Boomers to Zoomers: a generation adapts to webcam

Somewhere in leafy West London, Michael Gove feverishly upturns his study.

Hasty attempts are made to play not grownups, but human. Goofy QPR memorabilia shirt? Rehang it as curtains. Feebly sketched Christmas card by a terminally ill constituent? Mantelpiece centre. Ironic I Heart Brussels beer stein, gifted by Davo in the pre-Brexit halcyon days? Hell, fill it with lager, Sarah. Pronto.

Elsewhere, north of the capital, Rishi bats his doe-eyed lashes and laughs to himself, goofily, winding up a Nintendo Wii nunchuk from his second exercise video of the day and sheepishly nudging his free-weights out of sight. Swoon.

What’s this, you ask? The final desperate attempts by Tory ministers to refabricate their lives before dredging up another, inevitable, drugs bust? Not even. It’s merely 5 minutes to 9. And their weekly Zoom catch up.

But, as the age-old Chinese mantra goes, what came first: the pandemic or Zoom? Those who lay claim to knowledge of these virtual meetings before Covid19 wear the same shredded armour as those who battle, still, to defend their discovery of Wonderwall when Oasis were, like, tiny. The bottom line is: no one cares. Zoom’s here now. We’re all adapting.

Some have taken longer to adapt than others. It’s a new way of life. Take my parents, in their early sixties. We approached the topic of Zoom (“think of it like Uber for... actually, scrap that...”) using the same tentative, over-simplified language they themselves had used to tell me, aged 8, that my guinea pig had been euthanised.

Predictably, like introducing kitten to litter tray, my mother was, at first, suspicious. She prowled angrily around the kitchen where we clustered, sceptically. She hissed defensively, eyeing from a distance the glowing blue screen of my laptop. Then, she pissed in the corner.

But, to my surprise, my parents grabbed Zoom by the horns and rode off into the sunset of their Windows PC background before even I could. When our father began rolling out meetings thrice daily for work (he’s a vicar), pulling together sizeable congregations, we all saw the light. Suddenly the technology was less hostile neighbour and more... the lodger you kind of fancy? It walked straight into our lives and turned everything upside down.

My 90-year-old grandmother began overseeing family meetings like a caustic Logan Roy. We felt connected. Loved. The arrival of family friends for evening drinks became, at last, a welcome disruption to days handed over otherwise to lethargy and eating. I finally felt understood. Drinking heavily and alone under my parents’ roof shrugged off any lifelong taboo when there was suddenly – technically - a friend in the room, also vomiting into a waste paper basket.

With time came understanding. By week two of isolation, we had accepted our fate and prayed routinely to the gods of broadband bandwidth with solemnity, chanting in reverence: Zoom is our friend. Zoom is here to help. Zoom can be trusted... Or so we thought.

The first irritation came when Zoom prompted within my parents a revival of technological errors – of the linguistic kind. Just as the question “are you friends on The Facebook?” plagued my teenage years, my mother now asks, nonchalantly, as she opens a bottle of merlot, if I want to “Zoom in” on my grandmother at 8pm. Apparently, we, as a family, now govern the untouchable realm of totalitarian UK drone surveillance, dropping down and in on whatever subject we wish, delighting particularly in those who won’t welcome our intrusion.

The second, I suppose, was inevitable. Since local watering holes closed their doors, the coffee shops of West London bear black armbands in mourning, no longer lined with buggies. The riverside pubs similarly bereft of Hugos shooting the breeze in their second mother tongue: Craft Beer. And yet, the etiquette of clustered middle-class circles survives. But this time, online.

A Wisteria Lane flash of betrayal darkened my mother’s brow when she realised that a supposed ally, Camilla, wouldn’t be available for a last-minute “Zoom in” that evening. In fact, Camilla was booked up for the whole week. “I suppose we could say... Sunday? Sunday week?”, she offered, noisily leafing through her calendar as she languidly pencilled in a date. (Side note: is a Zoomer without a handle on paperless diaries not slightly counter-offensive?) My mother was horrified. “Who the fuck does she think she is?”, she muttered, consulting her own. “I’ll have to bump Melissa forward to tonight”.

So, Yummy Mummies beat on, imposing remote social hierarchy on a format for remote working, thriving in their yoga pants. Likewise, the unbearable Hugos drone on from their kitchens, demonstrating the variety of their subscription- based craft beer delivery service by conducting, unprompted, virtual show-and- tells. I blame webcam delay for my fractionally-too-slow gasp of appreciation at the latest fig-infused bergamot IPA (“Yeah, this little beauty’s actually brewed in Sussex... Mental.”) Sadly, cameras pick up eye-rolls.

And Zoom, my father learnt the hard way, is not quite the cuddly lodger we thought. On Friday, in front of 26 congregation members, that included a Bishop and, more importantly, my grandmother, whose attendance had been greatly anticipated all week, Zoom prayers were hijacked by online pranksters.

Amid the hushed and reverent mumblings of three bashful clergymen, anonymous users entered the meeting unannounced and explicit pornography (including, according to my cousin, a pair of testicles with a smiley face drawn on) was aired to everyone. Actually. Proof once again, as we pass the Easter weekend, that faith can and does reveal itself unexpectedly, especially in the most unprecedented of times.