Opinion | Lily Mooney: Covid means Zoom, social media and streaming dominate our lives. The mute button is sanity. - NBCNewsTHINK
O, mute button. Humble yet powerful, muffler of tyrants and Geico commercials. Faithful sentry, keeping trolls and ex-lovers’ selfies from entering my precious streams.Where I currently live, the TV goes on before 7 a.m. each day and stays on until 10 p.m. every night. The awkward staccatos of morning news cascade into an endless cacophony of cable — the dour melodies of WWII documentaries, the tinny early-Western gunfights, the crunch and wail of cop dramas audible in every room.
Months of Zoom conferences punctuated by flushes and farts have shown that knowing how and when to press mute — on yourself, on others — has become a necessary social skill. This isn’t my house, and shutting down the all-day noise buffet is not an option. Due to a bout of ill health before the coronavirus hit, I moved back in with my parents a year ago at the age of 32, and I have navigated a loud, foggy funhouse of outdated family dynamics ever since; I choose my battles carefully.
On the big remote, it nestles between"volume" and"channel." On the small, it relaxes a few centimeters above"play." On both remotes it works perfectly and without hesitation. Its warm, sensuous thermoplastic elastomer offers only a hint of playful resistance, rubbery flirt that it is, before yielding under the thumb as directed. And then I hear so much: the layered hum of appliances, the bustle of the street, and the wind, some days soft and others rough.
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