It’s Time to Start Leaving Our Zoom Cameras Off
There’s nothing quite like being at your absolute scrubbiest, with your hair up in the sort of messy bun that reads “I might be a witch and not the fun kind,” and getting a calendar reminder for a forgotten Zoom meeting. You’re sitting on the couch, you’re wearing some gross old T-shirt with a slogan about how much you like coffee, and you don’t feel like Making an Appearance. And yet, it’s generally considered polite to have your camera on when you join ye olde Zoom grid.
Here is a modest proposal: Let’s normalize turning off the camera in Zoom meetings. For so many reasons.
For one thing, it’s terrible for the psyche to stare at yourself so much. As Ellie Anderson writes in Forge, when we look at our own faces all day, we start to judge ourselves in unhealthy ways, to the point of losing touch with our own physical selves.
Plus, while it hasn’t gotten any easier to look away from ourselves onscreen, it hasn’t gotten any more fun to stare at them, either. That discomfort you’re feeling? That’s because the you you see on Zoom looks just a little bit…
