10:00AM
I almost made it. Thirty-two straight days of using Zoom Webinar three times per day to broadcast these writing sessions. Despite no one really showing up (and me not sharing it with people), the technology worked and I was in a rhythm. One hour ago, it didn’t work.
I logged in and clicked to broadcast and it just failed. I tried multiple times, restart my computer, tried different webinars, and even tried from my phone, and nothing worked. I sent a message to support about the problem. Then, and only then, I looked on Twitter to see if others were having the same problem. And yup, apparently Zoom is down.
Some people were saying maybe it’s down because it’s Sunday and lots of churches are starting to use it for their services. Makes sense to me. As I looked more, I saw that people were saying that they were going to switch over to try Facebook’s new Messenger Rooms. Upon further research, I realized that it launched today. Odd timing.
I really hope that Zoom having problems and Facebook launching its Messenger Rooms is merely a coincidence. I feel suspicious that it may not be. I guess this reveals how much I trust Facebook and its management.
I was reading yesterday about something called QAnon and other things deemed as conspiracy theories. I say “deemed as” because people who are in the midst of believing these things don’t see them as conspiracy theories. Just like my insinuating above that employees or management at Facebook may have done something to cause Zoom to go down today, I don’t think that I’m in the midst of a conspiracy theory.
I wonder how much conspiracy theories play on our distrust of certain people and groups. I wonder how much that distrust comes from past interactions we’ve had that made us feel betrayed, cheated, ignored, rejected, or some other type of attack that pushed us away. I know that I have felt angry and betrayed by Facebook as I’ve read about their privacy policies, experience with Cambridge Analytica, and many other factors over the years and their seeming unwillingness to speak the truth. I got so angry when I learned about many of the bots and fake accounts on the platform and they seemed to pretend they didn’t know about them or their influence. Even writing about it makes me feel angry.
I wonder if others have these feelings when they think about different people or institutions—the FBI, the police, the Chinese government, the IRS, CNN, the New York Times, people from Mexico, etc.
Again, I hope that this situation is simply a coincidence, and most likely, it is. I guess one of the hardest parts is that I may never know, and in that case, I have a choice about what I’m going to believe. I can choose to believe that Facebook attempted to sabotage Zoom to increase its own importance and profitability, that it was because of the churches, or that something else caused this to happen. If I choose to believe Facebook did it, I’ll probably feel miserable.
10:10AM
