“Can You Get Out of Here?”: How Zoom Renders Private Classrooms Public
On April 5th, my sister Milly’s high school Physics class got “Zoom bombed.” This is a term that has been coined to describe the phenomenon of an uninvited stranger disturbing participants by dropping into an online meeting on Zoom, a video conferencing technology. This term, and its synonyms (like Zoom raids), have only recently required invention, due to the spike in Zoom use as institutions across the globe have halted all in-person gatherings in response to COVID-19.
My sister’s Zoom bomber was a teenage boy who joined the meeting and asked a seemingly innocuous question about something on the (virtual) board. My sister asked him, “Can you get out of here?” and the Zoom bomber replied, “Milly Berman will die a virgin and never be loved,” learning her name from the identifying information found below her video feed. The teacher soon figured out how to remove the bomber, but hours later, a discovery was made by another student: the bomber had been recording the incident and had posted a video of it on TikTok. The phrase “Milly Berman will die a virgin and never be loved,” already an intrusion into the online classroom, now had the potential to go viral.
This rude teenager was only trying to capitalize on a current trend. One YouTuber, who goes by username “twomad,” has spent the past month or so…
