A lawyer in Texas became a viral sensation on Tuesday after accidentally activating a cat filter during a court hearing over Zoom.
Footage of the incident, which went viral on Twitter, shows attorney Rod Ponton struggling to deactivate the filter while appearing as a young feline.
Judge Roy B. Ferguson can be overheard attempting to help Ponton, to no avail.
“Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in your video settings,” Ferguson says.
In perhaps the best moment of the video, Ponton attempts to reassure the judge that he is in fact not a cat.
“I’ve got my assistant here, and she’s trying to remove it but uh… I’m prepared to go forward with it,” Ponton says. “I’m here live. I’m not a cat.”
The video has already been viewed more than 1.6 million times and counting.
In a statement to Vice, Ponton said the mistake happened after he opted to use his secretary’s computer.
“I was using her computer and for some reason she had that filter on. I took it off and replaced it with my face,” he said. “It was a case involving a man trying to exit the United States with contraband and contraband cash. All it was was a mistake. It was taken off and we had the hearing as normal.”
Ferguson even referenced the viral incident in a jovial tweet not long after.
“IMPORTANT ZOOM TIP: If a child used your computer, before you join a virtual hearing check the Zoom Video Options to be sure filters are off,” Ferguson tweeted. “This kitten just made a formal announcement on a case in the 394th (sound on).”
The incident is just one of a growing number of Zoom-related mishaps as millions of people across the globe find themselves working from home amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” - Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
