COVID-19 Crisis: A Pop Culture Break

Hey, all you cool cats and kittens,

All of our Zoom calls will start this way until everyone has finally binge-watched Tiger King. This documentary is wild, unbelievable, and has somehow connected all of us at this moment in time. Although we are all probably tired of talking about it, it’s better than starting a call with the weather or everyone’s weekend plans.

Speaking of the Zoom boom, how many virtual happy hours (with or without booze) have you joined lately? Zoom has become the video conferencing platform of choice for everything from social connection to virtual classrooms. Yep, that’s right — schools and daycares are starting to roll out e-learning. Clearly, Zoom is in a unique position to capitalize on social distancing right now. 

Their daily active users have increased from 10 million to 200 million MOM, including nearly 90,000 schools from 20 different countries. While its Privacy Policy may not be up to par, its filter feature has been key for those early morning calls.

DJ D-Nice’s Club Quarantine is the new Game of Thrones; the entire world is watching his Instagram story, live, at the same time. This DJ has launched himself into a semi-celebrity while 165,000 simultaneous viewers watch the sets he spins from his living room. These IGers aren’t just ordinary people; famous leaders and artists —Michelle Obama, Rihanna, and Drake, to name a few, have joined the party! DJ D-Nice had guest appearances on Fallon and Trevor Noah this last week and recently released a Spotify playlist to continue his climb to fame.

Social media platforms have seen increases in traffic and engagement over the last few weeks and celebrities are using this time to grow their followings. In the past few weeks, John Krasinski, Miley Cyrus, John Legend, and The Backstreet Boys have been going live across digital platforms, and Facebook and LinkedIn have been suggesting brands (B2C and B2B) do the same. All have the same intention during this time which is to connect with their audiences and provide support or distraction. 

Lastly, here is a Chrome Extension tip that a co-worker gave me recently: The Great Suspender. If you are a person who likes to rack up tabs, this extension will pause inactive tabs and help ease your bandwidth to help with video call quality. 

Hope you’re feline fine,

Katie Friedman*

*changing my last name to Exotic here would be TOO OBVIOUS and I won’t do it.