Zoom Escaper tool uses different effects to make your presence at virtual meetings unbearable

What we’ve all been waiting for! Zoom Escaper tool lets you self-sabotage meetings with different effects like ‘urination’ and ‘man weeping’ so your presence becomes unbearable to others in the chat room

  • Zoom Escaper is a free online widget that aims to help you leave Zoom meetings
  • It includes eight different effects that can stream through your Zoom audio
  • The sounds include a weeping man, barking dogs and even urination  

Zoom meetings have become the ‘new norm’ due to the coronavirus pandemic, but as people spend hours in video conference meetings many are thinking of ways to escape.

With this in mind, an artist created a ‘self-sabotaging’ tool that lets users add disruptive sounds to their audio stream with the hopes others in the chat room will ask them to leave.

Called Zoom Escaper, the free web widget offers eight different effects that stream directly through the microphone and into the meeting -but is only heard by others in the chat room.

Users can choose a weeping man, an echo, crying baby, barking dogs and even the sounds of ‘urination.’

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Called Zoom Escaper, the free web widget offers eight different effects that stream directly through the microphone and into the meeting -but is only heard by others in the chat room

The coronavirus took hold of the world in 2020, which forced millions into lockdowns in a bid to limit the virus from spreading.

Many businesses closed their physical offices, which forced employees to setup a workspace in their home and conduct tasks using video conferencing platforms.

And many are spending nearly a full eight hour workday in zoom meetings.

Sam Lavigne designed the widget to help people escape from the mundane meetings.

An artist created a 'self-sabotaging' tool that lets users add disruptive sounds to their audio stream with the hopes others in the chat room will ask them to leave

An artist created a ‘self-sabotaging’ tool that lets users add disruptive sounds to their audio stream with the hopes others in the chat room will ask them to leave

Users go to the website, enable the mic and download and install a free audio software called VB-Audio, which changes the Zoom audio input from your computer’s microphone to the software that will play the sounds.

Then open zoom and change the mic input to the VB-Cable, set ‘suppress background noise’ to low and turn off high-fidelity music mode, echo cancellation  and stereo audio.

Zoom Escaper offers eight different effects: Echo, bad connection, urination, construction, man weeping, wind, dog and urination.

And volume for each sounds can be cranked all the way up to increase chances of being evicted from the video call.

However, the weeping man may be the most disturbing and the construction is the most realistic – it sounds like you are standing next to a new building going up.

Open zoom and change the mic input to the VB-Cable, set 'suppress background noise' to low and turn off high-fidelity music mode, echo cancellation and stereo audio

Open zoom and change the mic input to the VB-Cable, set ‘suppress background noise’ to low and turn off high-fidelity music mode, echo cancellation and stereo audio 

Lavigine said that Zoom Escaper took him a week to build in his spare time. Motherboard also wanted to know how many Zoom meetings he’s wanted to escape. ‘All of them, of course,’ he said.

The constant video conferencing is not only boring to many, but has created a new phenomenon known as ‘Zoom fatigue.’

Named after the popular video chat platform, the term is used to describe the exhaustion that comes with participating in video conferences, whether it be on Zoom, Google Meet or another application.