Zoom Meetings Are Just Modern-Day Seances

Zoom meetings are just modern-day seances

This meme draws a humorous parallel between modern Zoom remote meetings and 19th century seances. It features a vintage illustration of a group of people sitting around a round table conducting a seance, paired with text that opens with the joke premise that Zoom meetings are modern seances. It then lists common phrases spoken during Zoom calls when an attendee has audio issues: asking if someone wants to join, calling for an absent attendee named William, saying they cannot hear him, and asking if he can hear them. The joke relies on the similarity between attempting to contact unresponsive spirits during a seance and attempting to reach unresponsive attendees with technical difficulties on remote calls.

This meme was originally shared on Reddit in meme communities, posted with the accompanying question "Would you agree on this?". It uses a public domain historical illustration of a seance, combined with relatable jokes about the widespread experience of technical issues on Zoom calls that became ubiquitous during the 2020 COVID-19 remote work boom, and has circulated widely across social media platforms as a relatable work humor meme.