When I speak, unless I’m sharing the screen I always keep looking at myself. It’s kind of strange – it clearly does not match a real-world conversation, but somehow I can’t help it.
Edit: More context – I’m wondering if others have it, if this is something that can be explained by some “brain” thing, and also how does it affect the conversation.
Yes. IIRC it’s one reason video conferencing is so exhausting
Only to check and make sure I look normal every now and then.
I hate when the person sharing their screen brings up their view of the video chat, so now I see myself full screen and I don’t want that
Yeah…it’s worth checking that your face is centralised.
Last week my wife ran a video call at work with the camera on her cleavage.
Yes, I make multiple video calls per day for my job and my eyes always drift to myself.
I try not to, but more often than not, it’s pretty much exactly this (whether I’m talking or listening):
I get on a video call, and I basically turn into a bird with a mirror.
I might be odd here. I don’t look at myself, and if I could hide my video feed from myself, I would. I think I look strange, so I find it distracting. I also avoid watching myself on video in general.
We use zoom for work and I enable my video feed as a full panel like every other participant, only time it feels weird or gets annoying is when there’s only 1 other person on the call and our feeds sit side by side. I don’t like how I look and have anxiety, so I guess I use it to make sure that I don’t look weird or something.
We’re just all tiny little narcissists.
I do. I spend a fair amount of time glancing between my thumbnail and the speakers.
Sometimes I turn my thumbnail off, so I don’t do it, but then I worry that I have a booger hanging out my nose, so I turn it back on.
but that just opens the worrying space more: what if you turned the camera back on and there it was? isn’t it better to not know? 🙃
why are you doing this to me?
I stare at the camera so everyone else can see me staring into their soul.
J/k, I look at whoever is talking or whoever has some eye catching background, which sometimes is me.
Don’t blink or show any emotion. Just stare stone cold into the camera
bonus points if they think that your connection is lagging
Just start adding random pauses when you speak
Consider where you look when you’re talking to someone in person. Do you look at them continuously? We generally don’t do that, it ends up being weird and creepy. Our eyes wander as we talk, so it’s natural that we’d do the same during a video call.
And consider this: when your own face is visible to you, when aren’t you looking at yourself? Typically when I see my face, it’s in a bathroom mirror, and it’s natural to look at yourself (whether to take note of your appearance or otherwise).
So I think it’s pretty natural, and I’m guessing lots of people do it.
