Room Rater Needs to Let Us Live

Sometimes it's interesting to count the small ways that the pandemic has changed our behavior. It always takes me a second to remember that passersby can't see my facial expressions, for instance, or that I can't give anyone a hug. On the rare occasion I watch TV, it's startling to remember that even the people who appear on it are working from home. I try not to judge their rooms, because I know that I am just getting a glimpse into someone's private home or office, not a space intended to be on television. Room Rater, a Twitter account dedicated to rating the rooms people use on video calls, has enough judgement to go around.

Room Rater began in April of this year, as the phenomenon of Skyping or Zooming in to meetings fully took hold. In the beginning, it was a funny novelty. Very few people were prepared for a national audience to see their living rooms, and some people had very funny set ups indeed.

As of late, there's not much to judge from these rooms. The people who work from home have been doing it for a while, and I'm sure they've learned what does and does not look good when you have to Zoom into MSNBC. As such, Room Rater has become more a weird nuisance than a novelty account. Much like Art Decider or The Tweet of God, this account is an example of an old joke that the internet won't let die. Room Rater has over 300,000 followers. Many people followed this joke account and probably don't remember that they did. The kinds of tweets that go viral from this account now are tweets that signal a particular political position, commenting more on the person inhabiting the room than the room itself. Take the room Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania John Fetterman is sitting in, for example. Room Rater gave it a 10 out of 10, but with its painted brick and its framed American flag hanging crookedly dead center behind Fetterman's head on an otherwise bare wall, it looks like it belongs on Male Living Spaces more than anything else. It's not a particularly good looking room, but Fetterman gets a pass because in the eyes of Room Rater he's one of the good guys. 

The phenomenon has become so pronounced that Jeb "Please Clap" Bush asked that the account rate rooms in a more bipartisan manner.

Caring about this account to the degree that Jeb Bush cares is pathetic. It's a Twitter account, soon vanquished with a press of the mute button. At the same time, it's an example of the way that social media turns us all into cops, like the world's stupidest panopticon.

Room Rater has, over time, signaled that it's basically a Resistance Liberal account through its content, but at the heart of that content is shame. It's about signaling an in-group and out-group; the haves and have nots; the people who have professional quality broadcasting setups in their homes and the people who do not. Essentially, you're just pointing out that rich people are rich.

Most importantly: leave me alone. I haven't seen my parents since March, I won't be seeing them for the holidays, and I probably won't see them until 2021. I don't want to hear a single thing about the various rooms that I use to Zoom into work meetings; they're all I see, all day every day. We're nine months into this pandemic and it's not getting any better. In fact, it's worse than ever. Of course many rooms don't look ready for a photoshoot in this situation, and that really doesn't teach us anything about the people living in them. To paraphrase Kourtney Kardashian, right now, there are people that are dying.