During the early days of the pandemic, many people worked remotely but that social connection of going out with your coworkers on a Friday evening had disappeared. Lockdown, social distancing and social bubbles made it impossible to hang out with friends, family and coworkers – hence the arrival of the virtual happy hour using social media platforms such as Zoom and Google Hangouts.
Virtual happy hours fostered that togetherness and improved communication. It was a time to catch up on each other’s personal lives and share experiences. Even though the pandemic is behind us, virtual happy hours are still popular.
Though not a replacement for real life meetups, the virtual happy hour became rapidly popular during a challenging time in our history. Technology made the impossible, well, possible, despite the technical glitches, the infamous mute button and jerky images caused by low bandwidth.
An article published for Food and Wine magazine said the “virtual cocktail hour is really about finding a way to connect with friends and family in a time when your usual avenues of connection are cut off” (Isle). The author offers eight helpful tips on hosting your own happy hour:
Ray Isle
- If you’re going to theme your event, make it broad. It’s hard for people, especially in places like California and New York right now, to shop, plus stores have limited selection. So, with wine, pick a popular varietal — Cabernet, Pinot Noir — rather than a specific winery or obscure region.
- For cocktails, email everyone a recipe in advance.
- If you are going to play music in the background, have the host choose it and play it, otherwise you get that jarring nine-songs-going-on-at-the-same-time effect. Or collaborate on a playlist in advance.
- Choose the grid option on the software, so you can all see each other at the same time
- Start off talking about something other than Coronavirus. This is supposed to be fun, not bleak. Plus, you’ll probably end up talking about it anyway.
- Set a time frame. An hour is good.
- Don’t share your meeting link on social media or public forums, because then anyone can join in. There have been reports of trolls crashing zoom meetups (particularly big public ones) and broadcasting awful porn to everyone. Not good!
- Come up with a plan to occupy the kids during your happy hour time, if you have kids. If it’s a group of parents who are meeting, you can even set up a separate virtual event for the kids (if they’re old enough). In another room, of course, and if you have a spare phone/computer/whatever.
Three years ago, the Inside Edition published a short video on helpful ways to host the best virtual happy hour. You can watch the video here.
Social Media Trends as of May 9, 2023
Facebook #virtualhappyhour: people are posting about this
Instagram #virtualhappyhour: 81,720 posts
TikTok #virtualhappyhour: 2,100,000 views
YouTube #virtualhappyhour: 333 videos and 79 channels
Google Trends: “virtual happy hour” first appeared during March 2020 when lockdown began and reached its peak at the end of that month.
Sources:
Inside Edition channel. “Snacks and Other Ways to Host the Best Virtual Happy Hour/.” YouTube. 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmB4tEwkwlM.
Isle, Ray. “Let’s Have Virtual Happy Hours All the Time — Not Just During a Pandemic.” Food and Wine. March 26, 2020. URL: https://www.foodandwine.com/news/lets-have-virtual-happy-hours-all-the-time-not-just-during-a-pandemic.
VIRTUAL-HAPPY-HOUR-MEME-BRACE-YOURSELVES. “Virtual happy hours” meme. AVitalTours.com. July 7, 2020. URL: https://avitaltours.com/nyc-food-tours/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/07/virtual-happy-hour-meme-brace-yourselves.jpg.
