Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/quarantine-humor-i-fooled-m.html
“I was inspired by the phone booth on Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”
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Just use a poster of the Taj Mahal. Make it really obvious for a good laugh. You could change it for every conference call…
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Set your conference call up in front of your TV and have it playing wildlife documentaries or something.
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Good luck getting that raise now.
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Too bad his technique probably wouldn’t work for my mask project…
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Perspective looks wrong, like his chair is sunken into the floor.
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Just the other day, the BoingBoing Store was hawking green screen software that let you do this without the kludge.
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Multi-level bedroom FTW!
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So he faked it? That means this story is. . . fake news!
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Before this was a gag on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, it was the topic of an entire article (about the future of communication) in Mad Magazine back in the seventies. Which is where I think Pee-Wee got the idea from, if memory serves me.
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My instinct is to have a backdrop of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, or the baddies’ lair from a Bond film. Full marks to this guy for aiming at plausibility. I would never have thought of that.
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and also a chapter in “infinte jest” - although i think people also wore life like rubber masks of themselves to look younger, prettier, etc.
david foster wallace basically predicted instagram i guess.
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Yeah there’s a lot of software that will generate backgrounds for webcams on the fly. I do appreciate the lowtech approach here for the lulz though.
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I use ChromaCam and have a couple dozen backgrounds that I use - including a shot of my cube in the office for when I want to appear at work but don’t actually want to be there.
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Certainly you don’t want your boss to think he’s/she’s paying you too much. I’d go for humor on this one. Plus, you could pretend you are managing the company’s crises from the bridge of the Millennium Falcon.
He seems like a good dude and ya gotta love a nice friendly prank, but his “luxury apartment” was a little more modest than I expected… more like “I fooled my co-workers into thinking I was in a hotel room”, no?
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“I was inspired by the phone booth on Pee-wee’s Playhouse"
The reference alone makes me say…
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Mine would be for something ridiculous like T-rex scenes from Jurassic Park or an active volcano.
Something to distract my co-workers from anything being said.
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That sounds beautiful. There are so many sources of light and shadow - all those reflective surfaces might make it difficult to seem like you’re in the scene. 
OTOH, sitting in front of mirrors without creating a reflection could fool co-workers into thinking something else. 
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