Zoomsterbation

In junior school, the elder children took childish delight at the start of every school year by getting the new children, 6 and  7 year olds, to pull their mouth wide apart with their 2 index fingers and say the word „Banker“. This was met by childish sqeals of delight, because the distended shape of the mouth caused, the „B“ was pronounced as a „W“. Try it!

This time its a Swiss Banker who joins the Jeffrey Toobin pleasure club.

A senior female top manager at a leading Swiss bank (listed on the Stock Exchange) had invited colleagues to a virtual online Town Hall. As participants signed in they noticed a colleague who was oblivious that the meeting was starting and he allegedly had by accident left his camera on, and was in the act of pleasuring himself. Apparently several of his colleagues who were online tried urgently to phone him to warn him. Unsuccessful; as he ignored the ringing of his cell phone – as he was otherwise engaged!

He is now looking to continue his career outside the bank involved in this incident. The Bank took appropriate action here.

Zoom*. Apologists point to “ zoom fatigue” as an excuse for online “lapses”. Some executives say they are fed up with the virtual meetings and continual online appearances.

“Zoom fatigue” has become a new and exciting phenomenon for researchers. Stanford scientists conducted a study** that concluded frequent zoom meetings could become very stressful for many participants because of “excessive introspection”.

"Zoom users are seeing reflections of themselves at a frequency and duration that hasn’t been seen before in the history of media - and mankind," the head of the study concluded. “Everyone has become a star in their own reality show. Perhaps a driver of Zoom fatigue is simply that we are taking more meetings than we would be doing face-to-face."

Times change, technologies change, and we are constantly faced with new realities to adapt to. We do not ascribe to this easy cop out of “zoom fatigue” as an excuse.

EJ Dickinson writing in Rolling Stone magazine about Jeffrey Toobin says it best:

“There are many people in the world who warrant our empathy, politeness, and forgiveness. A best-selling author, CNN Legal Analyst, New Yorker contributor and Harvard graduate who somehow could not muster up the self-control to keep it in his pants until after he got off the phone with his coworkers is not one of them.”

*The word “Zoom” has very quickly become the genericized word for Video Conference, just as Hoover for vacuuming.

**“Nonverbal Overload: A Theoretical Argument for the Causes of Zoom Fatigue”

Thanks to www.insideparadeplatz.ch for breaking this story.