Zoom Bummer

I run a weekly show called Nightlife on Mars with my friends Joseph and Red. Usually it’s a fun night with a small attendance. Last week we experienced what’s been dubbed a Zoom Bomb (henceforth to be known as “ZB” because I’m not gonna make you read— or myself write— “Zoom Bomb” any more than necessary), and it really sucked. 

It sucked hard. It didn’t even happen directly to me, but it was during my show, so I felt it. I felt the delicate balance crumble as fake, forced laughs, taunts, slurs, and other kinds of noise pollution flooded in from a handful of people with their video off. The whole show went lopsided. 

Maybe it wouldn’t even have mattered if it had been my show or not. Maybe I would’ve felt it even if I was just there to watch. But I wasn’t. I was co-hosting. And it seemed like the best course of action would have been some quick course correction in the form of a joke or quip or something to move past it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t have it in me. That’s what my co-producers thought I’d do. Instead, as they told me later, I “seemed shell shocked.” 

At first, it didn’t make sense. Why would I have been so thrown off? Over in the meat world, (before the pandemic,) hecklers were not a big problem for me. I wasn’t a big fan of it but I enjoy riffing, and the occasional distraction from my material has the potential to be fun. 

But these ZBers were not the well-meaning drunks who believe they are “part of the show” and/or are “helping” the comedian by shouting things at them. These were not audience members who get distracted and/or forget they’re at a live show and so begin speaking to their friends as if they’re at home watching television. They’re not even the actually angry audience member (someone who came to the show to have fun but was either disappointed by the quality of the comedy or outraged by its content) who feels the need to voice their displeasure loudly and immediately. 

No these guys were something entirely different. And what they were giving was a lot less like heckling and a lot more like good old-fashioned street harassment. And when I understood that, it all clicked. It’s the kind of stuff I’d hear far too often during a certain time of my life when I found myself walking alone through the Tenderloin with regularity. The mocking, the antagonizing — even dropping the n-word —  it was all unpleasantly familiar. It was a signal to be prepared to run or stand your ground and see how that goes. It was a precursor to getting assaulted.

So although I was safe and at home, my body acted like we didn’t know that.  I was treated to an unwanted, unasked for, and autonomic, physiological response. My belly felt heavy and empty. My face heated up. I started sweating. I couldn’t process what was happening quickly enough. I had to fight against the panic.

It sucked. 

And so, my friends were right. I was shell shocked. But not from actual artillery.

I was shell shocked by Zoom bombs.