Still Watching The Oscars With Friends (or Not Missing This Tradition For Anything)

I’ve been watching the Oscars with my friends for a long time. I actually looked back to see how long I’ve been going to Oscar parties with this group of friends and it’s been since I was 19! I knew it had been since I was in college, but I didn’t realize it was that long. I don’t have photos of all the costumes I’ve worn throughout the years, but I did find a lot of them when I was looking back at Oscar Parties past.

I love watching the Oscars with my friends and it’s a tradition that’s been a part of my life for a long time. But just like so much over the past year, we all knew this tradition wasn’t going to be able to happen the way that we were used to. A lot of us are vaccinated, but it’s still safer to avoid big parties right now. So the Oscar party this year was done how so many things have been done since the pandemic started. We had a party on Zoom.

We weren’t wearing costumes and we didn’t have the contest to guess the winners, but it still felt like the Oscar party that I love so much. The party is a lot about the people who go, and I loved seeing the people who were able to join.

Usually at the party, there is a quiet room and a loud room. The loud room talks during the show and the focus is a bit more on the party. The quiet room, where I always am, doesn’t allow talking during the show and you can talk during the commercials. We are social during the commercials, but I want to be able to hear what happens during the show and don’t want to miss anything.

Originally, I said I would be doing quiet room rules on Zoom and many others said they would be talking during the show. But we realized that we all had to almost do quiet room rules with muting things because our tvs weren’t at the exact same moment at the same time. So most of us muted ourselves (I also muted my computer) and a bunch of us turned off our videos during the show. And as soon as the commercials started, we were back on Zoom to discuss things. We also had the chat in Zoom going so we could say our silly remarks during the show.

The Oscars itself were interesting. I wasn’t as invested in it as I normally am (similar to how I felt during the SAG Awards). I wasn’t really rooting for any particular actors or films, but I do still love to see who wins. And since they didn’t have a time limit on the speeches this year, it was nice to hear the winners say what they want without getting cut off. And it was nice that for most of the winners, they were in the room so they didn’t have to give their speeches over Zoom. For the few that did do that, it seemed like things were set up a bit more officially than other award shows, so they didn’t have the technical issues that other shows have had. That was nice.

And even though I was watching the show on my couch by myself, I still was able to feel like I was watching with my friends. We got to be silly together and joke about what we watched during the show. And I think we all agree that next year, all of us are going to try to go all out for costumes since we didn’t wear costumes this time. Hopefully, next year I will have watched more of the movies that were nominated and will have stronger feelings about who I want to win.

But no matter what, I’m so glad that I was able to continue this tradition with my friends even though things weren’t the way we usually do them.

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