'Zoom gone wrong': Co-workers watch in horror as man's house goes up in flames during Zoom meeting, turns out to be horrible prank

Can you imagine sitting in a large virtual meeting, your eyes' glazed over, barely paying attention, then all of a sudden you hear your manager yell “fire" in the middle of her presentation? That's what happened to Becky Decker. She recently posted a video of her on an “MNO” conference call via the virtual meeting app Zoom. All of a sudden, one of the squares that usually is just someone trying their hardest not to look at their own square ignite into flames!

u/mamadecker

The manager is freaking out. Nobody knew Sam, he had come into the conference as a “guest” and nobody had his information. She was panicking asking if anybody knew him and if they should call 9-1-1. Others are oddly calm, saying “it's just a little fire” and “I think he's got it.” The entire screen goes into flames and then the video is cut off. So viewers are freaking out over whether or not this mysterious Sam made it out ok. 

The thing is, this video of this man's place catching on fire might look very familiar to many people who are always on the pulse of the Internet. It is actually an old video of a person from some time ago. The man did catch fire during a live web even—he allegedly made it out okay, but much of his house apparently burned down. This person is NOT the Sam in the video. 

What happened is that this was the kind of meeting that invited strangers in to learn about the company. So a stranger registered simply as “Sam.” What “Sam” did was just play this old video to these unsuspecting people who thought it was happening in real time as they watched helpless. 

The woman who posted the video posted an update clearing the air and expressing how upsetting it was. Many viewers are commenting saying that it was obviously fake, but if you look at everyone involved in the meeting, it looks like a much older crowd how doesn't really stay up-to-date with viral videos on the Internet, so they were the perfect victims. Fortunately, the air was cleared relatively quick, so nothing went too far. But was a very jarring even for the unsuspecting meeting attendees at the time.