FUNNY WOMEN: Hire Me, a Hype Man, for Your Next Zoom Presentation

Are you stressing about hosting a big meeting on Zoom? Don’t you think your presentation would go down a lot better with a little backup?

Hi, my name is Flava Dave, and I’m a hype man with months of experience. You might be familiar with my recent work touring the local Buffalo Wild Wings scene six feet apart from MC Pale Boi. Well, Pale Boi’s parents enrolled him in remote learning at a military boarding school, and I’m excited for the opportunity to apply my hyping skills outside of my chosen field.

I’m ready to put the power in your PowerPoint and spit some bars alongside your bar charts.

If you’ve never been to one of my shows, then let me paint a word picture of how your Zoom meeting could go down:

My work starts before you even enter the Zoom room. I’ll take the stage (you might think of it as “a virtual background pulled from the Master P episode of Cribs,” but to me it’s always the stage) to warm up the crowd (you might think of them as “project stakeholders plus three people doomscrolling in another tab,” but to me they’re always the crowd). I make sure everyone is pumped to be in the meeting. This is where I like to flex my creativity and improvise based on the situation. Maybe someone’s eating a donut when they join, for example, and I’ll start riffing like, “Everybody say ‘heeeeeey!’ Everybody say ‘dooooo-nuts!’” (I can’t be held responsible if this delays your presentation while everyone reminisces about how meetings used to mean donuts for everyone.) Or, if too many party people are trying to hide in audio-only mode, I’ll start screaming in autotune, “Put your webcams in the air and then turn ‘em on like you’ve completed the corporate-mandated training on how to care!”

Once I’ve got the crowd out of their seats—and then back in their seats because this is a meeting—that’s when you come in to do your stuff, and I’ll slide into a more supportive role. Please note: we’ll want to walk through your presentation together beforehand to make sure I’m calling out the true highlights. I am prepared to help you:

underscore key takeaways with a call and response (“When I say ‘R-O,’ you say ‘I!’”)
speak the subtext of your conclusions (“Gotta grasp the nuance of the data, y’all!”)
offer commentary so that no one misses how patiently you addressed Kyle from marketing’s criticism, even though he missed your point entirely (“Check out that restraint!”)

Speaking of Kyle from marketing, if he tries to dominate the Q&A, I have a whole repertoire of noisy “accidents” to put at your service whenever he starts talking: drinking a glass of water too close to my mic; opening a window while my neighbor’s power washer drops a beat; interrupting Kyle over and over while saying, “No, you go ahead.” Guaranteed to make every Kyle stay on mute.

Also note: there is an extra charge for a mic drop at the end of our set, but this cannot be negotiated in advance. Nothing but the energy of the moment can compel me to pull out this move. (Never ask me how I do a mic drop via Zoom; a hype man does not reveal his dope-ass tricks.) Thank you in advance for respecting my sick process.