The Zoom Under Water

In 1946 George Orwell outlined his model for the perfect pub, in an essay for the Evening Standard, which he called The Moon Under Water. This essay describes the ideal London (or any city based) local drinking establishment and it sets the standard for idyllic pubs, as well as inspiring the name of many Wetherspoons across the country.

Orwell’s pub had “barmaids [who] know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone” and a design aesthetic where “everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.” Right now, I would very much like to visit a “pub that has draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, [and] a garden,” as pub going has been seriously curtailed by the current deadly disease outbreak.

These are dark days for the local boozer. Now that we’re heading towards winter flu season, the Covid-19 infection rate is rising and many parts of the country under are local lockdowns. Another national lockdown or countrywide closing of pubs could happen at any moment, which would be a serious blow to the pub industry, its employees, pub goers nationwide, and my own relaxation.

Even on the few occasions I have been to the pub in the last six months, it hasn’t been as relaxing as it once was. The threat of getting sick and dying does impede my ability to unwind somewhat. I take the risk of catching Covid-19 seriously, and I can see why as a nation we prioritise keeping schools open, but we all need a break from the unending misery of life during a pandemic and now that pub trips are off the menu I feel that I am rapidly losing my marbles. 

Collective online drinking 

This isn’t to say that I haven’t been engaging in social drinking since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have just been doing it at home. A drinking session now involves gathering around a laptop with a bottle of beer ordered as part of a Tesco's delivery and dialing into a Zoom video call; whereas before it involved gathering around a small table with a freshly poured pint and looking at the actual, corporeal version of my friends. 

Collective online drinking can take many forms, as can in person drinking. I have attended intimate one on one sessions where we engage in in-depth philosophical discussions, rowdy group piss ups and even online beer festivals. In these Covid-19 times, it seems there is no aspect of collective public drinking that can’t be turned into collective online drinking. 

This virtual pub, that provides so many of the features of its offline predecessor could have many names. The Skype Arms? That’s a little unimaginative. Maybe, The Home and Hounds, which is cosy like a pub should be. Orwell had his Moon Under Water, so for the rest of my essay I will refer to this pub as the Zoom Under Water. 

Enter the Zoom Under Water 

So, we have gone from Orwell’s Moon Under Water to our Zoom Under Water. The Zoom Under Water offers many of the social benefits of an offline pub, such as providing a space for unwinding, socialising and inebriation. It can provide beer and companionship, which is the minimum viable (MVP) product for a pub. 

This concept of MVP is worth dwelling on for a second. MVP is product designer speak for the absolute minimum a user will expect from a product. It’s worth thinking about because most of us don’t spend much time considering the minimum we would expect from a product or a place or a pub. 

Minimum viable pub 

Whenever I pop into a pub for a quick drink, or a long session, I evaluate this against my tastes and expectations. Every pub is compared to my own personal Moon Under Water. This standard is subjective, every pub I go into doesn’t have to conform to my exacting ideas of what a pub should be for me to drink in it. Most places aren’t the maximum viable pub, a high bar that only a few places come to meet.

This is how most of us (or at least those of us who try to think critically about pubbing and/or have a sense of personal taste that relates to where we drink) approach the idea of evaluating a pub. This is difficult when applied to a pub in our own home, which simultaneously conforms to our tastes more than any pub ever could and at the same time is a long way from our ideal version of a pub, because it’s a home and not a pub.

This is why it’s worth approaching the Zoom Under Water the opposite way around. We should start by thinking about the minimum viable pub. What do we need for our homes to be transformed into a pub? I would argue that it is relaxation, inebriation and company. 

The Zoom Under Water vs the Moon Under Water 

The Zoom Under Water can offer these things, without the negative aspects of pubbing such as:  obnoxious drunk strangers, missing last orders, being unpleasantly sobered up by wind on exit or cramming onto public transport whilst resisting falling asleep so that our phones isn’t stolen on the way home.

Granted those are all positives. The main flaw of the Zoom Under Water, and it is a significant flaw, is that it is always the same. No amount of customisable Zoom backgrounds can convince you that you are not always in your home. 

Limited and unlimited choice

This sameness usually means that the Zoom Under Water always serves the same beers. If we order our beer online to be delivered to our homes then we have, theoretically, all the beer in the world to choose from. When presented with this near-infinite range of options, most of us fall back on what we know well. Netflix offers hundreds of thousands of shows, but the most watched shows are Friends and The US Office, because most people are already familiar with these titles. When presented with an ocean of new and uncertain options, we cling to the rocks of what we are familiar with.

The same applies to beer, when shopping online I am more likely to buy Brewdog, Beaver Town or Fullers Beers as I know them well. This means that the Zoom Under Water lacks a crucial part of the pub experience: discovering new drinks.

When faced with a limited range of options, such as the three, four or even ten beers, we are presented with the possibility of trying something new. Sure, some people always order Carling or London Pride, because that’s their drink, but many take this opportunity to broaden their taste. This is one of the great things about pubs, they give us the chance to find new beers for ourselves.

Algorithms and entrenched brands

In the world of internet content this is called discovery. The internet is supposed to be the ultimate tool for discovery and although it does offer people the opportunity to try something they didn’t know they wanted before (have you considered fascism, you might like it?) generally the internet has not opened us to a whole new world of discovery. If anything, it has entrenched the power of established brands that we were already familiar with.

This is because there is so much stuff on the internet that it needs to be curated for us, which is done by algorithms on tech platforms. These algorithms look at what they know about you, what they know about what you like and what they know about what the people who are similar to you like, and then make recommendations based on this. The net result is that the same things that you already like are being constantly fed back to you. 

The impact of this touches everything from the beer that we buy to the news that we read. It becomes dangerous when it extends to our politics. The process of reflecting ideas that we already like back to us means we are not exposed to new ideas or people who think differently to us. By showing us more of what we agree with and less of what we disagree with, we end up in an echo chamber where more and more extreme versions of our beliefs are bounced back to us.

The loss of discovery 

When I am sitting at home drinking the same beers that I like, checking Facebook and Twitter and reading opinions that I agree with, I am left thinking that discovery is something we’ve lost. The internet once promised to open us up to new possibilities, but it has entrenched the power of established brands and established political parties. We’re angrier than ever, but a revolution seems further away than ever. 

The freedom that all the choice in the world should offer has been lost because it is un-navigable and anything built to make it navigable has so far only created echo chambers. The solution to this is to remember to be open-minded, to seek out new experience and views that challenge your own. To keep trying new things. 

Right now, we are stuck at home without new things to try. Apart from being at home all the time, which is new for me at least. However, now that there’s nowhere to go we might as well spend our time trying something new even if it’s small. A new hobby or a new TV show or even try a new beer, rather than always ordering the same ones over and over. 

We need novelty

We need novelty and we need new discoveries, as we have seen the problem with having what we already like constantly fed back to us. This has been the great strengths of off-line pubs, how they allow us to discover new beers by limiting our options. It’s one reason why the beer industry supports a huge diversity of breweries and has become more diverse in an age where large brands are becoming more entrenched. 

The Zoom Under Water doesn’t show us anything new, it only reflects ourselves back to us. That's why we need the experiences that create novelty. In an increasingly online world this is what’s being lost, but if we are aware of this we can seek out novelty and try to add some discovery to our lives.

Image of The Moon Under Water, High Street, Watford was taken by Dr Neil Clifton and was found on Wikipedia. It used here under Creative Commons.