Let’s hope your boss doesn’t read this.
A Brooklyn developer and artist has created a digital tool called Zoom Escaper that allows users to get out of boring work-related video calls.
“Zoom Escaper is a tool that helps you get rid of Zoom meetings and other telecommunications scenarios,” creator Sam Lavigne wrote on Twitter on Monday, project launch. “It allows you to self-sabotage your audio stream, making your presence unbearable for others.”
Among other things, it mimics digital interference and disruptive external noise.
And it has participants in delighted meetings: the announcement has over 3,000 appreciations.
The digital destroyer is the perfect antidote to Zoom fatigue, a term for the overwhelming feelings of deflation and exhaustion caused by a year of work and distance learning through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“On Zoom, behavior that is usually reserved for close relationships – such as long stretches of direct gaze on eyes and faces seen up close – has suddenly become the way we interact with occasional acquaintances, co-workers, and even strangers,” wrote Jeremy. N. in a paper he recently published on the new phenomenon in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior.
Despite its name, Zoom Escaper can be used “in any program that uses your microphone,” including Google Meet, Lavigne said.
Users can download the program for free from ZoomEscaper.com. Lavigne has detailed instructions for use available there.
The effects include technical difficulties, such as delays, echoes and agitated sound. They also include some outside interference, such as the sounds of a crying man, a strong wind blowing, a crying baby, construction, and barking dogs.
You can also upload your own disturbing sounds to the site.
Make sure you’ve tested it with a friend before trying to exit a work call: users can’t hear sound effects during a meeting – only the other participants.