Before 2020 ZOOM almost seemed like a novelty way to work and play.
Now, it's the mainstay.
Wow, this has been a long two years.
And oh my goodness, the things we've seen because of it?!
ZOOM has given us a literal window into one another's worlds,
and some of those worlds are a "WTF is happening" situation.
Redditor yarakmansarak1 wanted to hear about all the ZOOM calls that have left many of us SHOOKETH! SO they asked:
"What is the most terrifying thing that happened during a Zoom Call?"
I was late to the ZOOM party. Still am. And my jobs allow me to be dark screened.
So you'll never know my drama. LOL...
Mute Please
Be Quiet Go Away GIF by Ryn Dean
Giphy
"It was mandatory to keep our mics and cameras on and my parents were having a screaming match in the background. Maybe not terrifying but it was horrible."
mommyittickles
PING!
"Last time when I was having a discord call with my online friends (playing mc together), we saw fire in one of my friend's background. We were telling him that there was fire outside his window but he had deafened his discord and he couldn't hear us. Some guy spam pinged him in the no-mic and then he saw the message, turned around, and left the meeting The whole group freaked out because he didn't respond for a week, even after we spam pinged him again."
"At the end of that week he messaged in the chat and said that he freaked out a lot but his house was intact and no one was hurt but the small patch of trees behind his house. (I'm pretty sure the message saved his life)"
Ilias_2008
Mean Girls
"A personal social nightmare. During a discussion heavy class I was taking last year I had a question that turned into a 2-3 minute back and forth with the teacher as they expounded on my question. Just when they were redirecting the convo back to their PowerPoint slides one of the girls in the class wasn’t on mute and someone in their room, I guess their roommate or something, said, 'that guy has such an annoying voice' and the girl responded, 'I hate hearing him talk, every time he opens his mouth I’m just waiting for him to shut up.'”
"Teacher reminded everyone to mute themselves and the girl got wide-eyed and muted herself. We could see her tell her roommate about it and then laughing, but they didn't apologize or anything. There was just a few moments of silence and then the teacher moved on. I stepped away from my computer for a bit and barely ever said anything the rest of the semester."
BK_Hazard
Speaking Up
"I attended a virtual networking zoom for work and during the main speaker event someone unmuted. They were clearly on the phone with someone and started going 'oh no I can talk now. It’s cool I’m just on this stupid webinar. I’m not even going to listen to this.'"
overduedoughnut
"HAHAHA. That happened with my company too. My work leadership wanted to do 'spirit meetings' to 'boost morale' and one of the agents had a hot mic that picked up her saying, 'Hang on, I gotta go to this wack-a** meeting.' It was amazing. She was just saying what we were all thinking."
pandamomium824
Hide Dad
GIF by CTV Comedy Channel
Giphy
"I was giving a university lecture on zoom, i only require camera if it's an evaluation. One of my students were speaking, camera on, and her dad shows by only wearing a g-string. He realizes that the camera is on and makes a quick escape."
Mediocre-Doughnut637
How hard is it to mute? Although now I'm going to be super sensitive to make sure for myself.
Caught
Lights Camera Action Thumbs Up GIF by Milwaukee Panthers
Giphy
"Saw a guy's wife beat him over the head with a purse. He was on mute and no one else on the call had noticed. I had to interrupt the call to ask if he was OK. Apparently, the wife had been abusing him for a while and this was the final straw that made him leave her."
fulthrottlejazzhands
Shots Fired
"Multiple shots being fired at the apartment across from me. I was on my weekly team call when it happened and I was asking a question so I was unmuted I went holy s**t those are gunshots and hit the floor. All my team saw was me throwing my headset off and frantically rolling off my couch. Supposedly my mic picked up me calling 911. Don't get involved with drugs everyone. There's a chance people will come and try to shoot you in the middle of the day."
nerdgirl37
'Hey IRL name.'
"Was on discord with friends and hopped in a work call early. I forgot I switched calls, and walked away from my desk with my headset on to go get a snack before the meeting. Someone said 'Hey IRL name.' Thinking it’s a gaming friend, I blurt out 'the f**k? Since when do you call me IRL name.'”
"Was not a gaming friend. Was the CEO. (I work for a start up so I luckily have a decent relationship with him) I realized my mistake a second later and mentioned that I’d been sitting in a call with friends while working today and apologized. He luckily laughed it off with me and never brought it up again."
ChocoboToes
For TEN minutes...
"Last year during the Dixie Fire in California, CalFire set up a Zoom meeting to give a state of affairs for residents who were evacuated. It was a public meeting. Whomever hosted, didn’t understand how to mute people. Some dudes came on and started saying utterly offensive and disgusting things. For TEN minutes."
"Every bad word, insult, vulgarity you could imagine. The CalFire team didn’t seem to understand how to mute people, or how to read the comments telling them what was happening. My husband was a fireman deployed to that fire and I was pissed. Just wanted information."
LittleWhiteBoots
TP 911
Toilet Paper Comedy GIF
Giphy
"Attended a zoom wedding and one old couple didn't know you had to self mute. Just prior to the wedding beginning the wife (offscreen) yelled 'Toilet paper, I need toilet paper quick!' Then just after the wedding ceremony finished same lady said 'That was the most boring wedding talk I've ever heard.'"
Nouveaucola
Clips
"My friend is a special ed teacher. A student recorded a brief clip of an inopportune moment and almost got him fired for inappropriate behavior - sexual harrasment. He was playing a harmonica and briefly had his back turned to the computer. The student turned down the volume on his computer and said my friend was simulating oral sex. There was an investigation and he was cleared, but it was pretty traumatic for him."
LeeSheltonsHat
So Helpful...
"Yeah, I teach, and I prefer cameras on for the younger classes so I can see if they're paying attention, but mics on only when it's your turn to talk and cameras optional for teenagers. I had a good student not responding to questions when usually she'd be full of ideas, and it turned out her grandmother was having a meltdown caused by dementia and the student was home alone with her trying to reach her parents and avoid calling the police to respond."
"One of her parents was in the room with me (we were team teaching from on campus) and was pulled aside to go deal with the crisis, which was how I found out. I was teaching a professional development workshop on best practices for online classes and shared the story as an example of exactly why cameras and microphones should be optional."
"You don't know what's happening in the background and why the student isn't responding."
NeonHairbrush
Trauma
"At the middle school I used to go to a teacher got assaulted by her boyfriend. Apparently he didn't know her entire class could hear it and it was recorded as well. They were not on camera but the threats and sounds were enough to arrest him."
"Edit: did a little research and it was actually filmed as well and a video of it circulated online for a while. The latest update is a month later and the guy was being charged for abuse and the teacher was still not working because of the trauma."
Joka96
Best Class
Oh My GIF by Omaze
Giphy
"Girl crap-talked our professor without turning off her mic. Someone recorded it and went viral on TikTok. Several million views. Funny thing is, best class I’ve ever taken."
_MilkBone_
Meow
"My cat once walked over the keyboard and I said, 'sure, why wouldn't you walk over there?! It's not a laptop. It's a modelling ramp your father built for you!!' Turns out she had unmuted my mic. The instructor politely asked everyone to mute their mics."
1ta_Agni
“I need to go”
"At the end of 2019 I was at the office in London, and on a Zoom with about a dozen other folks spread across the US. Got some pretty shocking news during the call, and felt a cold sweat come on, a lightheaded sensation, and then searing burning pain in my chest."
"I’d suffered a massive heart attack, and apparently managed to say 'I need to go' and then pushed my chair back from my desk and just collapsed. Thankfully it was still working hours and the office had people in it, so my team-mates got me into a safe place, grabbed my nitro spray, called an ambulance, etc, and all was eventually well."
"I ended up having a quadruple bypass not long after this. Had it been an hour or two later in the day I’d have probably died as the office would have been empty."
matdotcx
Poor Kid
"Blind kid in a zoom class at the end of last year during english, I see out of the corner of my eye he is the only one with a camera on, teacher was chill if we didn’t want them on while online. Starts stroking his soldier in front of half the class and the teacher. Teacher kicked him from the class without saying anything and continued on with the lecture like nothing happened. Poor guy probably didn’t even know, but yeah that was a very jarring English class."
Sparklebugsy
The Crawl
"My brother was on a zoom interview for a job in England early in the morning in my basement where we had our computers set up and I used to have my room. I crawled across behind him to avoid being seen in my underwear as I needed to get some clothes from my old wardrobe. My brother later told me he could clearly see me crawling across. I jokingly say his interviewer told him, 'your sex slave is escaping.' Funny enough he got the job."
imodea
Options
Hide Reaction GIF by flor
Giphy
"Had an optional zoom meeting with my boss and the head of a software company who's product we use. I was the only one who showed up. I wanted to die."
dont_tempt_me_frodo_
tabs
"This happened when I joined my company as a fresher and I was in training period. So one of the trainers started sharing his screen and it had porn tabs open. He stopped sharing instantly but everyone saw it. Then the other trainer (who was a lady btw) told him to leave the meeting saying she will take care of the rest."
angrybunny09
ZOOM is not the way. Be careful people.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
For many childhood memories are overrun by living nightmares.
Yes, children are resilient, but that doesn't mean that the things we see as babes don't follow us forever.
The horrors of the world are no stranger to the young.
Redditor -2sweetcaramel- wanted to see who was willing to share about the worst things we've seen as kids, so they asked:
"What’s the creepiest thing you saw as a kid?"
Serious Danger
"Me and my best friend would explore the drainage tunnels under the Vegas area where we grew up. These were miles long and it was always really cool down there so it was a good way to escape the heat of our scorching hot summers. We went into this one that goes under the Fiesta casino and found a camp with a bunch of homeless people."
"Mind you we are like 11 years old lol. And we just kept going like it was nothing. It wasn’t scary then but when I look back at it we could have been in some serious danger. Our parents had no idea we did this or where we were and we had no cellphones. We could have been kidnapped and never have been found."
oofboof2020
Waiting for Food
"I was at a portillos once when I was 12 and I was waiting with my little brother at a booth while my parents got our food. This guy was standing with his tray kind of watching me then after a couple of minutes he started to walk over really fast not breaking eye contact with me."
"He was 2 feet from the table and my dad came out of nowhere and scared the s**t out of him. He looked so surprised and just said he wanted to see if I’d get scared or not. He left his tray full of food near the door and left. My folks reported him but we never went to that location again since we found a better one closer to home."
nowhereboy1964
Captain Hobo to the Rescue
"When I was a pretty young teen, my friends and I were horsing around in San Francisco and started hanging out to smoke with some homeless guys. Another homeless dude came up and began aggressively trying to shake us down for anything (money, smokes, a ride, drugs- all of it) and wouldn’t take no for an answer."
"We got in over our heads and could tell this guy was now riling the other 2 guys up and they were acting like they wanted to jump us. Some grandfather-looking old homeless man appeared out of nowhere and yelled at us to get the f**k out of here- nice kids like us don’t belong down here at this hour!!"
"Captain Hobo saved our lives that night. My parents sincerely thought we were at a mall all day lol."
FartAttack911
Survival
tsunami GIF
Giphy
"I was 7 and survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Witnessed the wave rise way above the already massive palm trees (approx. 40ft?) and my family and I watched/heard the wave crash into the ground from a rooftop."
faithfulpoo
These Tsunami stories are just tragic.
On the Sand
Scared The Launch GIF by CTV
Giphy
"We were a group of kids who went to swim in a local lake. And there was a dead body on the beach with their hands raised and their legs bent unnaturally that local police just took out of the same lake. I've never put my foot in these waters again."
oyloff
Be Clever
"I was walking to school and I was about 5 or 6 years old and some guy pulled up beside me in his car and asked if I would get in. He also offered me sweets to do so. I said no. The creepy bit was when he calmly said ‘clever boy’ to me, then drove off. I’ve never even told my parents or anyone else about this as it would most likely freak them out."
OstneyPiz
Bad Jokes
"Dad's side of the family pranked me by burying a fake body on our back property and had me dig it up to find valuables. Was only allowed to use a lantern for light. They stuffed old clothes with chicken bones. Sheetrock mud where the head was... Random fake jewelry as the treasures... I was like maybe 10 or 11.. I remember digging up the boot first and started gagging because it became real at that point."
Alegan239
YOU
Who Are You Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
Giphy
"Woke up to find my little brother staring at me in the dark, asking, Are you really you?"
PrettyLola2004
Siblings can really be a bunch of creepers.
No one should talk to others in the dark though.
Not all pet owners have the same relationship with their pets.
While anyone who decides to become a pet owner, or pet parent as some say, love their pets equally, some never ever let them leave their side.
Taking their pet with them to work, running errands, even on vacations.
Many pet parents even allow their pets to share their bed with them when going to sleep.
For others though, this is where a line is finally drawn.
Redditor Piggythelavasurfer was curious to hear whether pet owners allowed their pets to share their bed with them, as well as the reasons why they do/don't, leading them to ask:
"Do you let your pet sleep in your bed? Why/why not?"
The Tiny Issue Of Water...
"Absolutely not."
"I have fish."- Senior-Meal3649
Everyone Gets Lonely Eventually...
"I adopted an eleven year old cat the day before Halloween."
"She has mostly lived in my closet since I got her, and she hasn’t been too interested in coming out."
"Last night, she came out of my closet and jumped up on my bed, and crawled under my covers and curled up by my feet to sleep."
"I was so happy!"- YellowBeastJeep
The Comforting Reminder That You're Not Alone...
"I recently lost my Greyhound but I used to let him sleep on my bed with me."
"The company was nice and he was no trouble to have on my bed."- HoodedMenace3
Hungry Cookie GIF by De Graafschap Dierenartsen
Giphy
What Do You Mean Allow?
"I have no choice."
"She is a cat, cats do whatever they want."- Small_cat1412
"He lets me sleep in my bed."- Poorly-Drawn-Beagle
Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
"I carry my old boy upstairs to bed every night."- worst_in_show
Hug GIF by The BarkPost
Giphy
Who Needs An Alarm Clock?
"I let my two cats sleep with me."
"They're so full of love and just want cuddles all the time."
"And so do I."
"We've all developed a lil routine."
"Get to bed, oldest sleeps on my feet to keep them warm, youngest lies in my arm while I lie on my side (she the little spoon), then when I snooze my alarm for work in the morning the youngest paws at my face and meeps loudly to wake me up."- GhostofaFlea_
Whose Bed Is It Anyway?
"Yes."
"They're also kind enough to let me squeeze into whatever space they've left for me."
"Although I do get a few dirty looks off them."- Therealkaylor
"I found this tiny kitten screaming her head off under a car."
"Would not come out."
"Got some food and some water in dishes."
"I stood by the tire so she couldn't see my feet."
"She got curious about the food and water and started gobbling it down."
"I thought she would bolt when I squatted down."
"She was too busy eating."
"I grabbed her by the nape of the neck and all four legs went straight out and she tried to scratch me to death."
"I got her in the door and tossed her toward the couch."
"She ricocheted off the couch as if she was a ping pong off a table and I lost sight of her."
"I put out food and water and a sandbox and did not see that kitten for three days."
"On the third day, I came home and she was on my bed pillow."
"I thought she would bolt when I came near, but she didn't."
"I wanted to sleep so I tried to scoot her little butt off my pillow."
"She would not go."
"I put my head down to sleep and that is the way it was from then on."
"She ran the roost."- Logical_Cherry_7588
sleepy kitten GIF
Giphy
Sleeping Is A Prerequisite...
"No, he's a cat and he cannot keep still during the night."
"He walks across the headboard, opens the closet doors, jumps into the windows and rustles the blinds, etc."
"If he would sleep he could stay, but alas, he's a ramblin' man."- Spong_Durnflungle
Saying No Just Isn't An Option...
"'Let'."
"Lol."
"It's a cat's world and I'm happy to be on her good side."- milaren
Felines Only!
"The cat does, the dog doesn't and the horse certainly does not either."- Xcrowzz
Angry Tom And Jerry GIF by Boomerang Official
Giphy
Is That My Hair On That Pillow?
"My dog is perfect."
"She comes up, cuddles til we start to fall asleep, then gets down to sleep on her bed so she doesn't get too hot."
"Jumps back up in the early morning for wake up cuddles."
"The hair everywhere is the only downside but she is so cozy, what can you do."- HoodieWinchester
It is easy to understand how some people are able to fall asleep more easily knowing their friend and protector is there, in bed, with them.
Though we can't blame others who don't want to run the risk of being scratched or bitten in the middle of the night either...