There’s No Zoom Party Like a College Zoom Party

In a pandemic, this is what a college party looks like: 69 people log on to a Zoom call at 11 p.m. on a Friday night. Every few minutes, one of them looks down at the number of participants and says, of course, “nice.” “Nice,” “nice,” “nice,” “nice,” “nice” echoes around the room for a moment, then the conversation returns to adding songs to the collaborative quarantine-themed Spotify playlist playing in the background: someone adds Travis Scott’s “SICKO MODE”; someone else adds the Lil Uzi Vert song in which he talks about all his friends being dead.

Almost everyone on the call is using Zoom’s virtual backgrounds, which I do not know how to use. There’s a girl with a Furby behind her, another with a, a boy with a blown-up Popeyes chicken sandwich, and at least a dozen people with stills from . Attendees shout that they are from New Jersey, Nashville, to mango Juul pods to the 2005 classic film .