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Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

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Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#121

Post by neuronerdgirl »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #39
tomjakubowski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten person meetings have felt better for me in person. I think it's because there's more room for impromptu overlapping discussions, which Zoom doesn't support well.

This is the billion-dollar problem in VoIP. I call it the "cocktail party problem", because a cocktail party is the most extreme example. In meatspace, you're able to drift between conversations subtly queuing to the other participants in a breakout conversation that you're engaging with them, while still being able to pick up on nearby conversations which you can choose to swap to. A multi-call system like a Discord…

Gather Town was tackling this issue surprisingly well during COVID, but anytime I tried to convince people to use it they defaulted back to Zoom because Gather was too confusing. I think it would take a real paradigm shift from the "call with video" model to get decent adoption of something like that, and now that it's so expensive to use Gather I don't see how they can get enough exposure to really convince the public at large.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#122

Post by lamontcg »

Are scientists discovering anyone who is immune to zoom fatigue?

Because I went full-time WFH in 2015 or so and never experienced it and have never understood what people are talking about.

I hate IRL meetings much more when you want to hide behind your laptop and yet want to act like you're paying attention and yet you're bored to death.

With zoom if someone starts pinging you something important over slack you can just mute and hide your video and respond and let yourself be distracted while keeping a bit of your attention on what is going on in the meeting. In IRL, you're stuck trying to sort out the urgency of responding to the issue in slack vs. the urgency of appearing to pay attention to the meeting you're stuck in.

And I haven't even had "zoom fatigue" when I've been the presenter in 2 hour long recorded training sessions with junior devs, even though I'm an introvert. I get a bit exhausted after doing that, but talking at people for 2 hours just exhausts the shit out of me any time.

That last bit kind of makes me wonder if extroverts experience "zoom fatigue" due to actually experiencing self-reflection in conversations for the first time or something like that.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#123

Post by agumonkey »

closeparen wrote: post #117
agumonkey wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some times one guy will have headset, but everybody use various setups quite randomly.

Which videoconferencing service is this?

Self hosted jitsi, nothing special beyond that. And i'm still on copper.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#124

Post by vladvasiliu »

kcb wrote: post #120
Dayshine wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jabra headsets seem to insist on Bluetooth when in calls, reducing the quality back down to terrible

It needs to be a model with a dedicated dongle if you're going wireless. Otherwise for 2 way audio they switch to the Bluetooth phone call profile that hasn't improved for like 20 years. I use a Sennheiser/EPOS DECT headset. I'd only recommend the Sennheiser ones for DECT because they have an ultra-wideband mode that actually sounds pretty good. Otherwise you're going to sound like a cordless phone.

Watch out, most Jabra headphones with dongles are actually bluetooth as per the specs. Or does the dongle do something regular BT can't do?

This was driving me crazy when I was looking for one a few months ago. Ended going with a wired Poly (the DECT models were absurdly expensive for my needs).

I do have a DECT Jabra model (with a huge base) which is nice enough for conference calls, and the mic doesn't sound noticeably worse than the newer, wired model we have at work. The headphones do have a somewhat tinnier sound, bur for conferencing they're very good as long as nobody with a deep voice breaks out some Shure mic.

The killer feature for me is the very, very low latency. I'm a non-competitive non-hardcore gamer, but I'm happy to use it in FPS games.

It also wipes the floor with bluetooth range-wise. During covid I had it at my parents' thick-walled house and it allowed me to walk around the garden during calls with no interruptions. BT can't handle me going in the next room in my small apartment.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#125

Post by vladvasiliu »

Dayshine wrote: post #119
vladvasiliu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised. At work we get some nice-ish jabra headsets and most people wear them. But I regularly have to take calls with people from other companies, and one in particular comes to mind where some dude never ever wears a proper headset, or doesn't know how to configure it or something [0]. We can always hear the people around him going about their business. Then there's also the fact that people insist on u…

The jabra headsets seem to insist on Bluetooth when in calls, reducing the quality back down to terrible

Fortunately, they didn't drink the wireless kool-aid when purchasing these, so we have wired-only versions.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#126

Post by flappyeagle »

thunky wrote: post #109
flappyeagle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don’t go. You have a choice. You are a sentient human being.

Oh...why am I even doing anything at all at my job? I could just refuse to work and get paid anyway? With no consequences? Wow all this time like a sucker I've been doing what my boss asked me to do.

You are allowed to negotiate with your boss. You have agency.

This includes whether to attend a meeting, hours that you work, and other things that you might currently conceive of as obligations.

At the end of the day your boss only cares about looking good to their boss. If you can help them do that anything else is just a detail

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#127

Post by thunky »

flappyeagle wrote: post #126
thunky wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh...why am I even doing anything at all at my job? I could just refuse to work and get paid anyway? With no consequences? Wow all this time like a sucker I've been doing what my boss asked me to do.

You are allowed to negotiate with your boss. You have agency. This includes whether to attend a meeting, hours that you work, and other things that you might currently conceive of as obligations. At the end of the day your boss only cares about looking good to their boss. If you can help them do that anything else is just a detail

I agree, but most (not all) don't have the leverage needed to get what they want. The boss thinks that dumb meeting makes them look good, so why would they want to let anyone opt out? Let one do it and the rest will follow, they figure.

So really, the options are typically 1) deal with it 2) quit.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#128

Post by kcb »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #124
kcb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be a model with a dedicated dongle if you're going wireless. Otherwise for 2 way audio they switch to the Bluetooth phone call profile that hasn't improved for like 20 years. I use a Sennheiser/EPOS DECT headset. I'd only recommend the Sennheiser ones for DECT because they have an ultra-wideband mode that actually sounds pretty good. Otherwise you're going to sound like a cordless phone.

Watch out, most Jabra headphones with dongles are actually bluetooth as per the specs. Or does the dongle do something regular BT can't do? This was driving me crazy when I was looking for one a few months ago. Ended going with a wired Poly (the DECT models were absurdly expensive for my needs). I do have a DECT Jabra model (with a huge base) which is nice enough for conference calls, and the mic doesn't sound notice…

I don't know the technical specifics but I've had a Logitech and Sennheiser BT headset with dongle. I'm pretty sure the dongle is Bluetooth but it is definitely doing something out of spec because there's a huge difference in quality between dongle and direct Bluetooth.

And yea DECT is pretty nice. I also use it for gaming occasionally.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#129

Post by hikarikuen »

While I'm sure most of us have relevant anecdotes for both in-person and videoconferencing, I'm not sure how relevant the circumstances in the study (watching a videoconference lecture) are to typical workplace experiences (participating in a videoconference conversation).

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#130

Post by decafninja »

flappyeagle wrote: post #105
peristls wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't always have an option and when you do there are consequences. It cost me my grades in high school (during the lockdown, in an European country) because I was adamant on not wanting to show myself on camera. The same thing happened when looking for a job. I'd rather face the consequences rather than give in.

You always have an option. Negotiate. Use your agency as a human being.

Sometimes it’s worth taking a stand. Other times it’s not. Standing up to people in power organizing pointless meetings is one of the latter cases.

If in person, just zone out. If on Zoom and allowed, turn off camera and vacuum the carpet.

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