Don’t Mute, Get a Better Headset

> You lose all of those spontaneous reactions that keep a conversation flowing.

I have a huge circle of friends, colleagues and family who are very used to push-to-talk, mostly due to the nature of competitive video games where you really must be able to hear all the possible audio cues like enemy footsteps. We find ourselves used to it to the point that when someone cracks a joke people press push-to-talk to laugh audibly and there's nothing weird in it. It has never been annoying to press the push-to-talk button just to laugh, it actually comes so naturally that we sometimes joke about how "stupid" it is to press a button just to laugh.

The push-to-talk approach comes with other benefits as well. E.g. when you throw your hands up in the air in frustration and mumble some words of annoyance (whether it's a frustrating meeting or an intensive video game) that you wouldn't like anyone to hear, you can be absolutely sure that no one will hear them. Or maybe you want to say something to the people present in the meeting room without the people online hearing it (job interviews, sales meetings etc). Or maybe you're working from home and your SO bursts into the room without knowing that you're in a meeting and exclaims something embarrassing. Maybe the expensive noise-cancelling mics would not transmit any of these embarrassing words or exclamations but there would always be the lingering "but what if they heard it".