Things We Saw Today: Even More Iconic Zoom Backgrounds to Make a Splash at Your Next Meeting

Judging by the popularity of last week’s Zoom backgrounds compilation post, many are in search of the perfect backdrop for our new video call-oriented lives. Since another week has come and gone, you may be looking to start afresh and dazzle unwitting coworkers with something new for next time. Luckily, users on Twitter continue to post their ingenious background picture ideas for the common good.

A note about Zoom backgrounds: they don’t work for all of us! Depending on your computer and processer—and lack of green screen—you may upload a virtual background only to find that it has subsumed your entire face and body and turned you into a nightmarish acid trip of a person. This can be fun for friendly Zoom gatherings, but keep in mind some work conference Zooms might take issue with you rendered into an outer space nebula.

Other folks are getting fancy and setting up dedicated lighting and green screens behind them to better ground effective backgrounds, and in a pinch, a regular plain white sheet can help, too. (If you are truly dedicated to perfecting your background look, there are portable green screens you can buy, from simple $12.99 backdrops to fancy $65 affairs that attach to the back of your desk chair so no set-up is needed, and everything in-between.)

Onward!

Twitter user @BeeShellll created a thread that now has close to 300k likes and 50k retweets to collect some of the most creative and iconic backgrounds. It begins with several that will go down in history books as the classics of our coronavirus era:

It keeps going from there, and going and going. Here are our favorites from Shell’s thread, as they and other users contributed:

You can check back in on the iconic background thread, as more and more additions are made. How has your life in Zoom been looking?

A few other things we saw today:

• See more

  If you’re able, please send some cash to your local food banks. https://t.co/XwcuT6PFal

  — Aaron Linde (@aaronlinde) April 3, 2020

• Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump has so much free time and so few worries that she’s apparently learning to play the guitar and reading The Odyssey! I will not compare her to any of the lady-monsters that Odysseus encounters on his voyage because they were awesome. (via Celebitchy)
• Actually related to Ivanka:
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  Here’s Jared Kushner going for the world record of most meaningless corporate buzzwords used in a single one-minute video clip pic.twitter.com/Vy1QJEhLQa

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 2, 2020

• A review of “Mrs. America,” the movie about notorious anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, who is played by Cate Blanchett. (via The BBC)
• Why the heck is Wisconsin still planning to hold an election on April 7th? (via HuffPo)
• Marvel is making some of its comics free to read while we are trapped inside! (via The Verge)
• Could coronavirus be the beginning of the end for giant super-conventions like San Diego Comic Con? (via CBR)

As Rust taught us on True Detective, time may be a flat circle, but it’s the weekend once more (like the weekend before it)! What did you see today?

(images: Antonio Guillem/iStock, HBO)

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Kaila Hale-Stern

Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.

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