Look, the pandemic was hard on us, but it was especially terrible for ageing tech-luddite college teachers and professors who suddenly had to learn whatever the hell was Zoom or Google Meet. Or god forbid, that awful piece of software called Skype. Welp, the doom is over — for them — as WhatsApp now allows screen sharing during group video calls.
But unlike every other video conferencing tool out there, sharing your screen on WhatsApp is going to be filthy easy. Just in case you’re wondering, WhatsApp allows up to 32 participants in a group video call.
And here’s the sweet part. Screen-sharing will work across mobile, desktop, and web versions of WhatsApp. Plus, video calls now also work just fine if your phone is laid horizontally. You longer have to tilt your neck at a right angle and suffer!
On a positive note, if you are the tech support guy (or gyaal) in your family, you can now just video call your home folks, show them a quick tutorial while sharing the screen on WhatsApp, and save yourself a few precious hours of life that would otherwise go into explaining Snapchat to your diabetic uncle.
The shit take
Look, I absolutely hate it when my professional press contacts share the same content on WhatsApp that they share on email. “Keep my work stuff on my emails, damn you,” is what I scream internally every time I receive a Docx or PDF asset on WhatsApp.
Students are not too far away from my anguish. When professors create broadcast channels or group chats on WhatsApp and conduct their entire teaching business there, the app loses its whole appeal as a chat platform to communicate with friends and family members. When there are FREE professional tools that can do a lot more, why use WhatsApp?
I’ve talked to a few members of the academia in the not too distant past about the shift in digital education during the pandemic remote learning era, and the general consensus is that WhatsApp is just convenient. Now, with screen sharing available for video calls, they have even more reason to stick tightly to WhatsApp.
Lord, have collective mercy!