For years, one of the most persistent workplace memes has been some variation of: "The best meeting is the one that didn't happen." It shows up everywhere — on Twitter, in Slack channels, in group chats after yet another Zoom call ends without a decision. People laugh, share it, and move on, but the meme sticks because it names something everyone feels and rarely says out loud: meetings aren't the work, they just interrupt it.
What makes the meme powerful is that it isn't really about hating collaboration. It's about hating forced synchronization. Most of the time, people don't need a meeting — they need context, clarity, or a quick update. The meme exaggerates the pain, but underneath the joke is a simple desire: let me get the information without stopping everything else I'm doing.
Loom feels like the quiet answer to that joke. Instead of asking five people to be online at the same time, it lets one person explain once and everyone else watch when it makes sense for them. No calendar ping, no "Can you see my screen?", no hour blocked for something that takes three minutes to understand. It keeps the human part of communication while removing the most frustrating part of meetings — the obligation to be there.
In that sense, Loom didn't come from a grand theory about the future of work. It came from the same place as the meme: collective exhaustion with unnecessary meetings. The meme described the problem in reverse, through humor. Loom simply took that joke seriously and turned it into a product.