
A theory of Zoom fatigue - longdefeat
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-zoom-fatigue
======
djsumdog
I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember
landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth
and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls?
There was very little noticeable lag!

Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There
was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that
cancellation stuff and you feel like the conversation is split into pieces ..
like a walkie-talkie where you don't control the "over" / button press.

Cellphones have gotten better, but they've never really hit the latency of
landlines (or maybe they have and I didn't notice. I never actually talk to
people on my phone any more). Video conferencing like that that but worse.
It's really apparent if you're on a remote team and you're next to someone on
the same call. You can hear that delay.

I like a lot of the fatigue comes from that delay. We can connect more people
now, with video, over great distances, but it does come at a cost at moving
from virtual dedicated circuits to package switches networks and transcoding
on some central server.

~~~
saurik
Landlines were so fast and so "direct" in their latency (where distance
correlates very directly with time, due to a lack of "hops") that local phone
calls were faster than the speed of sound across a table, and for a bit after
they came out--before people generally got used to seemingly random latency--
local calls felt "intimate", like as if you were talking to someone in bed
with their head right next to you; I also have heard stories of negotiators
who had gotten really tuned to analyzing people's wait times while thinking
that long distance calls were confusing and threw them off their game. But no:
cell phones haven't become as fast as landlines and likely never can due to
fundamental contrast of compressed packetized routed audio vs. the speed of an
analog signal propagating over a circuit-switched wired connection.

~~~
lisper
I have very clear memories of my first overseas long-distance calls in the
1980s, which were over a satellite link. The latency was so pronounced (about
half a second) that carrying out a conversation took quite a bit of practice.
You almost had to carry out a formal protocol of handing over control of the
line, as if you were on a walkie-talkie.

I have equally clear memories of my first overseas calls carried by undersea
fiber because the _lack_ of latency was so pronounced compared to what I had
become accustomed to by then.

I still can barely tolerate carrying on a conversation on a cell phone though.
The latency and compression artifacts are just horrible compared to a
landline. VOIP has gotten pretty good though. I can't tell the difference
between a good VOIP landline and a POTS line.

~~~
killjoywashere
I'm in the military. I have found that the habit of saying "over", learned as
crowded circuit management for open radio circuits, is quite useful in
teleconferences and VTCs, and for similar reason. It makes it clear that
you're handing over the circuit. "Out" means you're leaving the circuit.

~~~
notacoward
I think that can work well, as long as people _also_ adopt the
military/aviation habit of speaking crisply and not rambling on to hog the
channel until they're _absolutely sure_ they've emptied themselves of every
possible thought they could ever have on the matter. Like I just did with
every word after "rambling on". ;)

~~~
lisper
Yeah, this. The experience with overseas calls I was referring to was talking
to my then-girlfriend who was spending a year studying in France. Saying
"over" all the time is not very romantic.

~~~
munificent
Her: I miss you so much, your touch, your smell. I can't wait to hold you in
my arms and gaze into your eyes.

You: Copy.

------
lostdog
Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings.

* You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you.

* You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person.

* You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have to remain presentable and vigilant.

* There's no sense of space. You can'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't coming from anywhere in particular, so you need to search around for who's talking. And everyone on screen is looking a random direction.

~~~
dylan604
So why the fixation on a video call? I'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 "personalized" backgrounds are
tiresome.

I can see the benefits of a screen share/presentation, but I really don't need
to see the other people involved. I don't care about tone of voice. I get
sarcasm. For the people that don't, then even if they can see them, the
sarcasm isn't more/less because it's a video call.

Video calls to me are just another version of "Hey look at me!!!! I'm special"

~~~
zjs
In part due to the latency noted elsewhere in the comments, I find myself
interrupting people more when I'm remote. With video on, the visual cue of
someone getting ready to start talking makes that easier to avoid.

Secondarily, I have a much better time assessing whether other attendees are
following a conversation. If I'm feeling lost, but everyone else looks like
they're following along, maybe it's just me — and I'll sit tight and try to
catch up. If others look bewildered, I'll start asking questions.

~~~
fastball
Maybe someone needs to add a feature to their video calling solution where you
can press a button to "raise your hand".

~~~
papeda
Maybe this is sarcasm, buy Zoom has that exact feature.

~~~
RandomBacon
I used that feature to "raise my hand" in my first ever Zoom meeting. The host
didn't realize it until I raised my actual hand on video.

------
sudosteph
Any other Autism Spectrum or ADHD people who feel less fatigued by video
meetings compared to IRL?

The things I like: \- having the range of activity during a meeting
constrained to one area in front of me so I don't have to look around the room
to make sure I'm not missing something / get overstimulated by too much stuff
happening. \- Boxes with borders lighting up when someone is making noise /
talking so I know where to look. \- Names always associated with faces \- text
chat area for sharing links and non-disruptive ways to request clarification
\- No longer get lost in the hallway trying to find rooms with weird names \-
Don't have to kick people out of rooms when they stay too long \- can foot tap
and fidget hands off screen without people noticing

~~~
mjayhn
My problem is I can't multitask during a zoom at all. I'm so anxious that
someone will ask me a question so I'm tuned in the entire time while everyone
else is pretty obviously off working on the side. I also find that I stare at
myself fidgeting. It's nowhere near as bad as in person where I just want to
not talk at all, though.

Also if everyone is on different timezones please don't make us turn on
webcams. I'm getting a lot of 7-8am meetings lately now that my team is mostly
East of me. I'm just waking up. I was in meetings from 8am this morning. I
showered at 2pm when I finally got a 30 minute break.

~~~
randycupertino
I'm a little bit vain, a bit of a narcissist and self-conscious. I find it
very distracting on Zoom to be looking at my own face on video to ensure I
look like I'm properly paying attention, showing my best angle (hiding a
double chin!) and not fidgeting.

Maybe I'm just too much in my own head about it, but it seems there's a bit of
a performative element to zoom meetings making me a lot more award of
presentation and perception than in irl meetings.

~~~
sudosteph
That makes total sense, most people don't make a habit of looking at
themselves unless it's for the purposes of evaluating or adjusting something
about their presentation. I tend to just make sure it's setup right when it
starts, then use the option to hide the self-view to avoid that distraction. I
don't care if I might look silly later, since constantly readjusting is a
silliness of it's own. And someone will ping me if the camera messes up.

------
ken
I’m surprised this didn’t mention the elephant in the room: the audio quality
is terrible. I simply can’t hear half of what is said, even at full volume in
a quiet room.

Either I ask for repetition all the time (and walk over whatever the next
person said), or I assume it from context and let it go.

Even when I can pick up all the sounds, it’s so different from hearing voice
in person that I have to concentrate just to parse the audio into meaning.
It’s exhausting.

Cell phone calls are still pretty bad, too. Low bandwidth digital audio
compression is just wretched.

~~~
qppo
The only thing really terrible is their (lack of) echo cancellation. Otherwise
I'm about 90% sure it's just off the shelf OPUS with next to no DSP on top.
It's not that bad on its own.

What is terrible is audio hardware on laptops. MacBooks are alright, but just
$50 on a headset will go a long ways to solving your problems. Consumers
haven't given a shit about audio fidelity for decades honestly, it's just
showing today when you are listening to unprocessed audio streams that haven't
been optimized for your laptop or phone's fundamentally inferior transducers.

This is a solved problem, for what it's worth. The major audio manufacturers
sell products for these use cases. It's not the software at this point, it's
actually decent. It's the input and output devices. Thank god for gamers
buying these things and driving economies of scale.

~~~
ken
So the solution is "convince all of my (unemployed) friends to spend $50 on
something which has more value to me than to them"?

Assuming that does solve it, I'd say a solution is _known_ , but I wouldn't
call it "solved". That's like a "nobody needs DropBox" type of "solved
problem".

~~~
qppo
Well they have value in hearing others and being heard, I'd assume. All my
friends have their own mics because we couldn't understand eachother
otherwise, and we don't have problems with fidelity. My coworkers are a
different story, because consumers rarely listen to integrated microphones
before they purchase a device (bluetooth earbuds are absolutely terrible about
this, fwiw). Who's at fault, the company for cheaping out, or the consumer for
not caring enough to find out if they company cheaped out?

The technical problem is solved. The economics problem of getting people to
value the solution and marketing problem of educating about it is still open.

Regardless, this isn't a problem to be solved by software. It's a consumer
electronics problem.

------
skyros
Long time lurker, first time commenter.

The original post and the comments here are interesting and intriguing, but
many points raised here (a) assume that the initial proposition is in fact
true, and (b) don't ask as to what evidence is available in support of the
proposition (or indeed whether there is evidence that might appear to
contradict it) beyond our own individual experience:

'Why is video-conferencing so exhausting?'

This is not to say that Zoom (etc.) _isn 't_ tiring to use, simply that it's
sensible first to ask questions such as:

\- is it particularly tiring to use? How do we know? \- if Zoom etc. is
particularly tiring, for what proportion of users is this the case? \- are
some types of users more affected than others? Why? \- is fatigue related
specifically to video (as opposed to audio) use? \- is fatigue related to the
number of concurrent users in a given call? \- is all video-conferencing
similarly tiring, or are some platforms more so than others, and if so, why?
UI? Latency? Some other reason? \- are Zoom meetings any more tiring than
traditional face-to-face meetings? \- etc.

~~~
Bedon292
I think these are great points. I came to here to understand what people's
feelings were on the matter. I don't particularly find 'Zoom' tiring any more
so than a regular meeting. Is the problem these days just more meetings than
there used to be? Because people are still trying to figure out the whole
remote work thing?

And in fact I kinda like them better than regular meetings, because I can walk
around the house and do whatever. But I also don't have a webcam requirement
either, so maybe that's the difference for me.

------
aurbano
Just a little anecdote that’s relevant here. Around 10 years ago my girlfriend
didn’t have wifi home yet (low tech family), so we spoke at night over
landline, as those calls were free. And it definitely did feel like what some
people here are saying: you could hear everything with no delay or cuts at
all, the whole call just felt like she was there next to me.

They eventually setup wifi in their home, so we switched to VoIp calls, mainly
so we wouldn’t block our families’ landlines for a couple hours every day. And
the quality was so much worse...

The delay sometimes would be so bad that we had this technique where one would
slowly count down from 3 and then say “Now”! Then when the other heard Now
they’d say Now too, and the first person could essentially count the seconds.
This way we could “slow down” our conversation to accomodate for the multi-
second delay, which (thinking back) was like our own protocol for dealing with
signal delay!

~~~
csa
I will go out on a limb and say that the issues you describe had more to do
with your internet connection(s) than with VoiP.

In the mid-2000s, I used Vonage (VoiP) from Japan to the US all the time.
People were shocked because it sounded like I was right next to them. My
grandmother actually thought I was bamboozling her by saying I was in Japan
because she thought that there was no way it could be so clear.

Granted, I was usually dialing my VoiP on a blistering fast internet
connection (not in Tokyo, to be fair) to a POTS line in the US, but the
connection was amazing.

So I wonder how 10 years ago the VoiP-VoiP connection was so poor. Do you
think it was basic internet speed (which the US has historically been behind
other developed countries), or do you think it was something else?

~~~
aurbano
Could very well be, she had a very basic plan (around 10Mbps), while I had a
fiber plan on 200Mbps so maybe that was the issue. I can't recall how it was
with other people though.

------
stainforth
I was on a partially-remote team for years, with bi-weekly team conference
calls - webcam was possible but we all never used it, not even the manager.
Screenshare was used for presentations. But audio was enough. Why is everyone
defaulting to video calls for things? It adds so much "noise" and cognitive
load on things.

~~~
intopieces
Some people miss seeing their colleagues' faces. I know I do.

~~~
slimed
You miss them. Not their faces.

~~~
asdff
My personal happiness plummeted, anecdotally, when my coworkers started
dropping the video feed one by one. It was surprising, but noticeable and
significant.

~~~
intopieces
Same for me. There's just little things about interacting with a person face
to face, personality aspects like how they express themselves: posture, eye
movement, facial expression even. They just add to the interestingness of the
work.

------
Legogris
First time I've heard of this and it's not something I experience at all. I do
not find video conferences more exhausting than in-person meetings - if
anything maybe even the opposite.

One factor than can make it more tiring is poor connectivity and audio to the
point where it becomes an effort to interpret what others are saying/making
oneself understood. Other than that I think it's just a matter of what one is
accustomed to.

~~~
randallsquared
I also find meetings via Zoom less draining, in general, than in-person
meetings.

Maybe this is why:

> _This, too, amounts to a persistent expenditure of social and cognitive
> labor as I inadvertently mind my image as well as the images of the other
> participants._

If I understand the author correctly, if they don't have a constant image of
themselves presented to them, they aren't constantly processing how they look
to others(!)? Well, in that case, I can see why Zoom would be more draining,
but, you know, welcome to my world in any situation except when I'm alone or
only with my SO.

------
rhplus
I find _leaving_ a call to be difficult. In the real world, someone just
“dropping in” to a meeting room can nod, wave, or gesture to say hi, find the
right moment to enter the conversation, make a point and then leave with the
same nod, wave or gesture. You can’t do that on a video call without either
seeming rude (“Foo has left the call”) or breaking the main conversation flow
(“Hey everyone, I’m gonna leave now”). It’s tiresome and I end up sitting on
calls until everyone else is ready to exit.

~~~
jsilence
I usually leave message in the chat like "sorry, gotta go" and wave into the
camera when exiting.

Don't have the impression that this is disrupting the conversation too much.

------
ryandrake
“Kevin, you’re muted. Unmute and say that again, please”

“Sara, your voice cut out for 30 seconds and we didn’t hear any of that, can
you please repeat?”

Two people talking: “Bfrhtxhlcyfoydoyd... oh, you go ahead” “no, you go ahead”
“OK like I was saying, cofhlflydhlbdfykdjtxtc...”

“Hang on, I think Kumar just disconnected. We need him to continue.” “Can
someone text Kumar and see if he can rejoin?”

“I can’t see more than five huge pixels of your presentation, Jan. Can you re-
enable screen sharing?”

Things that are exhausting and don’t happen during face to face meetings...

~~~
hnzix
Or that one person who refuses to mute while typing loudly and sniffling and
slurping their coffee and making wet sloppy mouth noises.

------
qppo
I think the problem is that Zoom hasn't solved any of the hard problems with
scheduling and holding meetings remotely. They got decent/reliable multimedia
multicast, and I'll give them that.

Talk to anyone in process management/optimization and they'll probably rant to
you about how bad most people are at holding and attending meetings. The "one
page memo" at Amazon is kind of famous.

Zoom (and all its competitors) could do a lot to solve these problems and
doesn't. That's the source of Zoom fatigue. People are bad at meetings, don't
know they're bad at them, and hold bad meetings. It's stressful and tiring.
Maybe Zoom just makes it more obvious when you can't easily joke around or
grab a coffee. To me it seems that all these remote meeting software solutions
are only focused on the purely technical problems, because they're really easy
to specify and measure improvement. I haven't really seen anyone use
technology to really go after the _social_ problems of video conferencing yet,
at least not like how Discord and Slack have done in their domains.

------
immy
Seems obvious and succinct to me: on Zoom, you feel compelled to look at the
screen all the time. In-person, you can respectfully look anywhere in the room
because the other person shares the physical space and can intuit where your
attention is.

~~~
mkj
I wonder if positioning the webcam say 2m away looking at the general
workspace would work better - not just the head.

Need to have highish res video for faces still to be distinguishable though.

------
Wowfunhappy
Has anyone here used Mumble? They put a great deal of effort into lowering
latency, and in my experience the results are quite good.

I wish it wasn’t so fringe so I could get non-tech people to use it with me.

~~~
RandomBacon
I just looked. It's not free. The website ambiance is also not very inviting.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Ah, I know what you saw! That's the wrong site—how did they get to the top of
Google?

The correct one is: [https://www.mumble.info/](https://www.mumble.info/)

It's free, OSS, etc. It does require hosting a server, however.

~~~
RandomBacon
They have the same name as a competing service???

It sounds like they made a mistake choosing that name/domain.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I _think_ Mumble.com hosts instances of Mumble.info's software (although they
aren't related a la WordPress.com), so they aren't competing per se.
Definitely an unfortunate situation, though.

------
PeterStuer
I'll take a 1 hour Zoom call over the 1:30h commute to meeting in traffic
jams, 1 hour meeting, 1:30h back in traffic jams any day.

Any 'Zoom Fatigue' I'll shrug off with a nice walk and a coffee in 30 minutes.
The stress from spending 3hrs bumper to bumper ruins more than just the entire
day.

------
hvs
Meetings are exhausting, Zoom or no Zoom. I’ve noticed no difference and I’m
on at least 3/day.

------
fxtentacle
I think the main cause of stress and fatigue is that you have to be
presentable all the time.

I put a sticker over my camera and I bought a headset with a hardware mute
switch (so that it doesn't show) and now I can phase out just like I'd do in a
regular meeting :)

~~~
blackrock
I recommend a camera cover slider. This one works great.

It gives me some sense of physical security that hackers can’t penetrate the
camera, or corporate can’t spy on me, since they’re now installing desktop
screen capture spyware on your laptops. They can probably spy on you by
stealthily activating the microphone, but that’s a different problem.

[https://www.amazon.com/0-027in-MacBook-Smartphone-
Protecting...](https://www.amazon.com/0-027in-MacBook-Smartphone-Protecting-
Security/dp/B077ZT29P2)

------
willmacdonald
On a slightly related subject I can HIGHLY recommend Google duo for voice
calls. Very little latency, fantastic clarity and the ability for both parties
to talk and listen at the same time.

Makes it so much less tiring for long conversations.

I have not tried it for group conversations yet.

------
crazygringo
For one-on-one videoconferencing meetings with normal latency (e.g. within 3-4
time zones), I find zero fatigue or problems like this.

The only "fatigue" I find is frustration when people are talking over each
other or multiple people trying to jump in at the same time. This generally
happens either when latency is bad (e.g. US-Japan), connections are bad
generally (MS Office decides to auto-update in the background and saturate
your download), or just when it's a particularly contentious meeting with lots
of people trying to get a word in edgewise, and all the normal cues you use to
figure out when to talk just aren't there. And the reasons for those all seem
self-evident.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
A meeting that has a component of "go around the room and get everyone's
input" is harder in Zoom. In a physical room, you go clockwise or
counterclockwise. But on Zoom, when someone finishes talking, who knows who's
supposed to go next?

~~~
adenner
You need someone to serve as the facilitator for the meeting and call out the
order.

~~~
cygned
And have ground rules established.

------
wintermutestwin
The elephant in the room is the lack of EYE CONTACT. As a mediator now having
to work on video, this is very close to a deal breaker. We don't hear much
about it on tech news because no one has a mass market solution. A google
search will find either a wasteland of dead SW and HW products or room based
systems that are so expensive that they are typically bought by globals for
CxOs.

------
notacoward
The "uncanny valley" aspect is something I have experienced, but the big thing
for me is the accumulation of three types of events.

(1) People trying to talk at the same time and taking several seconds to sort
out who goes first.

(2) Glitches when everything freezes or even gets kicked out and brought back
in, taking even longer to resolve.

(3) Wanting to say something and having to wait ages as people with less lag
(I'm on the opposite side of the continent from everyone else) keep jumping in
without a break.

Each instance of these raises my annoyance level. Dozens upon dozens of them
even in a half-hour meeting can leave me totally exhausted from trying to tamp
down the anger. By contrast, doing a 1:1 over VC isn't _nearly_ so bad. Maybe
an occasional bad moment, but not enough for fatigue to set in. I highly
recommend that everyone do that comparison for themselves. The problems tend
to increase more than linearly with number of participants, until there are
enough that everyone accepts the need for strong moderation and two out of the
three issues drop back to near zero.

------
renewiltord
Do not feel this. I have a wireless headset so I'll occasionally mute my mic
and do a couple of dumb-bell curls or go get some water while thinking. Feels
fine, honestly. I like being present for the social comfort I get from
physical proximity to people but the Zoom thing just has that absent, so I
don't get that extra bonus but I still don't feel tired.

~~~
solidasparagus
You do curls on video?

~~~
ars
I'm not the person you replied to, but I never turn on my video.

~~~
mixonEPA
Do you ever feel pressured to turn it on when everyone else in the call has
their video on? I know I do and it's something I need to work on cause I find
myself more productive and engage with the camera off for myself.

~~~
hnzix
Turn the camera off after introductions, then only turn it back on when you
want to make an important point or the convo is about a very specific work
item related to you.

If someone complains, you can say you don't want to clutter up the video feed
or that you're having latency issues (also, they're a dick).

------
zrail
As a full time remote worker, one of my favorite things about my setup is that
I have a 43" 4k monitor set about 6 feet away from my eyes. I use macOS's
scaling feature to make everything bigger. This has significantly reduced my
eye strain and my overall fatigue.

My setup is somewhat unique, as far as I can tell. I have the monitor on a
wheeled TV stand and I use a small hand cranked standing desk to support my
laptop and keyboard. The laptop is connected to a dock that sits below the
monitor with one Thunderbolt 3 cable, then I have one USB cable returning from
the hub to the desk to support my microphone and keyboard.

This setup gives me a ton of flexibility in how I position myself relative to
the light in the room and the distance between my eyes and the monitor while
maintaining a standing position.

------
aaron695
I think it's exactly the same as ‘Moral Fatigue’

Every meeting you have to think about audio, video, the background, how to
chat, is mute really really on, what are you wearing, other people in the
house, the fact your setup is being judged.

In an office you can just do it.

It's not until you have set yourself up and comfortable and confident you then
notice all the little things missing that we know are important to humans,
like touch and smell and body posture and 3D video and 3D sound which I think
are not about fatigue but something else.

The Reason You’re Exhausted Is ‘Moral Fatigue’
[https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
features/corona...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
features/corona-exhausted-moral-fatigue-974311/)

------
ayodio
It is exactly the same as why we can't drive as well while on the phone.

When face to face with someone every possible audio frequencies emited by the
other person will reach you. This means your brain won't have much work to do
to make sense of this information since it is 'complete'.

In a zoom meeting in most cases everybody is on his laptop using the built in
laptop microphone. This means the sound will be mediocre at best concidering
there isn't any network issue. Voice quality will be compressed and lack
certain frequencies that you don't notice but help you decypher more quickly
the other person speech.

That means that the brain energy necessary to only be able to understand the
person in a zoom meeting for the same amount of time is more important than in
a real life meeting.

------
sgt
Thinking a lot of Zoom meetings are just too long. I recommend max 30 minutes
for a meeting, almost regardless what it is about. It's enough to come up with
some action points that can be worked on in the meantime, then followed up
with a new meeting e.g. in the afternoon.

------
sarah180
I have a simpler explanation, and my mantra for life.

    
    
      Are you finding something difficult?
      Is it something you've been doing frequently for a long time?
      If not, then of course it's difficult.
      Keep hope: We get good at the things we do in life.

------
tylerjwilk00
I recently discovered that the best way for me to communicate over Zoom when
speaking is to not even look at the screen. I'll stare off into the distance
and just focus on my words and thoughts.

Video and audio lag seems to short circuit the communication interrupt window
that happens normally in person to person communication, although in large
enough gatherings that fails even IRL.

Another thing is that the way Zoom gallery mode works is a bit unnatural in
IRL. In normal P2P communication your only looking at one set of eyes balls at
a time. All of the sudden you have several sets of eyeballs you can see all it
once. This makes it more like public speaking and less like a small tribe
meeting.

------
sdffdsfdsfsddsf
Aren't meetings in general draining?

------
shadowtree
Love how nobody checks what Zoom actually does in terms of audio.

First, the do a lot around synchronizing video and audio. On bad connections
they slow and speed up video and audio to keep the appearance of coherence.
Really, really hard stuff that other video conf systems fail at.

Also, they have audio settings to filter background noise. Basic settings
around the mic, but the Advanced settings about noise cancellation ("Original
Audio").

If you book online classes for music teachers, you'll see why they prefer Zoom
and which settings they recommend.

------
mwcampbell
I think the money quote is this:

> perceiving an image of a body in virtual space rather than perceiving a body
> itself in shared space may be worse than not perceiving a body at all.

So drop the video and go audio only.

Of course, I'm legally blind, so I can't really understand why perceiving
facial expressions and body language is apparently so important. But one of my
best friends is totally blind, and the two of us have communicated over two
decades without ever being able to see each other, so it can work.

~~~
mumblemumble
It's a familiarity thing. Sighted people are used to a manner of communication
that includes visual cues, and people always prefer what they're used to. I
also find that people who are used to visual in-person communication also
dislike videoconferencing because they can't see things like when another
person is crossing their legs or tapping their foot.

Whether any of that is actually beneficial is another question entirely.
Personally, I have an easier time concentrating on the conversation when it is
audio only.

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DebtDeflation
I find the video component to be completely superfluous and often distracting.
The combination of audio, screen-sharing, and chat are more than adequate for
accomplishing the task at hand. I don't need to watch grainy, stuttering video
of my co-workers in sweat pants to be productive.

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cosmodisk
To me, physical meetings are as draining as the ones using zoom. If it's a
meeting,where you just sip coffee, listen to others who do all the taking,then
it's easy, however beimg actively involved in a convo,while trying to come up
with some useful stuff,can be draining.

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orbifold
I imagine reading this article to a uranium mine worker in Namibia.

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galoisgirl
Over a video call? Please no...

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fouc
> having to remain relatively still in front of a camera

If you video conference from your phone or laptop then you can move around.

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ape4
You are completing with the latest show on Netflix - that most people would
rather be watching

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jrockway
I think another issue is having to re-invent cues for changing who is talking
in the conversation. When you're talking to someone in person, you can pick up
a lot of information as to whether they want to continue talking, or whether
it's your turn. On video conferences, those things are missing. You might
detect a lull in the conversation and start talking, but at the same time,
someone else does the same thing and starts talking. You have 100ms+ of
latency, so you can get into what you're saying before realizing that someone
else took their turn (or you took theirs). The collision mitigation algorithm
takes place, and it's just as bad for your mental fatigue as it is for your
WiFi's latency (which uses the same algorithm -- listen before talk, and if
you collide, wait a random amount of time and repeat). These things just don't
happen when a few people are in the same room together.

The result is that we try to use the video channel to pre-allocate timeslots
for speaking. You make your eyes bigger, you raise a finger... but sometimes
people aren't looking at the video, or don't understand what your newly-
invented cue actually means. This is all very tiring.

The overall quality of the call is much lower than real life, as well. People
do not own good microphones or cameras, so you can't actually hear them or see
them very well. The noise gate intervenes and just cuts off audio from time to
time. It is maddening how bad it all is.

Many years ago when I worked for Bank of America, we had these multiple-100k
Cisco videoconferencing setups. They worked really well. My friends and I were
at work pretty late and there was a tornado warning, so we couldn't go home
(we all biked). We went to these conference rooms, set up a link between the
two rooms right next to each other, and had a totally normal conference.
(Things were set up so that the entire wall of the room was a video screen,
and it had an array of cameras, microphones, and speakers. Everything was
tuned perfectly so it looked like the people in the other room were just
sitting across the table from you. There was no latency, everyone was their
normal size, and the audio and video quality were perfect. Obviously with two
rooms across the hall from each other, there shouldn't be any latency... but
at least the system didn't add its own. It makes a big difference.)

Finally, I think another issue is that people just aren't used to getting work
done with video conferences. I worked as a remote team at Google, so pretty
much 100% of my meetings were video conferences. 1:1s with my manager and
everything else. The system suffered from the same quality/latency issues as
anything else (though we did typically have good cameras and microphone arrays
in every room), but through practice, people got good at getting stuff done
despite the limitations. I never really felt fatigued the way I do on calls
with random people at home. (I guess my tips are: have an agenda in advance,
and use your screen share to show progress through the agenda. Call on people
in remote locations: "Anyone from the New York room have anything to add?".)

