Excerpt From the Diary of the Zoom Developer

Day… something. I’ve lost count. All I know is that it’s been too long—much too long.

Looking back, I intended on creating a tool that workers could use. I intended to become the patron of a new era—a technological, professional era. And yet, COVID-19 mocks us all with the onset of online school.

My platform, once used with the intent of progress, is now the site where thousands of teenagers set ghastly virtual backgrounds, raise their hands incessantly, and laugh at the boomers who haven’t figured out my easy-to-use interface.

I made the Annotate function as a hopeful, strapping young developer, not realizing that children would be abusing it in their classes to draw impressive (if not biologically implausible) diagrams of certain male organs. Is this what the future is? And though the drawings on the screen are bad, they hardly compare to the godforsaken virtual backgrounds.

I mean, seriously. Some of those backgrounds come from unspeakable websites that I find in my son’s search history. It’s appalling! The anime backgrounds are even worse. I pity the children forced to gaze upon Jojo’s screaming face for 40 minutes straight.

I have created a monster, plain and simple. Zoom? More like Zooming off a cliff. My wife Karen has left me, perhaps due to my increasing irrationality. She took the kids, who are, no doubt, also using Zoom in their online classes. I wonder if they ever think of me as they troll their teachers with Alt+F4.

Trolls! Don’t even get me started on the trolls. People are just logging in wherever and whenever they see fit! It’s absurd that this is happening. And now, somehow, people are relying on me to fix this problem. Hilarious!

As if losing my family wasn’t enough, I’m a joke to every app developer out there! Google Meets, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and even worthless, old MySpace all laugh in my face as my platform becomes what the children refer to as a “meme.” They all think they’re better than me! And maybe they are for creating platforms that don’t allow extreme trolling, but still.

Life grows ever bleaker as my faith in humanity wanes with each new eye-bleach-worthy virtual background. To conclude, dear journal, existence is pain, and if it weren’t for the massive revenue coming in right now, I would have quit my job and moved to Alaska. The end is near. I can feel it dawning upon me. Finally, freedom from this mortal vessel is possible because of Zoom.