ZOOM-BOMBERS

High drama on the poetry slam last night. I logged on while it was in the middle of being zoom-bombed.

It's not pleasant watching a flustered host trying to deal with multiple insurgents.

"Sir, sir, I've seen this before!" drawled one, in a young American accent (camera off) trying to pretend he was supposed to be there, "Just hit Alt and F4"

"Yeah man," cried another. "It'll kick out all the people who recently joined."

It won't, of course. I think Alt+F4 ends the meeting for everyone. The host was also sceptical. The infiltrators were adamant though, and there was a lot of cross-talk going on between them. At the same time, they were writing filth in the chat. The host held his head in his hands, apparently helpless - I felt sorry for him.

Then the little band of half-cooked anarchists started renaming themselves after the genuine people in the group! One of them even copied the picture of one of the poets, and used it as his off-screen avatar so that the host couldn't tell which one was the real person.

One by one, they got kicked out, thankfully. The last was perplexing though: a very well spoken young man who claimed he was using a desktop PC without a webcam. English literature, he claimed was his thing, and he had written a poem on his university course. He sounded very convincing. Then he began to read a poem which, unfortunately, would have been very much at home on the wall of a public toilet. He got a few lines in, and then rhymed a racial epithet.

"Kick him out, kick him out!" interrupted someone, madly.

"Wait, no! Don't k..."

But he was gone. Was he genuine but with a potty mouth? Was he just a posh troll who got a little further than the rest? Irrelevant really; you can't use language like that.

It's not helped me have a lot of confidence in zoom. It's a powerful tool but it's not an encrypted one. Even with a waiting room, the potential is there for interruption and embarrassment. In fact, this last week, a council meeting went viral because the host had to manage bad behaviour on zoom. Just like the poetry slam, she too kicked out the troublemakers one by one.

I think zoom credentials are like house keys. If you don't want just anyone in there with you, you shouldn't get multiple keys cut, and you certainly shouldn't leave the keys lying around with a map of how to get there.

Anyway, the slam continued. I read two poems. I didn't win. That's okay; one of the other guys on there wrote a fabulous piece about late-night shopping and waxy vegetables. It was a worthy winner.

The whole zoom-bombing experience made me want to do something. The host really needs a hand with running the slam, and especially with the fine-tuned bits, like making it safe online, sending out the newsletter, keeping it all ticking over. He's even asked for help with it all!

But alas, it can't be me. About as quickly as I had had the thought, I followed it up with the cold truth that I just don't have the capacity or the drive.

I don't think I'll go back for a while. I'm just not sure I like trolls seeing into my house and knowing my name. Who knows, maybe one of these days the slam will be back to being live and in a real room! Imagine that: performing poetry with a microphone... and an atmosphere!

As one person pointed out last night, when that happens, it'll take quite a lot of commitment, time, and travel for the zoom-bombers to interrupt us again.