ABSTRACT
Technology allows for magical thinking, and never more so than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Zoom, the most popular videoconferencing and online chat software during COVID, is both hated and appreciated, tiresome and indispensable, new and, at the same time, a minimally different version of video platforms that have been around for decades. Zoombombing has become and remains very common since people learned of Dr. Moore’s Experience; they were drawn to the topic partly because of the work of journalists who published dozens of stories about horribly racist and sexist zoombombings targeting a wide range of people and groups. Zoombombing is a new term, but the racism and abuse were by no means new to the people who talked to them. In defiance of the notion that there’s a bright line between the virtual and real, they found that racial abuse during Zoom meetings caused lasting trauma, anxiety, and anger.
