fridge
- I am actually 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters
- Lori Laughlin takes my classes for me
- I’m trapped in Joe Biden’s election bunker
- Cuz I’m out in the club, and I’m sippin’ that bub and you’re not gonna reach my telephone
- Soyboy bf is tied to my radiator
- McCovid
- All the mosquitoes in Washington D.C. are trying to fuck me. They come to my window offering roses, money, trinkets to convey their affection. How do you explain to a twelve person seminar that the cloud of bugs in the window are not a hygienic problem or a joke. The mosquitoes just want to have sex with me, it’s that simple.
- Vampire face doesn’t show up on video.
- Incredibly back-lit so it looks like I have no facial features
- I’m brushing my teeth because my breath is horrible
- My breath is so steamy it fogs up the camera.
- I scaled Nassau Hall ten minutes before class and am now too exhausted to either get down or participate
- I’m listening to ambient music in the dark by myself and I’m fine
- I’m tinting my mom’s eyebrows.
- I’m giving myself a bowl cut
- I’m not tryna pull a Jeffrey Toobin
- i just dont want to im depressed
- I’m yelling random numbers out my window whenever a golfer shouts “Fore!” and hiding so they don’t figure out which window is screwing up their hits.
- I’m cleaning up the glass from my broken window because one of the golfers figured out it was me
- I didn’t have enough time to change out of my fursuit before class
- I got a haircut that makes me look even more racially ambiguous than i already do
- Jennifer
- I’m not doing ANYTHING cool or interesting and I wish I was because I want people to talk about me after the call, so instead I turn off my camera to be mysterious and hope they assume I’m engaged in delightfully eccentric and subversive acts behind my stock photo profile picture.
- Aioli all over my keyboard
- I’m Anscombe sitting in on a GSS class
- Traumatized by the fact that everyone else sees my face inverted
- I am profusely bleeding after slamming my face into my desk 15 times as a result of reading that tweet about how people under 5’7” are minor coded.
- I’m mastering the “Bet On It” choreo
- My python is molting and I need to hold the skin
- I’m wiping out Tomato Town
- I’m simultaneously attending my Tamagotchi’s college graduation (University of Vermont)