No party like a Zoom party?

April 29, 2020 6:29 PM

My birthday is next month and I'd like to get at least a little enjoyment out of it. I live alone/am in an LDR so I can't celebrate with my partner or family this year. But, maybe it's a great opportunity to reconnect with friends in faraway places! What makes for a good Zoom (or other video chat platform) party? What makes one unpleasantly awkward?
posted by 4rtemis to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

The worst Zooms I've been on are the ones without specific "what are we going to talk about" directives. Remember it's not like at a real party where, when you've exhausted your chitchat with one person, you move on around the room. You're there staring at everyone until it's done.

The best ones have had stuff that functioned as an ice breaker (e.g. everyone bring a cocktail or mixed drink and be ready to discuss it! Show us the thing you've been working on! Wear jammies!); and someone who took responsibility for keeping things going; and a scheduled end time. Zoom is only free for a large group for a 40 minute meeting, which is PLENTY.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:56 PM on April 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

I wrote a blog post about this, in answer to a recent Ask MetaFilter question about it!
posted by limeonaire at 7:13 PM on April 29, 2020

I recently played the game Quiplash via Jackbox TV in a Zoom hangout, and legit had a blast. They have tons of games that look fun, and it was so nice to have an activity other than aimless chatter about how sad we are (which we're all doing plenty of on Zoom lately).
posted by mostlymartha at 7:27 PM on April 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

This would depend on the crowd, but one thing we did at the birthday video chat I attended was that everyone was asked to tell a joke. It was surprisingly fun, and I say that as someone who can only ever remember one joke. (What did the zero say to the eight? “Nice belt.”)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:14 PM on April 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

My birthday was earlier this week and I organized a virtual game night with my immediate family who live spread out across the US. We chatted on google hangouts for a bit and then played an online game (Settlers of Catan...) with the audio still on and it was fun. Not too bad of a birthday all things considered.
posted by knownfossils at 8:45 PM on April 29, 2020

The smaller you can keep the number of screens, the better, at least for me. Like literally no more than 10 people and ideally no more than six. More like chat roulette than a party, I suppose, but everyone will actually feel like they were able to participate.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:21 PM on April 29, 2020

My bestie's friend threw her a surprise bday Zoom party that went pretty well. There were about a dozen people total: friends from childhood, college, and grad school - some of us were close or had met; others didn't know each other. But the conversation was smooth; people talked about their onscreen pets or decor as an easy icebreaker while waiting for her arrival.

We all had a beverage to toast with (the singing wasn't great), and then we went around asking a question each of the bday friend, ranging from thoughtful ("what advice would you tell yourself a year ago?" / "what do you unexpectedly enjoy about staying at home?") to silly ("who do you like?"). Some of these were fun or hypothetical enough that we could chime in with our own answers ("if you were a building, what would you be?").

The bday friend also went around saying what she appreciated about each of us, and those who wanted to shared what they appreciated about her. To make it less emotional, this could be instead a favorite memory. Some people made their Zoom backgrounds funny pictures of her or screenshared old photos and told stories. Maybe you could pose everyone the same question too, like asking for recommendations.

Finally, it was a good time for her to give life updates in general, since not everyone yet knew about her upcoming plans (unrelated to COVID-19). People dropped off as they had to go - think about time differences when scheduling - but we had a good group stay on for hours.

My sibling's coworkers seem to have fun collaborating on an online crossword or playing Taboo while wearing hats/headpieces at their virtual happy hours. If your guests would be into it, would a dress code or theme work and spark conversation?

It could perhaps be nice to passively screenshare a virtual tour of e.g. a botanical garden if you want a background setting, depending on the ambiance you're going for.

Also, Google Meet is about to be for free until Sept 30 - no time limit, web-based, free mobile app, requires Google account.

If you need a joke to tell ...
What's the best kind of COVID-19 joke?
An INSIDE joke!
(Sorry, currently in the center of the pundemic with a sick sense of humor here)
posted by eyeball at 10:23 PM on April 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

A friend did a surprise zoom party for me with a quick trivia game about me and also a slideshow of photos!
posted by raccoon409 at 10:59 PM on April 29, 2020

My birthday party ended up being Jackbox games (Quiplash was indeed my favorite, I stunk at the guessing spy game and the murder trivia game is good but creepy AF) and Scattergories. Most of the guests were on the opposite coast so after those folks went to bed, the West Coast contingent did some karaoke.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:51 PM on April 29, 2020

I just posted this on the other thread by mistake:
I was at a zoom party the other week where we spent time trying to arrange ourselves on screen so it created amusing screenshot set ups for the host. For example so that each person in the top row just showed their head, each person in the middle their torso and each person at the bottom their legs. Or a single Frankenstein's monster with the top centre person as the head, the centre as the torso, the people to the left and right in the middle as arms and the bottom centre as legs.

We also did rounds where we high fived the people next to us, or pretended to pass objects back and forth between the windows.

And a human pyramid.

Bearing in mind that the order of windows in the gallery appears different for each user, organising each shot was a fun challenge in itself that required the host to give instructions about where each person should place themselves. She did screenshots or video of the results and then shared them with us.
posted by lollusc at 4:01 AM on April 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I threw a surprise birthday party for my partner over Zoom last month. We had 25-30 people and after the initial surprise, separated people into breakout rooms so that my partner and I could chat with a few of them at a time, and the other rooms could hang out and do as they pleased while we were in a different room.
posted by benbenson at 8:51 AM on April 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have been thinking about this for other reasons and I think that if you have more than eight or so people, break our rooms could be great. They could even be random, set for like six minutes sit 3-4 people each, give each one session a prompt with the option for people to use that prompts or just to chat, give a two minute warning, and then re-split into different groups. Enough time to quickly catch up, or to meet someone you don’t know yet. The random tales of some social pressure, as does the prompt and time limit.
posted by Salamandrous at 6:02 AM on May 2, 2020