Organize a Virtual Happy Hour With Your Friends Via Video Chat
Social distancing means that many of us will be spending time at home this weekend instead of in bars, restaurants and concerts with friends. Just because you are at a safe distance from other people does not mean that you cannot communicate with them virtually.
In Japan, which introduced social distancing earlier than we in the US, women use Zoom to enjoy virtual happy hours. Drinking with friends online has become such a thing that there is even a name: on-nomi or online drinking, Vice reports .
I live across the country from a few good friends of mine, and actually have been doing all this on-nomi for a while now. If you haven’t tried it yet, I definitely recommend it.
As for my group of friends, we usually meet at the scheduled time via video chat on Facebook. Yes, I know, on Facebook. After a few unsuccessful attempts on other platforms, this turned out to be the easiest for us, but you can really use whatever you want.
Considering we’re probably going to be doing this for a while, I highly recommend the Houseparty app as well. The app is available for both desktop and mobile and allows you to throw a virtual party that your friends can come and go to as they please.
If your friend has the app installed, they will receive a notification that you are online and they can join the party if they want. It makes you feel more at ease than scheduling a virtual meeting, and just lets you send a bat signal to your friends that you’d like to hang up.
And if video chat isn’t for you, a lot of my friends also started playing online games together at night. We had a pretty epic virtual Mario Kart game last night. If you have a video game system, it might be time to pay for this online package and have a virtual gaming session with friends.