We’re Going to Zoom, Zoom, Zooma, Zoom

The State of Medium Address 2020

[Edit: The following is the “State of The Medium” speech delivered by the First Tribune of Medium, Gutbloom, before the Medium Senate on May 1, 2020. Due to the Coronavirus epidemic, the meta-fictional address was moved further from the center of the “sane” galaxy in the Mildew Multiverse by being held on a video conferencing platform. For fear of lawsuit, we will decline to name the platform here, but it starts with a “Z” and rhymes with “tomb”. The transcript of the address follows. Why you would read this transcript rather than watch the recorded “*oom” meeting is beyond us, but having watched this disaster live, we understand any desire to scrub forward, even if it means facing an uncertain future. ]

9:01 AM

Gutbloom: Is this thing on? Can you hear me? OH, there I am. Lord have mercy! Why didn’t Pee Wee tell me that I had scrambled eggs in my mustache? [Edits: The Tribune wiped his mustache on his sleeve] Um, can you guys take that towel off the chair behind me? I don’t want the voters to think I am the kind of person who leaves a towel on the back of a chair. Also, take the leash off of Chim Chim. Ever since Tiger King everyone gets upset about owning exotic animals, and they don’t know that he is a rescue monkey. I rescued him from the Temple of Ramakrishna in India where they just fed him fruit all day. Poor little guy enjoys beer and playing pool, but the priests didn’t know that. If he starts smoking or jumps up on the desk and tries to put his asshole in the camera, you’ve got to grab him.

[The Tribune then looked directly into his camera.]

Mx. Speaker, Vice President Thor Heyerdahl, Senators, distinguished citizens, and fellow Medihumans… both those that pay five bucks a month for dreck and those that do not: Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the blogosphere.

I’ll admit that the blogosphere is all fucked up. At this moment, when the whole world is joining us online and we should be taking off like Amazon or a medical device manufacturer, our stale and anemic output is doing less to lift people’s spirits than Paul McCartney singing “Lady Madonna” at One World Together concert.

[At this point Lon Shapiro texted “Depressapalooza!” in the Zoom Chat.]

Oh, right. As Lon Shapiro points out, the state of the Blogosphere Address is supposed to be some sunshine and smile propaganda.

Let me start again. On Medium, our response to the Coronovirus has been tremendous. We’ve had a tremendous response. Perfect. Much better than those bed-heads over at Reddit or school marms still reading HuffPo. Had I not talked the Medium engineers into eschewing video on this platform, we would be infected right now with tons of “dance” videos like Tik Tok is.

[The Tribune stared into his camera silently. Apparently waiting for something.]

Are you guys going to applaud or what? Is this a State of the Blogosphere address or not? Are you partisans, or are you partisans?

[One person, someone named “The Grand Prix Wizard of Checkerboard Square” clapped. It looked like this:]

I guess I’ll start by reading, in a wooden and halting fashion, my prepared statement that was written by someone else. It will contain a lot of numbers. Andrew Cuomo has a lot of numbers in his state of the state press briefings and that guy is like political cat nip right now. Here goes:

[The Tribune then read from an index card in his hand]

Number of people on Medium with Covid-19: 0 Number of people on Medium who our office has tested for Covid-19: 0 Number of people who have written articles about having Covid-19 on Medium: 30 Number of times our office has clicked out of an article to remain ignorant about people’s self-reported cases of Covid-19 on Medium: 30 Number of times we have gone outside to bang pots in support of first-responders: 0 Number of times we have thought about it: 25 Average number of minutes we feel guilty afterwards: 3 Number of Zoom meetings the Tribune has attended: 500 Number of Zoom meetings he has attended wearing pants: 500 Number of times he has tried to imagine other people not wearing pants: 500 Number of times he has tried to imagine other people not wearing anything at all: 498 Number of times he has attended “silver studs” geriatric nudist meetings: 2

[The Tribune seemed to lose interest in the index card. He put it down]

I hate numbers. Maybe now, you do too.

Let me just speak from the gut. Let me just freestyle in the Zoom window, OK? That’s more the “Gutbloom style”, and I’m going to get up and walk around while I talk to you so that your Zoom window looks like a carnival ride or a bad acid trip.

Lots of Companies are doing “special things” in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. As your Tribune, I’m going to ask Ev Williams to fix comments. Community may save us, but to have community we need to be able to comment, and comments have been broken for a long, long, time. Maybe they can make a new category of comment that is not a “story.” We can call the new, lesser comment, the “shitposter comment.” Owners of the story can hide, ban, delete, or pin to the shitposter comments on their stories.

You know the platform you are on is fucked up when you go to Reddit and say, “God, they have much better comments over here.”

[ Ev Williams left the meeting]

[The Tribune’s Screen went to his icon. Apparently he turned off his camera]

Do you want me to talk about how tremendous, great, and strong the Medihumans are, or do you guys want to play a game like trivia or Name That Tune?

[One thumb’s up, from a person named “Rattenkönig”, went up. It looked like this:]

OK, I have a game we can play. What room am I in?

[The Tribune then turned on his camera and either actually passed gass or made some kind of farting noise with his mouth.]

[Kim Yo Jong, Real Obama, Regina Motherfuckers, and Fiona Apple left the meeting.]

Man, these Zoom meetings suck. Even fart jokes don’t work. What are we going to do if we can’t make fart jokes?

[The Tribune then turned off his camera, but didn’t end the meeting. The remaining participants played Keno for stuffed animals. Bob Dylan won.]

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Credits:

Two of the icons were jacked from Upsplash artists. Here is their information:

Radio Free Spruce icon image photo by Hannah Gullixson on Unsplash.

Gutbloom’s Magic Monkey icon image photo by @rw.studios on Unsplash.