

- #HOW TO HAVE A ZOOM MOVIE NIGHT HOW TO#
- #HOW TO HAVE A ZOOM MOVIE NIGHT ANDROID#
- #HOW TO HAVE A ZOOM MOVIE NIGHT FREE#

If you’re looking to branch out, there are a great number of newbie-friendly games that can be played remotely (or semi-remotely). These are partly designed for asynchronous play, but if you want to retain the feeling from a true board game night of everyone playing at once, I recommend having a conference call going with your friends on speakerphone, so everyone can make the “wood for sheep” Catan joke again.
#HOW TO HAVE A ZOOM MOVIE NIGHT ANDROID#
Most of the board games that Wirecutter recommends ( here and here) have Android and iOS versions, and will let you play cross-platform. If you already have a board game that you and your friends love to play, the simplest option might just be to look for the digital or mobile edition of it. In 30 years, we might look back at the 2010s’ proliferation of “board game night” the way modern society views “fondue parties”: with disbelief and mild utterances of “the past really is a foreign country.” But until we reach the point of realizing that “meeples” is an absurd turn of phrase, we’ll have to move the weekly board game night into the digital sphere. But maybe the easiest thing is for everyone to pull up a movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime and hit play at the same time, while chatting over group text, Discord, or Slack. There are other options, too-some people use Twitch, or Kast (née ). On Discord, you can set up a screen share for up to 50 people, so one person can play a movie on their screen, and everyone else can watch it (and play Statler and Waldorf in the comments). You can use a Facebook Watch Party, but the video has to already be uploaded to Facebook, so you’ll mostly be limited to public domain titles.
#HOW TO HAVE A ZOOM MOVIE NIGHT HOW TO#
How to handle a group watch depends a bit on the platform you’re using. It turns out that watching a movie while dunking on it with friends is just as good online as it is in person (plus no arguing over snacks and drinks). And though I can’t make it every week, when I do it’s an absolute delight. Share an online-movie night with friends.įor months, I’ve been part of a group that gathers digitally each week to watch a bad movie together. One of the most fundamental parts of building a digital community is creating the space for people to gather, talk, and feel safe. That way, if you want to keep politics and COVID-19 talk sequestered to a certain channel, you can, and then have another one for pictures of pets and kids, another for sharing what you’re listening to, and so on.
#HOW TO HAVE A ZOOM MOVIE NIGHT FREE#
Slack and Discord are both popular and free (or free enough), and they let you set up channels, so people can talk about specific topics without everything devolving into a head-spinning tornado of GIFs and chatter. You might already have a group text going with your friends (and possibly one with your family, one with your other friends, a secret one with your siblings that your parents don’t know about…), but consider moving to a platform that has more-advanced tools and controls. Establish a low-pressure chat environment. Here are a few tried-and-true tips for maintaining a social life while still adhering to social-distancing norms. And in these bizarre times, it’s more important than ever to set up those channels sooner rather than later. Here’s the good news, and it’s something that those of us who were raised on the Internet have known for years: It’s possible to have a bustling social life through digital platforms.

Although maintaining personal and public health and safety is the most important thing, it’s still dispiriting to see your social life vaporized. Suddenly that dinner with friends you were looking forward to has been cancelled, and forget going to the movies or heading to the gig you scored tickets for months ago. With hundreds of millions of Americans hunkered down under widespread work-from-home and social-distancing directives, it can be tricky to sustain your social life (and mental health).
