Humanizing research online claims to engage practices that care for human learners. Even so, many of the recommended practices are unreflective about the universalizing ethic from which they draw. We argue that humanizing online learning becomes tangled in broader university aims that expect care to happen aside from underlying histories of (de)humanization. We propose Bantam becomings as a way for online teachers to appreciate smaller opportunities for becoming-with learners and technologies that have the potential to (re)claim online spaces as more-than-human space.