Zoom Etiquette

How not to Zoom

Technology enters our lives, and etiquette lags behind. We're all Zooming now, and we need to observe certain conventions.

"I don't want to Zoom – I just can't be bothered." This translates as "I think the technology will be too daunting. In fact I don't even know how to start."

You can download Zoom from the internet – Google "Zoom download" and follow the instructions. It takes a few minutes.

If someone has emailed you a Zoom link, click on it and Zoom will install itself and take you to the meeting (if you don't already have Zoom installed).

You can use Zoom on a computer (PC or Mac), laptop, tablet or phone. You can even join meetings through a landline, though you won't be able to see anybody.

SO, YOU'VE JOINED A ZOOM MEETING

Look at the edges of the screen for controls. Video and audio bottom left, gallery view top right, Leave Meeting bottom right. Chat and Share Screen bottom centre. If you can't see the controls, pass your mouse over the borders. Try top right - you'll find the very useful "Exit full screen".

You can increase or reduce the volume through the controls on the top row of your keyboard. Look for the megaphone symbol.

You can increase your own volume by clicking on audio (bottom left) and following instructions. You'll be asked to test your own microphone – it may be turned down very low. Or too high! (Shouting seems to cause "crackle".)

Look for your own image – is it flattering? Is it showing your best profile? Is it showing only the top of your head? While looking at your image, adjust the angle of your laptop screen accordingly. It helps to rest your laptop on a pile of books or monitor stand so that you are looking directly at the screen. It also helps to prop up your tablet rather than resting it on the table. If you put the tablet on a horizontal surface, you can still see everybody's face, but they can only see your ceiling. And if you're looking down at us, we're looking up at you – or more usually a close-up of your double-chin or earlobe.

If you're holding your phone in your hand, it's hard not to wave it around – which means that your image wobbles around distractingly.

Make sure the light is falling on your face – don't sit with your back to a window.

Remember that you can be seen!

VISION ON, SOUND ON
"I'm tired of Zoom meetings where everybody talks at once and interrupts each other." Translation: "My group hasn't discovered the mute function."

If two people talk at once on Zoom, the technology can't decide which is the "main speaker", so you just get bits of both and can't hear either person.

Once you've all said hi and introduced yourselves, the Admin needs to MUTE YOU ALL. If you want to speak, wave and the admin will unmute you. (You can also mute and unmute yourself. Look at the microphone symbol — does it have a red line through it? You're muted. Click on the three dots on your image and you'll see options to mute or unmute.)

You can always type side-conversations in Chat (see the bottom of the screen).

If you're unmuted, remember that the rest of the group can hear EVERY SOUND YOU MAKE. Sounds near the mike are amplified: it can pick up chewing or even breathing. If you're unmuted, you'll disturb the sound for the main speaker even if you say nothing.

If you decide to adjust the position of your laptop or tablet, please mute yourself. Again, you may not hear much but we can hear loud crashing sounds as you place your device. Position your device before the meeting starts.

If you're wearing headphones and a microphone, please keep still (or mute yourself when not speaking). Your movements can make loud sounds at our end. If you're using phone earbuds with a tiny microphone attached to the wire, make sure the mike isn't muffled against your clothes. Keep the "live" side facing outwards.

Please don't leave your mike on and wander off and have a conversation with someone else at home - we can hear you mumbling.

And conversations in the background are much louder to us than they are to you. You may be able to filter out the chat - we can't.

Remember that you can be heard!

SINGING ALONG
A group singing or speaking together on Zoom can result in cacophony – this is because some people are on a slight delay, due to internet speeds. If you're the leader, don't slow down, just keep going.

Zoom seems to pick out the loudest person and decide they are the leader. It then fades down the actual leader, making it harder to follow them – and they stay quiet for a few seconds afterwards. One solution is to select Original Sound in Audio Settings.

The better the device and broadband, the better the sound.

If people complain they can't hear you, adjust your volume or get an external microphone – they don't cost much. You might as well make life easier for your colleagues – this is the new normal, and it will be with us for some time.

Q I can’t see the zoom screen and my email.

A Top right of the Zoom screen click on the word View and Exit Full Screen. Resize your windows by grabbing a corner or side and using the mouse.

As with all manners, it's about consideration for others!

Footnote: When we started doing religious services via Zoom, we spent some time discussing how we would communicate with each other. How to replace real-life whispering, looks, nods etc? In the end we concluded we just had to talk to each other. Even so, I spent a whole service with my volume turned up too high and nobody told me.

More here, and links to the rest.

Innovations 3

The middle classes have conniption fits over every new gadget and every new fad, as if they’d never seen anything new before. Which is odd, because capitalism depends on endless novelty. But the Upwards are appalled every time.

They make predictions about the terrible harm the innovation will do. And then they identify a special innovation disease…

They usually get over it in 10 years, though some still say they “don’t do Facebook because I don’t know how it works”. It’s not done to notice that the Smartphone flap is the same flap we had about the Internet, television, radio and the telephone.

Upwards can’t just join things, or buy things – they have to “succumb” or “give in”. I finally succumbed and: bought myself an iPad, Blackberry Curve, Moleskine notebook; joined Twitter, created a Tumblr, turned on CNN, got SKY, bought Emily a mini balloon. (I’ll never understand Protestant guilt.)

Secretly, they think they ought to be carving all their own tools out of wood with a home-made flint knife. They have food processors and Mac books and tablets and Smartphones – but they can always project their tech disapproval onto the new phenomenon. Is this “virtue signalling”?

TV
Prediction: TV will rot our childrens’ brains and turn them into zombies.
Since the 50s and 60s, TV has been accepted seamlessly into middle-class lives. It never rotted anyone’s brain, or ruined anyone’s eyesight.
Policing: You must watch TV with the lights out or it’ll damage your eyes. Sit at least 15 feet away, you’ll see better from there. (Probably true for middle-aged people.)

SMARTPHONESUpwards are now policing their children's Smartphone use, and writing about it in the broadsheets. "All screen activities are linked to less happiness", declares an article saying no good will come of these things. And they turn children into zombies. Kate Winslet bans “devices” from her home, like our French teacher who wouldn’t let her children read comics, back in the 60s.

TELLYTUBBIES
The Great Tellytubby Flap is now forgotten, and there is no sign of a blighted Tellytubby generation speaking in baby talk.

JET PLANES
Jet travel was presumed to be evil in a uniquely modern way. Vicars preached sermons about the “jet age” and the irresponsible “jet set” who can always “jet off” somewhere else.

PAPER TISSUES Vicars were even upset about Kleenex, and preached sermons about the "throwaway, disposable society".

MICROWAVE OVENS
They can cook your innards if you leave the door open, it’s not real heat, the food isn’t really cooked, it gets as hot as a nuclear reactor, it cooks from the inside out (thanks to Giles Coren).

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL
We can’t have a channel tunnel because rabid continental foxes will invade Britain. (We’ve moved on to “Driverless cars may be hit by leaping deer”, and “Driverless cars can’t recognise kangaroos”.)

PREDICTIONS
In 1674 the Women's Petition Against Coffee was filed on the grounds that coffee made men impotent, gossipy & “'Frenchified”.

Charles II not only banned coffeehouses, but also forbade people from selling coffee, chocolate, sherbet, and tea from any shop or house.

A 1706 pamphlet warned of the dangers of coffee, chocolate and tea.

In 1822 William Cobbett wrote that tea leads women into prostitution and has boys "lurking in bed".

A 19th century cookbook for the poor advised parents that sweetened white sauce was better for your children than “a sloppy mess of tea”.

"After that dreadfully cold place, what I really want is gallons of hot tea, if you, as a nerve specialist, can bear the thought of it.'' (Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers)

Now we complain about coffee-shop chains: ubiquitous, tax-avoiding, worker-exploiting, and the coffee is sweet and milky.

The potato was denounced from the pulpit because it’s not mentioned in the Bible, and besides, they might give you leprosy.

Tomatoes (“love apples”) were thought to be poisonous.

(The middle classes have lost their fear of exotic vegetables, but now they need a new one every few months to stay ahead of the game.)

Trains shouldn’t exceed 30 miles an hour because the human body can’t stand such speeds. You might end up with "railway spine".

We can’t employ women in business – they’ll grow beards!

In the 20s, a pundit opined that if women got any thinner they'd all become lesbians.

In 1921, the Ladies Home Journal wrote that jazz music "stimulated the half crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds. It is harmful & dangerous". (They said much the same about rock'n'roll.)

Biros will ruin children’s handwriting.

Biological washing powder digests dirt – it might digest you! (60s)

Premarital sex will cause the breakdown of society! (60s. Now even fundamentalist Christians think it’s OK if you’re engaged.)

TECHNOLOGY
Speech-to-text will make typists redundant. (It’s hardly used. Secretaries were made redundant by bosses typing their own letters and memos into a computer. And still schoolchildren don’t get taught to touchtype properly.)

Technology will make journalists redundant, citizen journalists will take their place. Reality: BBC uses pix by "weather watchers", and a lot of “amateur video”.

Computers cause computer addiction. The Internet causes sex addiction. Or just Internet addiction.

When mobile phones first came in, when – about 20 years ago? We were told not to leave them plugged in overnight, and not to leave the charger connected to the power because it wastes energy. James Thurber had an aunt who thought electricity leaked out of empty sockets…

Other people use their phones to Instagram pictures of their food. I only use mine to check my blood pressure.

Upwards are still asking languidly: “What is the point of Tumblr? Or LinkedIn? Or Pinterest?” or something else that has been around for years despite lacking their approval.

When videos were new and expensive, only a few people had them. A friend gave a party to watch the Agatha Christie episodes she’d recorded. People thought they should turn on something for guests, as they used to turn on “light music”. But you don’t really want the York Mysteries over breakfast or Wallace and Gromit over dinner.

Whenever a vast, destroyed work of art is 3D printed, an Upward writes an article saying that this is wrong because the money would be better spent on young, contemporary artists, etc. Their real problem is that 3D printing is done by a machine and therefore vulgar. And these things are so big, and so popular, and they're in a public place where crowds of people can come and admire them.

DISEASES
Did doctors ever see a flood of patients with railway spine, hula hoop back, platform shoe ankle or texter’s thumb?

Miniskirts cause cystitis, frostbite, chapped thighs and fat thighs.
Mobile phones/bras/deodorants give you cancer.
The Twist causes slipped discs. (It was a popular dance of the 60s.)

Previous modern health worries dissipated when the predicted health mayhem never emerged and the feared exotic agents became thoroughly familiar. (New Scientist Oct 6 2012)

More here, and links to the rest.

Class and Innovations

Is there a word/phrase for that process where people first complain about technological change, then accept, then embrace it? writer and blogger Lee Jackson 

Middle-class Upwards and Weybridges are not early adopters – they chase fads, not things. And there weren’t all these innovations when they were young: every time a new gadget comes along they act as if it was the first they’d ever encountered. They have to go through a stage of calling the remote control the Herbert and leaving silly messages on answering machines. Also they have to act very puzzled about the whole concept. Video? Why would anyone want to watch a film at home? Email? Why send a document from one computer to another? Talking books? For the blind, or maybe while you’re driving or ironing. (They’re doing it now about Kindles. “People can’t remember books they’ve read on a Kindle so well because Kindle makes it too easy.” Daily Telegraph Jan 2011)

"One of those audiobooks in which some plummy thesp intones a classic novel" Richard Morrison, Times November 11, 2011 (Audiobooks have been around for 25 years and they’re usually read by character actors.)

When the first few got videos, they used them to watch the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby. And they insisted on turning them on for you if you went round to their place. Nobody knew how to programme their video (except me). And they never set the clock, so it blinked all the time. “The pictures are better on radio” must date from 1951. Remember when they insisted black and white TVs were just as good if not better than colour? Colour TVs were something terribly vulgar that Americans had. Eventually they explained that they had “given in” for the sake of the nature programmes. (Now they’re complaining that benefit scroungers all have flat-screen TVs. Possibly because they’re the only kind you can get.)

Although Upwards have had phones since the 1880s, they went on being terrified of expensive phone calls while spending hugely on drink and awful private boarding schools. When telephones first came in, Upwards had one “instrument” in the house in a stuffy cabinet under the stairs. If guests were allowed to use it they had to leave two pennies to cover the cost. (These were households with butlers and maids, and the guests were being fed three-course meals cooked by a chef.) When watching American films of the 50s, they were rather surprised that Americans had wall-mounted phones in their kitchens, with a long flex so that you could have a conversation while doing other things. According to Debrett’s (1980 version) it used to be unacceptable for women to add a phone number to their visiting card.

Gadgets are made of metal and plastic and they are the same for everybody. You can get one encrusted with pink rhinestones, but not an artisanal one made of natural materials. When mobile phones arrived Upwards supposed vaguely that they might be useful for plumbers. Actually they were outraged that mobiles were immediately taken up by plumbers, builders and anyone who saw how useful they were. The Upwards had to fight a rearguard action by getting them banned from railway carriages and joking about people who rang up just to yell “I’m on the train!”

The Evolution of Adoption
1: Affect great puzzlement about what it’s for.
2: Contempt for those who buy/do the thing.
2b. Smugness about not using it.
3: Grudging acceptance.
4: Hysteria about a drawback: RSI, radiation poisoning, complete social breakdown.
5: They buy one but a phone that doesn’t take pictures, or a TV that isn’t flat-screen/colour.
6: They’ve all got one and boast about how many apps they’ve got and how theirs is bigger/more expensive/classier than anybody else’s.
7: They carry on as if they were the first to discover it.
8: They carry on as if they’d invented it.
9. They won’t allow that you (who have been using computers and social media for about 20 years longer than they have) know anything at all.

Once they’ve adopted the technology, Upward etiquette lags behind and they shove their camcorders into their friends’ faces while shrieking with laughter, or email vast numbers of holiday snaps, unfunny internet jokes, virus warnings or chain letters to everyone in their address books, not blinding the email addresses. If they’re not too snobbish to have Facebook accounts, they “like” a page that sends spam to all their friends.

Upwards used to be very shocked if a fellow Upward admitted listening to radio phone-ins. Now it’s Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is funded by the CIA, and Twitter lets the whole world into your living room. Upwards don’t even like to think that there are people living in the UK who aren’t Upwards. Twitter might connect you to people who live in the wrong part of West London. And Twitter was created laterally, not top-down. It’s not run by or for Upwards.

“Children… have been routinely counselled to use FB infrequently and with enormous caution, thus protecting themselves from – to name some of the more obvious traps – obesity, time wasting, stalkers, bullying, invasion of privacy, bitching, hideous embarrassment, isolation, career damage and unwitting complicity in Zuckerberg’s latest schemes for monetisation…” Catherine Bennett on FB’s sudden reinvention as a must-have, or acceptance as a normal part of life. Now it’s the people not on FB, she says, who are pathologised. Aug 12/12.

Are the middleclass parents who won't let kids join Facebook (or the 21st century) for fear of trolls and bullying the same ones who "won't wrap kids in cotton wool"? What happened to "children must learn how to manage risk"? (It’s a bit like not having a house in case you get burgled.)

“I'm not on Facebook" is the new "I don't even own a TV." @rainnwilson

Adding “xxx” to text messages “is a way to be friendly without resorting to dreadful emoticons”. Carol Midgley Times May 9 2012 I bet she went through “those dreadful mobile phones”, “those dreadful text messages” first.

Lower middle class Jen Teale has been using emoticons for years - she used to write PTL! and a smiley face on postits and stick them to the fridge (it stands for “praise the Lord”). And emoticons and acronyms were being used on “primitive” social media in the mid-80s and their origin is probably earlier. Teales moved seamlessly from home movies and holiday slides to camcorders.

And innovations are always dangerous – until they’ve been accepted and are just part of life. Microwave ovens would cook your innards if you left the door open, didn’t use “real heat” so the food wasn’t really cooked, and got as hot as a nuclear reactor (thanks to Giles Coren). TVs were bad for your eyes and killed conversation. Upwards put them in a special room (they had one to spare), and watched them from a great distance with all other light sources turned off. The game was played out again with computers: radiation, RSI, protective lead garments for pregnant women… And mobile phones give you “texter’s thumb”.

Try Googling “we finally gave in and got a”: laptop, taxi, tanning bed, gas powered mower, fake Christmas tree.

When travelling, I often bump into an elderly and aristocratic couple who want to make it quite clear that they are slumming by using the same mode of transport as ordinary people (and a cheap mode at that). They have bitter public disputes about how to use lifts or read departure boards. You meet them in self-service restaurants too, pretending to be baffled by the procedure (“You get the eating irons, Freddie.”) They are always sending one of their party off to check the departure time, bag a table, go on to John Lewis etc etc. Before mobiles, this meant a 75% risk that they’d never find each other again. But maybe that was the point: you’d either lose Araminta, or have an excuse for a lovely prolonged row in which you accused her of waiting by the wrong pillar.

“My doctor told me to drink decaffeinated tea but I can only get horrible bags. Can I get proper leaf tea that’s decaffeinated?” Letter to Times

Upwards were never going to use teabags or eat flavoured yoghourt. Ahem… Here are some innovations they used to ban – or at least hedge around with prohibitions – and now accept:

Teabags: they contained the sweepings of the factory floor.

Supermarkets: the muzak sent you into a trance and you bought more than you needed and it feels like stealing. Supermarkets were American, and so ipso facto common. Then they came round to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose because you can drive straight there and buy everything you need surrounded by like-minded people and don’t have to walk along streets and go to corner shops and mingle. They told you to shop at Sainsbury’s rather than corner shops “because it’s cheaper”. But now they’re against supermarkets again and are supporting corner shops (but they have to be delis run by people like them, not Costcutters).

Central heating: American. Dries out your nasal passages.
Ariel (bio washing powders): Cause a skin rash.
Hula hoops (the toy, not the snack): Cause slipped discs.
Miniskirts: Cause cystitis and chapped thighs.
Mobile phones/bras/deodorants: Give you cancer.
Platform shoes: Cause twisted ankles.
Sony walkmans: Cause road accidents (now it’s mobiles and soon it will be in-car television).

The Tellytubbies: Will encourage our children to speak badly. (The great Tellytubby flap is entirely forgotten and the kids are all right. Now we’re whingeing about In the Night Garden.)

The Internet: Causes sex addiction. Or just Internet addiction.

Twitter and Facebook: Encourage people to make nonexistent “friends” with thousands of people, or follow stupid “celebrities”. It will mean the death of privacy! Both Twitter and Facebook give you instant access to everybody in the world. (This one is still current.)

The Twist (it was a dance, me lud): Causes slipped discs.
Convenience food: It’s OK now you can get it at M&S.

Comics: Will stop children learning to read (and you earned a lot of brownie points if you didn’t let your children read them). Now it’s texting that will stop your children learning to spell.

Fruit-flavoured yoghourt (only plain was allowed): When yoghourt came in Upwards refused to put sugar on it. But they believed magical claims about it eg that it helps you live to 100.

And these are the people who are always complaining that the media whips up utterly unnecessary panics about paedophilia, swine flu, foot and mouth… Some (a dwindling band) still refuse to use any machine invented after 1960. More about technology refuseniks here.