No.

I've been studiously avoiding the local lockdown Friday 4:30pm "drinking together on video" events. Work events are already awkward enough as it is, at least in real life you can have multiple concurrent conversations going on.

Using $Video_call_tech, it's predicated on one person talking at a time.

Want to hear something worse? If you keep scrolling, the page mentions other types of events your team can hire including a “stand up comedian”, which sounds like my personal hell. Social Zoom meetings are already awkward for the reasons you mentioned, then on top imagine having to laugh politely at some C-rate comedian (you know they’re not getting headliners) doing material that needs to be clean enough to be appropriate at a work event. Just an astoundingly bad idea.

Apparently they also offer group yoga.

I'm totally sure downward dogging over a group video call is not going to be as awkward as hell, and will definitely realign my chakras... ...to point towards other career opportunities.

Damn, so not a good idea… and I was thinking of getting pizzayogaonline.com ! :)

Look, if hot yoga can be a thing, pizza yoga can be a thing.

I look forward to seeing pizzayogaonline.com in the next YCombinator batch :D

I wish we could play some kind of video game instead that provides proximity chat to players, like Minecraft or something else with a low barrier to entry. Do away with the video entirely and just let me talk to people and maybe do something fun besides.

That's a great idea. We've been trying to find a better way to socialize as a remote team and playing a casual video game with local chat is brilliant.

Actually, that's not a bad idea at all.

I'd rather talking alongside each other in a game,than staring into a camera, hoping you're making eye contact and failing.

I have a weekly meeting with ~10 friends by Zoom. During the lockdown it's impossible to meet IRL, and we are distributed in ~4 countries, so we are even meeting more than before.

Not really.

If it’s voluntary perhaps, but mandatory crap like this sucks.

If people want this, they are welcome to join but don’t force social community at work.

Imagine "living your dream to the fullest" and build this startup. This is the broest SV can get.

I was hoping it was an April’s fools from earlier this year.

No. I find Zoom (and the like) to be generally painful. The less of it, the better.

I mean, what are you going to do in a lockdown?

We did "meet" a couple of times for remote beer last year with the rest of the team.

It's not like going out, but it was better than nothing to spend some off-work time with the colleagues.

> I mean, what are you going to do in a lockdown?

Anything but trying to be social on a medium designed for speaking one at a time.

Whatever your opinion of restrictions in a given location, I'm pretty sure the right answer isn't to put pressure on people in a job context to ignore restrictions/recommendations/what makes them feel personally comfortable in their own situation to get together with coworkers in person.

Sure, I didn't mean to suggest it's people's duty to capitalism to gather with coworkers if they don't want to.

But in general, if the question is, "how do we accommodate <unsuccessful interdictive intervention whose collateral damage is visited with horrific severity on the most vulnerable in society>", I think that answer is: you don't. You organize and overcome it and speak truth to power.

Online social events are neither social nor events. What is physically a mingling cocktail party feels like an AA meeting.

No.