Zoom Video Communications experienced explosive growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the primary platform for remote work, education, and social connection globally from headquarters in San Jose, California, United States. Daily meeting participants surged from millions to hundreds of millions as lockdowns forced virtual interaction, revealing both video conferencing's utility and its limitations for human connection. The platform's ubiquity transformed workplace culture, educational delivery, and family gatherings while raising concerns about privacy, security, and digital fatigue.

Zoom's pandemic dominance influenced contemporary poetry's exploration of virtual presence, digital exhaustion, and mediated intimacy during isolation. Poets examined grid-view arrangements as new social formations, using gallery mode imagery to explore simultaneous connection and separation. The platform's technical glitches, frozen faces, and audio delays also became poetic material representing communication's fragility and the uncanny valley of almost-presence, while prompting reflection on what is lost and gained when physical co-presence becomes impossible.