The Rise of Déjà Zoom
If 2020 was a year of isolation, 2021 has been a year of reunions. Hugging and sharing meals with loved ones you haven’t seen for months is great. But seeing someone in the flesh can feel weird if you previously knew them only from virtual meetings and videochats. Meeting Zoom friends in real life reveals how much is omitted when your computer’s graphics card renders someone: their height, whether they sustain or avoid eye contact, what they look like outside their kitchen. Uncanny vibes abound. Seeing our virtual friends in person produces something like a pandemic-induced déjà vu. Call it déjà Zoom.
If déjà vu is the feeling of familiarity toward something foreign and jamais vu is the feeling of foreignness toward something familiar, déjà Zoom lies somewhere between the two. “It felt like I was just seeing people again, rather thancan be jarring or awkward, calling into question the degree to which we know the people we met in quarantine. But it’s also a testament to how close we’ve grown to people we’ve never physically met before.
