Zoom Fatigue and the New Ways to Party:
Virtual-reality coffee shops and party-simulation apps are aiming to help you gossip and mingle more realistically online.
By Anna Russell
“What we’ve really lost with covid is the public commons,” he went on. “We’ve lost the ability to be among a crowd—among a lot of people, maybe some of them friends but some of them strangers.”
"Bailenson has argued that Zoom and other video platforms cause users to experience “nonverbal overload.” On video calls, faces appear much larger than they would in real life, creating the impression that you are very close—too close—to one another. (Everyone’s a close talker on Zoom.) Then there’s the fact, often remarked upon, that on Zoom you’re always on. In real life, when members of a group aren’t speaking, they’re looking at the speaker, “or they’re looking down, or they’re looking at their notes. What they’re not doing is staring at you the whole time,” Bailenson said. “On Zoom, every single person gets stared at for one hundred per cent of the time. Do you realize what an insane design decision that is?”