A new web widget promises to help users escape boring Zoom meetings with convenient excuses built right in. It’s called Zoom Escaper, and it can add anything from a crying baby sound to a bad connection into your Zoom call, giving you an excuse to duck out. Artist Sam Lavigne created the app that is cracking people up and setting them free.
Zoom Escaper is free to add on as a browser extension, and it only requires that users also install a free program called VB-Audio to fuel the sound effects. After that, you can add sounds like barking dogs, construction or crying babies to your Zoom call, without actually hearing them on your end. Meanwhile, you can also use more subtle effects to simulate a bad connection, make your audio sound choppy or create an artificial echo. All of this will theoretically set you free from the Zoom call — although it may not help your professional prospects in the long run.
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In an interview with The Verge, Lavigne said that he created Zoom Escaper as a “deliberate slowdown, reducing productivity and output, self-sabotage, etc.” He created another web extension called Zoom Deleter, which “continually checks for the presence of Zoom on your computer, and if found, immediately deletes it.”
Lavigne is clearly passionate about subverting productivity through technology. In 2016, he created a website called Slow Hot Computer, which, as advertised, makes the computer it is opened on run slowly and warm up with effort. There, Lavigne wrote: “Use it at work to decrease your productivity.”
Lavigne’s 2017 website The Good Life may be even more subversive. It automatically sends users 225,000 emails confiscated from Enron during a security breach at the company in 2001. Lavigne created a YouTube video to show how to use Zoom Escaper, describing its function in a dry tone, like its virtues are self-evident.
Zoom has exploded in popularity in the last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which allowed more people than ever to begin working from home full time. While many complain about long Zoom meetings, others defend them as better than the alternative — commuting to an office. As the COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available, more and more people are discussing whether they should go back to shared office spaces when it is time. To some who want to stay at home, pranks like Zoom Escaper can only hurt their cause.
