<story><title>A theory of Zoom fatigue</title><url>https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-zoom-fatigue</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lostdog</author><text>Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings.&lt;p&gt;* You can&amp;#x27;t have a normal conversation with that much delay.  Every time you talk you&amp;#x27;re probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you.&lt;p&gt;* You can&amp;#x27;t have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person.&lt;p&gt;* You can&amp;#x27;t tell who&amp;#x27;s looking at you, so you always feel like you have to remain presentable and vigilant.&lt;p&gt;* There&amp;#x27;s no sense of space.  You can&amp;#x27;t look over at person if whomever is talking just teleports to the center of the screen.  Or if the layout is fixed, sound isn&amp;#x27;t coming from anywhere in particular, so you need to search around for who&amp;#x27;s talking.  And everyone on screen is looking a random direction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dylan604</author><text>So why the fixation on a video call? I&amp;#x27;m probably just an old curmudgeon, but to me the benefits do not out weigh the oddities being discussed. Everyone wearing their pieces of flair with their &amp;quot;personalized&amp;quot; backgrounds are tiresome.&lt;p&gt;I can see the benefits of a screen share&amp;#x2F;presentation, but I really don&amp;#x27;t need to see the other people involved. I don&amp;#x27;t care about tone of voice. I get sarcasm. For the people that don&amp;#x27;t, then even if they can see them, the sarcasm isn&amp;#x27;t more&amp;#x2F;less because it&amp;#x27;s a video call.&lt;p&gt;Video calls to me are just another version of &amp;quot;Hey look at me!!!! I&amp;#x27;m special&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>A theory of Zoom fatigue</title><url>https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-zoom-fatigue</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lostdog</author><text>Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings.&lt;p&gt;* You can&amp;#x27;t have a normal conversation with that much delay.  Every time you talk you&amp;#x27;re probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you.&lt;p&gt;* You can&amp;#x27;t have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person.&lt;p&gt;* You can&amp;#x27;t tell who&amp;#x27;s looking at you, so you always feel like you have to remain presentable and vigilant.&lt;p&gt;* There&amp;#x27;s no sense of space.  You can&amp;#x27;t look over at person if whomever is talking just teleports to the center of the screen.  Or if the layout is fixed, sound isn&amp;#x27;t coming from anywhere in particular, so you need to search around for who&amp;#x27;s talking.  And everyone on screen is looking a random direction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xioxox</author><text>In our (academic) meetings, people generally default to switching off their camera when there&amp;#x27;s more than a handful of participants. I find this much less stressful. I can also do some physical activity which helps concentration if I&amp;#x27;m just listening.</text></comment>