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.
A theory of Zoom fatigue
11–20 of 213 posts
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#12I 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 ca…
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.
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#13Do 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.
You do curls on video?
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#14Any 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
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#15I 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 ca…
Agreed. After reading the title, I immediately thought of the Doherty Threshold [1]. It states that if the system can respond to user actions and give the user feedback within 400ms, it increases users’ attention and productivity.
That constant delay, plus the worse ones when the connection loses strength, put a constant toll on "zoom" conversations.
I think that is the main factor but many of the items they brought up in the article also add to it but my guess is if there were no delay or drop in quality, it would be very manageable.
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#16Any 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 wher…
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.
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#17I 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.
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#18Lots 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.
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#19I 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 ca…
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 als…
There's no compelling reason we couldn't have IP audio links (with an easy calling interface) that have no such compression artifacts. I would actually call it more of a noise gate issue perhaps trying to save bandwidth by maximizing the compressibility of quiet parts as if they're total silence, signal off. That kills the intimacy IMO.
We've had it for so long now with digital cell phone calls, even HD calling, certainly Zoom et al (some are particularly aggressive on the noise gate when others are speaking over you).
Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue
#20Do 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.
You do curls on video?
I'm not the person you replied to, but I never turn on my video.