Anna Russell, in Zoom Fatigue and the New Ways to Party:

The socialite Jordan Baker, an expert slinker in “The Great Gatsby,” put it best: “I like large parties. They’re so intimate.” At a Zoom cocktail party, there’s no kitchen, and everything said must be sanctioned by the group. (The chat function doesn’t cut it.) There are no whispered asides and no eavesdropping. You can’t slink on Zoom. You can’t sidle up to someone and say, “Bachelor”-style, “Can I steal him for a sec?” Even a large party on Zoom has no intimacy, and little to no intrigue.

Two things:

1. I attended a virtual conference today on Zoom. Like most big Zoom meetings, it was…fine. People presented, people watched, people asked questions in the chat. But there were no whispered asides, and no eavesdropping. There was no sliding up. There was no intimacy, there was no intrigue.
2. “Expert slinker” is the best description of Jordan Baker I’ve ever read.