When office workers were allowed to work from home during lockdown, Zoom became the #1 app for communicating with coworkers but it wasn’t just employees that benefited. Quarantined families could use Zoom to stay in touch with each other and for some events like funerals, Zoom was the only way to say goodbye to our loved ones. This situation was something I experienced when my grandmother died abroad and I could not travel out of the country to attend her funeral due to lockdown and quarantine restrictions in both countries.
An article published on April 29, 2020 for the Philadelphia Inquirer, by the Angry Grammarian, discusses how the pandemic has changed our language and how zoom, a video conferencing app, has become a verb (Barg).
-Mom: Son, go outside, it’s warm. Son: I can’t, Mom. I’m Zooming with my physics class” (Licensed_nerd).
Some turned Zoom into an art form. Rosetta, a painter who lives in Ontario, Canada, used her Zoom calls to paint portraits of her friends who also happened to be artists themselves. Check out the interview below:
courtesy of KnowYourMeme
Social Media Trends as of May 23, 2022
Because the Zoom app existed prior to the pandemic, I won’t get any meaningful social media results using the #zoom hashtag, despite its use as a verb. Google Trends showed negligible interest in the zoom search term until the second week of March 2020 when it started to go vertical and reached its peak during the first week of April that year. It’s no coincidence that lockdown was in progress then and people and employers were looking for video conferencing apps to stay in touch with family and coworkers. Zoom also happens to be free to use and requires little setup.
What do you call an employee who only goes into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays And Thursdays? The clue is in the first sentence. The original meaning of the term is a derogatory word used often in the United Kingdom.
An article published for SmartCompany.com on February 24, 2022 asks “are you a T.W.A.T?…Before you type me an angry complaint, know that it stands for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday – it’s an acronym to describe the hybrid workforce who only come into the office three days a week” (Elsworthy).
Office workers showing up only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – TWaT for short – is well and truly a thing, and it’s got the potential to be a big drag on Melbourne CBD’s economic recovery, writes Noel Towell | OPINION#COVID19Vic#backtotheofficehttps://t.co/nh7sw72u4H
The Huffington Post published an article on the new meaning of this expression saying that “City workers have reportedly been using the term [T.W.A.T] to describe their cheeky colleagues taking advantage of the new ways of working…one person defended the employees, saying: ‘Perhaps better described as hypertwats. They are generally super efficient in the 3-day work period'” (Bakar).
There are no social media reports for this term (I get everything but the pandemic meaning).
Depending on context, and if you’re not in the office Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, then don’t be a T.W.A.T.
“My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing” – Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister.
The pandemic arrived in the United States in March 2020 which was quickly followed by a two week quarantine lockdown. State and local governments passed emergency mandates that required non-essential businesses to close. Establishments such as restaurants, gyms, salons and movie theaters were shut down and those who worked for them were out of a job. Knowledge workers such as those working in finance and IT were generally allowed to work from home and apps like Zoom became popular as a way for employees to stay in touch with management and coworkers. My office closed for two weeks till the pandemic had passed. We were instructed to take what we needed to do our jobs remotely. Two weeks became two months and then two years and I am still working from home.
For many, this “new normal” afforded them the opportunity to spend more time with their loved including their pets. No longer having to deal with office commutes, expensive lunches and difficult employees, the work life balance and quality of life improved for those working from home. There are many advantages as a remote worker. All those chores that may have waited till the weekend could be squeezed in between Zoom conferences. You could take the dog for a walk and do a virtual workout in your lunch hour.
After most people had been vaccinated and the pandemic had passed its peak and became endemic, there was a push to get people back to the office. Some who’d gone a long time without human contact looked forward to being back in the office but the majority of virtual workers wanted to keep remote working.
In some industries such as the financial sector, senior management felt their employees worked better in the office collaboratively. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, said “I do think for a business like ours which is an innovative, collaborative apprenticeship culture, this is not ideal for us and it’s not a new normal. It’s an aberration that we’re going to correct as quickly as possible” (McKeever). The British prime minister Boris Johnson said “We need to get back into the habit of getting into the office. There will be lots of people who disagree with me, but I believe people are more productive, more energetic, more full of ideas, when they are surrounded by other people.” Boris felt that workers were unproductive while working remotely and were more likely to spend their working hours drinking slow brewed coffee and hacking off pieces of cheese (Taylor).
Some employees threatened to quit if their company forced them to come back to the office and in the age of the Great Resignation there were plenty of remote working jobs out there. A few few were scared to come back to the office for fear of catching Covid-19 but most wanted to keep their work/life balance.
Not every company was so demanding. Many CEOs recognized the benefits of remote working and employees found they were more productive working from home. In order to meet remote workers half way, some companies proposed a hybrid working environment whereby employees would come into the office a few days a week and work from home the rest of the week. Apple Corp created “return to office plans” that allowed employees to work a hybrid schedule with some days in the office and the rest working from home.
Check out this funny YouTube video on “when meetings are no longer virtual” (Foil Arms and Hog).
The pandemic has changed the lives of office workers forever. Working Monday to Friday in the office from 9-5 is over. Hybrid and remote working schedules are here to stay.
Google Trends: “return to office” as a search term has been around for a while but its popularity peaked in August 2021 as vaccines became widely available and state and local governments decided that it was safe to come back to the office.
Deltacron was identified in January 2022 by a lab in Cyprus and is a portmanteau of Delta and Omicron and contains genetic material from both Covid-19 variants making this new variant a recombinant one but some medical experts doubt Deltacron exists.
The new variant has an entry in Dictionary.com describing it as “the name given to a supposed combination of the Delta and Omicronvariants of the COVID-19 virus; however, many scientific experts have concluded that it does not exist. A number of virologists have said that the appearance of a combined strain was simply the result of contamination of the samples in which it was thought to have been detected. Deltacron is, in fact, not a variant, but a broad nickname describing variants that contain a mixture of mutations found in Delta and Omicron.”
An article titled “What Is Deltacron? A New Coronavirus Variant Or Lab Error?” reports that the lab responsible for discovering the new variant said “on 7 January [that the] team had discovered Deltacron in 25 patients [and the] variant appeared to be a mix of the delta and omicron variants” (Majumder).
Because there are so few cases the World Health Organization has not classified it as a variant of concern. Epidemiologist William Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said “It’s only a variant if it produces a large number of cases…if it’s not causing lots of cases, people don’t need to be concerned” (Ellis).
Social Media Trends as of May 20, 2022
Facebook #deltacron: 11,000 people are posting about this Instagram #deltacron: 6,960 posts TikTok #deltacron: 24.9 million views YouTube #deltacron: 1,100 videos and 525 channels
Google Trends: deltacron appeared on January 8, 2022 and peaked during the second week of that month before fading into obscurity by the beginning of April 2022.
Juan. “Lexicon images. “Researcher with blood sample of New Variant of the Covid-19 DELTACRON and generic data of covid-19 Coronavirus Mutations. Doctor in analysis lab holding sample of new strain of covid DELTACRON” image. Adobe.com. File no: 479256877.
This is my 50th post so I thought I’d do something a bit different. Here are some of the popular pandemic memes from 2020. To date, I have posted about 56 different terms, words ands phrases connected to the pandemic and there are plenty left to write about.
Coronavirus testing sites began to appear in March 2020. The major pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens adapted their existing prescription pickup drive thru so that customers could get tested for Covid-19. Appointments had to be made online and testing could not be performed inside the pharmacy. Their were specific instructions for this kind of test: “In drive-through testing, the person undergoing testing remains in a vehicle while a healthcare professional approaches the vehicle and obtains a sample, all while taking appropriate precautions such as wearing personal protective equipment (PPE)” (Wikipedia).
drive thru testing at a CVS Pharmacy
On March 20, 2020 the first coronavirus drive thru testing site opened in New Jersey attracting long lines of vehicles. An NBC News article describes the scene: “Hundreds of cars, some with a single passenger and others packed with four, were lined up Friday morning at Bergen Community College in Paramus, located about 20 miles from Manhattan, to get tested for coronavirus, according to NorthJersey.com. The National Guard was brought in to assist state police with monitoring the testing site” (Burke).
When Covid testing was at its peak it was virtually impossible to find a location anywhere that had an opening. I remember trying to find a spot at CVS, Walgreens and Quest Diagnostics only to find they had no availability.
Google Trends: drive thru testing appeared during the week of March 8, 2020 when Covid testing centers started to pop up across the nation. During the peak of various Covid waves, the search term spiked as people tried to find testing locations where there was still availability. The term peaked in Christmas 2021 when the Omicron variant was rapidly spreading everywhere.
“How to self-swab in your car at a Regional Test Site or Mobile Test Unit.” Department of Health and Social Care. UK Government. June 16, 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QawyKwIIfKQ.
A retronym describes a new word created from an existing word that is similar to the original form but has a slightly different meaning. In this case, Covalgia is a retronym of nostalgia which is an affection for some parts of the pandemic such as empty roads (if you had to commute), remote working (if you didn’t have to go back to the office) and not having to be around your coworkers.
Chris Rodgers quotes Jay Martel’s definition of Covalgia in this tweet:
Covalgia – nostalgia for certain aspects of the pandemic – e.g., reduced traffic, more birds, fewer mass shootings, no office birthday parties.
Omicron is the name of a highly transmissible variant of the Covid-19 virus and was first detected in South Africa in November 2021. Two months later it had spread around the world faster than previous variants. It arrived in the United States in the same month it was detected in South Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on December 1, 2021 that “the California and San Francisco Departments of Public Health have confirmed that a recent case of COVID-19 among an individual in California was caused by the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529). The individual was a traveler who returned from South Africa on November 22, 2021. The individual had mild symptoms that are improving, is self-quarantining and has been since testing positive.” By Christmas 2021, Omicron was the world’s most dominant variant.
So where did the variant gets its name from? Omicron is one of the Greek letters of the alphabet. An article published for the South China Morning Post on 17 December 2021 explains why: “Alpha, beta, gamma, delta…[The] World Health Organization determined in May 2021 that its nomenclature for important strains in the Sars-CoV-2 variant classification would adopt Greek-letter names (as opposed to place-of-origin names, such as “Wuhan virus” or “South African variant”, the practice criticised for contributing to xenophobia and racism)” (Lim).
The new variant dashed hopes of a return to normal during the Christmas holidays and delayed return to office plans. Cases rose exponentially and schools deliberated whether to return to virtual learning. An article published on December 20, 2021 for NBC News on December 16, 2021 reports that “The omicron variant is spreading rapidly across the United States, shattering hopes of a return to relative normalcy in the final days of the year and harkening back to the anxiety of the early months of the Covid-19 crisis. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday that the variant is “just raging through the world” (Arkin).
Omicron sounds more like the name you would give to a transformer than a Covid variant. Ironically, an anagram of the word spells “Moronic.”
Omicron is the name you might give to a transformer (Wikipedia)
The Covid-19 variant started popping up in memes and YouTube videos. Here’s a Star Trek parody of how to pronounce the word “Omicron.”
Here’s a tweet showing a parody photo of the UK gameshow Countdown with the words Omicron and its anagram Moronic.
Facebook #omicron: 300,000 people are posting about this Instagram #omicron: 594,110 posts TikTok #omicron: 3.2 billion views YouTube #omicron: 130,000 videos and 30,000 channels
Google Trends: omicron as a search term became popular during the week of November 21, 2021 and peaked around Christmas Day around the time it became the world’s most highly transmissible variant.
During lockdown when people worked remotely and used Zoom to stay in touch with their coworkers a new issue arose – Zoom bombing. This is where an uninvited person joins your video call over Zoom without permission.
An article published on the website How to Geek in April 2020 described the main cause of this: “The problem is how people handle public Zoom meeting links. These links are shared thousands of times between clients, friends, colleagues, classmates, and so on. Careless handling of them can result in a Zoom meeting being open to public access. Then, anyone who finds the link can join an in-progress meeting” (Gunnell).
Unauthorized persons who hijack Zoom meetings have been known to make offensive comments, throw racial slurs and bully people. There are many ways to prevent this from happening. If you must use links without a password don’t post them where they can be easily accessible or found by Google. In the Zoom settings menu you can disable the “Embed Password in Meeting Link for One-Click Join” setting and make it a requirement to have a password to join the meeting. Screen sharing can be disabled except for the host so inappropriate content is not shown. The “Remote Control” feature should be disabled if you don’t want other participants to control your computer. If you don’t want files to be shared you can disable the “File Transfer” option. For a full list of ways to prevent Zoom Bombing read the here.
Zoom bombing can also refer to the unexpected appearance of individual(s) in a video who weren’t supposed to be there. Prior to Zoom calls, the old term was video bombing. One humorous example of Zoom Bombing happened during lockdown during a live interview with the BBC. On May 15, 2021 The Indy100 website published an article titled “Jon Ashworth’s daughter is the latest kid to Zoom-bomb a TV interview.” The shadow health secretary was giving a live interview when his daughter made a cameo appearance. The interview went viral and appeared on Twitter.
A new victim of child Zoom-crashing tonight: shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth pic.twitter.com/ugieTUKWVW
Many of us working remotely are using Zoom for business, meetings, interviews and classes. One mom from New Hampshire zoom bombed her kids’ classes while wearing embarrassing costumes, such as a bear suit and an old man, and posted selfies on her local New Hampshire Facebook page.
Lexicon images: zoom bombing
Social Media Trends as of May 9, 2022
Facebook #zoombombing: 3,100 people are posting about this Instagram #zoombombing: 2,685 posts TikTok #zoombombing: 76.3 million views
Google Trends: zoombombing didn’t register until March 2020 when the pandemic arrived in the United States. The popularity of the term reached its peak during the week of March 29, 2020 which coincided with lockdown.
Lexicon images. “zoombombing concept represented by wooden letter tiles on a wooden table with glasses and a book” image. Adobe.com. File no: 344298530.
Happy Blursday to all my readers! This term entered the lexicon soon after lockdown began. My office was closed in March 2020 and everyone was told to work from home for two weeks till the pandemic had run its course. Well two weeks turned into two months and then two years. Everyday was the same and like many other people who worked remotely, I started to lose track of the days. Was it Thursday or Friday? Sunday or Monday? With no daily commute, every day felt like yesterday, especially under lockdown when we couldn’t go outside except to go shopping or for a solitary walk around the block. Time seemed to pass quickly and the days went by in a blur.
The Collins Dictionary has “blursday” listed as a new word suggestion: “humorous word for any day of the week that feels not much different from the one before” (Melony).
The Urban Dictionary has a couple of entries for “blursday,” one dating from 2007, so this isn’t a new term:
Defintion #1: “When you’ve been sheltering in place for so long because of a global pandemic you have no idea what day it is as they all blur together.
-I got so drunk on Friday. I slept in all blursday but Sunday I went to brunch” (J4432).
Blursday appears in a number of online publications. An article published for WebMD on May 7, 2020, entitled “Today is Blursday: How Lockdown Warps Time,” describes the feeling “of your internal clocks melting as your stay-at-home days drone on” and that many people all over the world report that their perception of time has been distorted because of the effects of lockdown. Most feel that time is speeding up but others say their days have slowed down to a crawl (Goodman).
Some people got creative during lockdown and produced journals for sale like this cool notebook from Amazon described as a “Funny notebook for the shelter in place self-quarantine phenomena where the days blur together” (Lit Notebooks).
Blursday is the name of a movie released in June 2021 which was directed by Vincent Soberano, an award winning actor and filmmaker, and tells the true stories of three couples in their apartments during lockdown. The IMDB entry describes the movie as “a unique and profound story about loss, love and pregnancy during confinement.”
An article published for Broadway World on May 29, 2021 quotes Soberano’s reasons for making the movie: “On Blursday, I wanted to produce a time capsule film, detailing a journey through THE FIRST 100 DAYS of the global pandemic. Following the global theme of “we are all in this together”, I created a couple of cinematic rules: To be performed by three couples around the world and to be captured inside their own apartments using computers and phone cameras.” The movie was filmed at each of the couples’ apartments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires, “shot via Zoom and in person” (Wild). Watch the trailer below:
image submitted by Piscine26
Social Media Trends as of May 7, 2022
Facebook #blursday: 2,400 people are posting about this Instagram #blursday: 6,081 posts TikTok #blursday: 828,000 views YouTube #blursday: less than 100 videos and channels
Google Trends: blursday first appeared as a blip in February 2009 and didn’t really take off in popularity until March 2020 when lockdown arrived in the United States. The term peaked in April 2020 at the peak of lockdown and then tailed off for a pit, spiking again in November 2020 (as some states reintroduced lockdown after previously lifting them) before returning to where it was in 2009.
