The hottest new queer club: investigating Club Quarantine’s off-label queer use of Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Lockdowns and preventative measures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of nightlife venues that have long served as outlets for queer sociality. This article examines queer people’s response to such measures through a study of Club Quarantine (Club Q), a series of online queer club nights established during the early days of Canada’s lockdown in March 2020. It draws on mixed methods to explore Club Q’s negotiation of Zoom videoconferencing software for hosting and animating club nights, combining participant observation with examination of Club Q’s promotion and media coverage as well as applying the walkthrough method to Zoom. Findings show that Club Q appropriated Zoom through redefinition, adaptation, and reinvention of the platform, reorienting its purpose from business solutions to queer representation, connection, and solidarity. We conclude that Club Q merges off-label use, as technological appropriation that negotiates hurdles specific to platform technology, governance, and economic interests, with queer use–activity that establishes queer space. We conceptualize this queer appropriation as ‘off-label queer use’: practices of platform appropriation that release a queer potentiality for challenging heteronormative and marginalizing technosocial structures. Club Q challenged platform features and policies that constrained sexual expression and posed safety risks for queer users while providing a queer space for fostering resilience and solidarity during crisis. This article’s theoretical contribution enables the identification of off-label queer use in other arrangements of users and technology, allowing for an understanding of when platforms facilitate or inhibit queer survival strategies.