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Comment by pyronik19 | Hacker News Reader

"On top of standard-grade performance anxiety, the "big face" image that Zoom uses by default in its "speaker view" can trigger a "fight-or-flight" surge of adrenaline, writes Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford's Human Computer Interaction Lab."

From the hyperlink in the article. This for me is the kicker. From the start to end of a zoom call I feel like I'm on a stage. When I am in an in-person meeting I feel like I am "hanging out". One drains me of my mental reserves, the other fills it up. Zoom just feels draining. They noted the fact you see yourself and there is real time self critique to the hissy sound and pixelation. After a year of it .. I'm close to done.

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This is interesting to hear. I have the opposite experience, I'm generally an anxious person and feel stressed going into meetings, especially with groups of new people. I've found that I'm much more relaxed on zoom calls than in person, I think because it feels like there is much more of a buffer between me and the people I'm talking to. Seeing faces on the screen does not provoke the same feeling as a real life meeting.

(Incidentally, I really dont like working remotely and want to get back to real meetings as soon as I can, even if it will make me more anxious in the moment)

What this really means is that different people are different and good collaboration tools will allow people to customize their experience while providing some kind of shared infrastructure. Even in an in-person meeting, you have lots of different behaviors, the people who chat to each other, the people who are super focused, the people who take notes on their laptop, the people who sit farther back in the room, the people who arrive late or leave early, the people who distribute the agenda, etc.

I agree, seeing my self during a zoom call is similar to looking in the mirror at myself while in a meeting, i've never done it in person, and would be very odd to see someone do it during a meeting. Ive been trying out new approaches to tackling the "looking in the mirror" tendency I get while in a virtual call. So far, the simplest and most effective is just minimizing the zoom call all together and listening to everything. I've never needed to see myself during a meeting before, why do I need to now?

Interesting! I have noticed this is a thing for me as well. I have found that by disabling the display of my own video, I feel much more relaxed. I highly recommend you give this a try.

This has worked for me, but when on a handheld device I'm paranoid of cutting half of my face off or keeping myself in a weird position.

I wish it had a two-tone high-contrast filtered version of myself, that I could use merely for positioning. Might be a potential solve?

I suggested to the folks behind pop.com, which does not show your face to you, to implement some form of indirect feedback mechanism when your face is aligned and centered. I thought maybe a small face+camera icon that turns red/yellow/green depending on whether your face is not visible, sideways/non-centered, or centered and in focus. That way even if you don't see yourself, at least you will know that others can see you fine.

Who are these folks? I have a tonne of suggestions and would love to give feedback!

This should be trivial for the people at zoom to add. They already split the background and foreground in the video for displaying images that aren't the wall/messy room behind you.

One trick with some videoconferencing software is to make the window smaller and put it at the top of your screen (or wherever the camera is). The other face will be smaller and you will be more directly looking at the camera and hence making eye contact which makes you look more natural to whomever you’re calling.

I think apple does some trick on facetime where it just draws over your eyes so they are pointing at the camera while you look at the screen.

I've done a couple of interviews via Codepen where you're watched over video while you come up with a solution, and it's much more difficult than a typical whiteboard interview.

I don't want to invalidate your experience at all, but I find exactly the opposite.

I do a lot of video pair programming, and I feel supremely comfortable screen/video sharing. Getting to work on my own machine with my own IDE and shell set-up, my own hardware in my comfortable home office, 10000% better than awkwardly scratching at a whiteboard speculating about what may or may not work if committed to code.

It doesn't make me anxious but it gives me exactly the same feeling I get when someone looks over my shoulder when I'm on LSD.

I haven't tried it for a big call yet, but Jitsi seems better. For just a chat Discord still reigns supreme for call-quality of the services I've tried, although it may be bad data because I'm usually playing a game or helping someone solve a problem rather than solely conversing.

This is why I rarely go on video to begin with (well besides having my laptop in clamshell mode and not wanting a webcam literally pointing at my bed 24/7

I'm a firm believer that video adds nothing to the call other than add distractions.

> I'm a firm believer that video adds nothing to the call other than add distractions.

I agree. And I would add that voice does not add anything either. It's better to do everything by chat or by mail, that at least leaves a usable trace.

I wonder if we can compare our Briggs Myers personality categories ;-)

I’m the opposite. In-person meetings are extremely taxing while zoom meetings are very relaxing. I’d love to never have an in-person meeting ever again.

Just use Grid view.

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