09/03/2021
The secret to convivial DD Week staff meetings:
https://vimeo.com/519674133/6ea854ee0f
SUMMARY
This video was created for an exercise in gently insisting on breaks during (long and short, boring or intense) Zoom meetings, as a collaboration between Karlin Boelens-van der Klink (WdKA Vitality Coach) and WdKA Social Practices. The exercise was prototyped at a rather bland set of institutional meetings (Drive and Development Week) in March 2021.
MECHANICS
The mechanics for its use are simple. In a regular work meeting, every 30 mins, a Vitality Zoombomber crashes the meeting and, without saying a word, takes over screenshare functions to play this video. Meeting participants should be gently briefed on the exercuse when the work session begins, ideally even meeting the Vitality Zoombomber briefly over audio only (everyone else can have their cameras on). Vitality Zoombomber is not part of the workgroup and exits the meeting after the audio introduction.
Participants should be informed that when the video appears, whoever is speaking at that moment will have 30 seconds—indicated by the classic karaoke font captions on screen—to wrap up what they are saying. Once the titles have disappeared, Vitality Zoombomber launches a 5-minute mindfulness exercise. Participants never see Vitality Zoombomber's face, only the relaxing forest scape. Vitality Zoombomber can choose to do live meditations, launch pre-recorded sounds, lead stretching exercises, etc. Participants can follow the exercises or choose to leave their chair for 5 minutes. When the break is over, the meeting resumes. The Vitality Zoombomber exits the room and returns every 20-30 minutes until the meeting is concluded.
WTF IS A ZOOMBOMB?
Zoombombing is a tactic for trolling online meetings popularized during the Zoom zeitgeist at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Trolls, mostly of the right-wing variety, would attend Zoom meetings, webinars, and lectures by (left-leaning) organizations and individuals, engaging in multiple disruptive actions. Most typically, they would hijack the screenshare function in the call to bombard the audience with disturbing images—pornography, speeches of Adolf Hi**er, etc. Expletives, insults towards the speaker or members of the audience, slurs, and other deviant utterances would be employed, increasing shock value. Much rumorology existed about the motivations of zoombombers, but what was clear was that their MO, in cases mostly reported in the Global North/West, [1] was largely related to white supremacist discourse. These (ideological) trolls capitalized upon poor literacy in online meeting etiquette and loopholes in the software itself, forcing the company to tighten restrictions and modify features. It was also a crash-course education for inexperienced users, forcing widespread social adjustments in the use of the platform to increase security and control. The era of Zoom-innocence was short-lived for the academic population that flocked to Zoom in the rapid switch to online learning environments.
NON-VIOLENT WHITE HAT TROLLING
This is an exercise in deeply listening to peripheral views. It was co-developed in a center of capital by a migrant mestiza from the tropical periphery. It learns from highly effective strategies from the Alt-Right in an attempt to extract their weaponry for counter-assault, or simply to disarm, neutralize, and re-purpose it. More specifically, this exercise acknowledges the intuitive and strategic "wellness" factor that Alt-Right propagandists and citizen trolls have mined from left-wing politics and thinking, applying it with brutal efficiency to causes that purportedly fell outside of the politically-correct discursive umbrella. This exercise is a non-violent "eye for an eye," a reverse-mining, a cheeky appropriation of a right-wing tactic in the name of care for other humans. It is, ultimately, fruit of putting one's money where one's mouth is: not just talking about but actively committing to being outside of one's echo chamber. Counter-homophilous [2] research involves mindful listening (and not assimilation) to environments that are radically unfamiliar as a strategy for critical self-improvement.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Global North/West: A hyperreal territory-object
[2] Homophily: The human tendency to congregate and bond only with those who are similar to us. A phenomenon largely documented and researched in network studies known, amongst other things, as a factor for radicalizing political beliefs.
GENEALOGY
This video was lovingly ripped for academic purposes from YouTube. Karaoke captions are original.
TITLE
Take a Five Minute Forest Therapy Break
ACCOUNT
Association of Nature and Forest Therapy
DESCRIPTION
This video is an experience of one of the most common invitations given during guided Forest Therapy walks. Simply relax while noticing what is in motion in the forest. No effort is needed. Notice how you feel after watching. Try coming back one time per day for a week and see if you notice any beneficial effects of simply viewing nature scenes.
SUMMARY This video was created for an exercise in gently insisting on breaks during (long and short, boring or intense) Zoom meetings, as a collaboration between…
