Things We Saw Today: How to Add a Farm Animal to Your Zoom Meetings

Now that Zoom has become the unofficial office and general gathering space of the coronavirus quarantine, you might be looking for ways to spice up your daily meetings or happy hour hangouts. You’ve probably seen the ways people have gotten creative with their backgrounds (of which there are a lot) but now a farm and animal sanctuary in Silicon Valley is letting you add some delightful new attendees to the mix.

Sweet Farm is a non-profit that makes a significant part of its income from in-person visits to the farm. Since that’s not a possibility right now, they’ve introduced a program called Goat 2 Meeting (good pun) offering virtual farm tours. They’ve also made some of their farm animals available to join your call, be it a work meeting, birthday party, or whatever event might be made better by having a pig or a llama in attendance. (So, basically any event ever.)

From Business Insider:

People can pay anywhere from $65 to $250 for various interactions with the animals, which include goats, sheep, pigs, cows, turkeys, and llamas — by far the most popular choice. For $65, you get a 20-minute virtual tour of the farm for up to six call participants. For a bigger meeting, you can pay $100 for a 10-minute animal cameo or $250 for a 25-minute virtual tour.

Sweet Farm is also offering free tours for nonprofits and schools and they say they’ve received hundreds of requests so far.

Others are starting to get in on the idea too, which I think is just fine because I don’t think there can be such a thing as “too many llamas on Zoom.”

• Cate Blanchett stole Thor’s hammer and brought it out during a (virtual) pajama party with Stephen Colbert. (via Nerdist)
• I did not know this was a trend and now that I do, I love it: Makeup artists on TikTok are lipsyncing to John Mulaney bits. (via Vulture)
• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has an interactive special coming to Netflix next month.
  See more

  Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend — an all-new interactive special premieres May 12

  Ellie Kemper, Tituss Burgess, Jane Krakow­ski, Carol Kane, and Jon Hamm return — plus Daniel Radcliffe joins in on the fun as you get to decide how the story ends! pic.twitter.com/HU2tjF8xY2

  — See What’s Next (@seewhatsnext) April 15, 2020

• More full-length Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals are coming to YouTube. (via Playbill)
• Lego has started making face visors for healthcare workers.
  See more
• Kevin Smith thinks Birds of Prey should have been rated PG-13 and Kevin, I like you, but I don’t care. (via Pajiba)
• Reclaimed Classics is a new YA series that “will uphold the core plot points, characters, and themes of the familiar versions of classic novels, yet these key components will be filtered through the lenses of the writers’ diverse experiences.” Every single one of these ideas sounds SO COOL. (via Publishers Weekly)

What did you all see out there today?

(image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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