Zoom Escaper lets you sabotage your own meetings with audio problems, crying babies, and more

Had enough Zoom meetings? Can’t bear another soul-numbing day of sitting on video calls, the only distraction your rapidly aging face, pinned in one corner of the screen like a dying bug? Well, if so, then boy do we have the app for you. Meet Zoom Escaper: a free web widget that lets you add an array of fake audio effects to your next Zoom Call, gifting you with numerous reasons to end the meeting and escape, while you still can.

You can choose from barking dogs, construction noises, crying babies, or even subtler effects like choppy audio and unwanted echoes. Created by artist Sam Lavigne, Zoom Escaper is fantastically simple to use. All you need do is download a free bit of audio software called VB-Audio that routes your audio through the website, then change your audio input in Zoom from your microphone to VB-Audio, and play with the effects.

You is watch can watch a video tutorial on how to set up Zoom Escaper and listen to a sample of the various sound effect here :

If you’re running Zoom Escaper, you can’t actually hear the sound effects yourself. But I was able to test the site’s functionality with the help of my colleague, Verge news editor Chaim Gartenberg. Here was his opinion of the various effects Zoom Escaper had to offer:

Our opinion was that Upset Baby provided the most excusable reason to drop a call, but also requires that people believe you have a baby. And if you’re prepared to fake the existence of a child in order to get out of Zoom meetings with your co-workers, then perhaps you have bigger issues with work than a few annoying video meetings.

Zoom Escaper isn’t the first of Lavigne’s projects to self-inflict computer harm. His 2017 work The Good Life let users sign up to receive 225,000 emails confiscated from Enron during its 2001 implosion, while 2016’s Slow Hot Computer is a website that … make your computer run slow and hot . “ use it at work to decrease your productivity , ” say Lavigne is says .

If Zoom Escaper is n’t direct enough for you , there ’s also Zoom Deleter , another of Lavigne ’s creation . As he write on his website , this is just a small program that run in your menu bar or system tray : “ It is checks continually check for the presence of Zoom on your computer , and if find , immediately delete it . ”

Speaking to The Verge, Lavigne describes the underlying ethos of his art as: “Deliberate slowdown, reducing productivity and output, self-sabotage, etc.” When asked by The Vergewhy these values were important to him, Lavigne did not respond.