1. English Zoom call. Teacher was holding us like 15+ minutes after the period had ended. She said something along the lines of “keep working arduously” and I responded with: “If she says arduously ONE MORE TIME I’m going to FLIP A TABLE.”

I was not on mute.

2. In one of my classes, this girl wrote in the Zoom chat, “This is so fucking boring,” not realizing that the professor could see it.

3. During my English class, this one girl forgot to mute herself. While my teacher was talking, she almost deafened all of us on the Zoom call answering her mother’s questions.

Her mother (from a distance): “What class are you in?”

Her (yelling): English!

Her mother: Oh, the hot teacher?

Her: Yeah that guy.

Now, even I’ll admit my teacher is fairly attractive, but it does take it to another level when you get your own mother involved. Thankfully, our teacher is a chill guy and thought the whole thing was just kind of funny, and kind of just gave a general reminder to the class to keep mics muted. She didn’t say anything for the rest of the class.

4. Heard the clapping sound of a kid jerking off. His name lit up and everything.

5. I had a student’s boyfriend (both college) walk up behind her on Zoom, reach into her shirt, pull out her breasts, and start doing a little boob dance. She was just laughing and playfully slapping his hands away.

This was probably 30 seconds after I had just gone through my whole speech of making sure there was nothing in your browser history, Google search history, or names of folders that could be embarrassing or offensive.

6. College student here! This was last semester so it was when we had first switched to all online. I had an 8 am class that was Renaissance through Modern art history. Anyway this kid in the class didn’t have his mic muted and he was snoring. Like snoring snoring. My poor professor tried to wake him up, and couldn’t. She also had no idea how to mute him or kick him out so we went on with the lecture. After about 5 minutes she finally said, “I can’t fucking teach to this,” and ended the zoom meeting. The rest of the semester we used voice thread instead.

7. This was work not school, but someone posted a drawing of a hello kitty type character on the side of their presentation during a virtual meeting. One of my coworkers mumbled, “damn, fat ass,” which, when I looked again, yeah, the character had a pear body shape.

It was such a weird thing for someone to say though my brain just dismissed it as me mishearing it until they panicked a second later and apologized for not being on mute, and then I fully proceeded it. Additional context: coworker is a 50+ mother of three.

8. Professional development, one of my coworkers told her daughter (correctly), “This is such a waste of my time.”

9. An elementary student left their camera for a moment and the mother walked by naked. Guessing she asked him to leave the room so she could change or something not realizing the camera was left on.

10. One time in an art class (separate from my school) my dad knocked on my door. It was dead silent at that point, everyone was working on their projects. I clicked the mute button and yelled, “WHAT!?” Turns out my mic was already muted and I turned it on. I startled the entire class and the teacher asked if I was okay.

11. Dude my one teacher forgot to turn off his camera and his son was changing in the background and the son kept on looking at the camera.

12. I teach for an online university that requires me to conduct a weekly live session. One morning I was lecturing and a student popped in late. I said, “Hello, (student name)! Thanks for joining us.” She said, “Don’t say my name, bitch!” just before she realized her mic was on and turned it off. I just laughed.

13. In a math class I was in last year, we were taking a test, which you have to turn your mic on for—their way of trying to prevent cheating. Some girl apparently forgot that hers was on and started belting out Stand By You by Rachel Platten at the top of her lungs. It went on for the entire song and she was still humming it when I finished the test and left the call.

14. Some guy’s mother started yelling at him: “Turn down the freaking sound, I am so sick of listening to your classes the whole day, go to the balcony and continue from there or just bloody drop out of uni,” along with a set of few swear words. Our professor muted him so I don’t really know what happened next.

15. A girl’s mom: “Who the fuck you on the computer fo this early in the morning?” And asking the same thing over and over.

Teacher: “…I think your mic is on.”

16. I just did 8-hour zoom calls for 7 weeks training for a new project. On the second week, a man unmutes his call, farts the longest fart I’ve ever heard in my life, then when he finishes, mutes the call. I can see others laughing while muted at his fatal error of thinking he wasn’t muted and so he went to “mute” his call.

I found this to be the highlight of the week, but the following week the guy does it again!!! Honestly the second time I laughed but then started to wonder if it was some kind of power move…

17. Ironically my IT teacher forgot to turn off his mic and camera and proceeded to get in a very heated argument on the phone with his ex-girlfriend who he has a kid with. Did I mention that she’s also a teacher at our school? Yeah, most awkward 5 minutes of my life before he realized.

18. Last week kid in my brother’s class forgot his camera was on during the first class and was smoking a giant gas mask bong on his face during the syllabus review.

19. I’m a college student. Last semester we had a girl place an entire dinner order over the phone with her mic on while we all tried to tell her that her mic was on. I think she had us muted. She was ordering Mediterranean food. I think she got a chicken gyro.

20. Not virtual, but I was a guest speaker at a music college last year. My mic was still on when I finished, went backstage and said, “Well that was fucking horrible.” I wasn’t called back to speak again.

21. I’m not a student, but work in the tech industry. I’ve been in meetings where people forget to mute themselves on LARGE company calls, with hundreds or thousands of attendees, and we’ll hear a fart and then a toilet flush. That’s about as interesting as these meetings get though.

22. My teacher got scolded by his wife (another teacher in school) because she needed to work and he didn’t repair her computer. He was a computer technology teacher and he just kept saying, “Sorry honey, I forgot. I won’t do it again. I promise it will take two seconds to fix it,” in loop because the wife went on a little rant of how he always forgot things. When he saw the mic was still on he blushed and after a moment of silence just went on with the lesson.

23. Was in training before classes started this year. 200ish teachers. Only the principal and AP were speaking. The teacher has her mic unmuted, phone rings, picks it up, and says, “Hey. Yeah. Just sitting here in another one of these goddam trainings.”

24. A student in my class forgot to turn off their mic, and we heard some background noises (doors closing, tapping…) and because of a display bug, we couldn’t see where the noise was from.

Then the student started saying crap about the teacher, “Oh, yeah this is useless, he’s just writing on a tablet, even I could do that, etc.”

Everyone heard that. The teacher heard them just insult him. They didn’t come back to the classes after that.

25. In a thermodynamics class, one of the students said, “Holy shit, this is so much,” after covering a large set of equations related to fugacity. Everyone found it relatable.

26. I was producing a video for some university professors on a specific medical thing for a virtual learning course. I was all set up to shoot the process, and the teachers excused themselves to the next office to regroup and have a chat. I already had their wireless lav mics attached and fed to my camera, so when I sat down at the camera and put on my headphones I immediately heard their conversation – they were criticizing me, saying they couldn’t believe they hired someone so young, inexperienced in that particular medical field, how I looked, how I asked questions, etc… Oops! At least I made them a fine video. These days I don’t put my headphones on until we’re about to shoot.

27. Grade 3 kid stopped in the middle of the class meeting and took his laptop to the bathroom with him. He sat on the toilet for the rest of the meeting.

28. I had to defend my thesis over Zoom and many professors came into the call to watch. My thesis was about immune response in fish to parasites. One professor joined late and forgot to mute her mic and we got treated to this little gem:

“Shhhh. Mommy is learning about fish parasites, which is what you’ll get if you don’t stop peeing in the koi pond.”

29. I was in a meeting with my class for the first day of school, and I had forgotten to mute myself. I then proceeded to start noisily baby-talking my cat, who was in my lap at the time. Embarrassing.

30. When I was doing an online Algebra camp, the teacher forgot to turn off his mic while we were supposed to be doing some problems. He said, “I fucking hate math.”