I have read so many articles from people saying why they hate video calling. It seems that most of these authors think that video calls are awkward and that they never know what to do during the call. People seem to be overly image conscious, think they have to stay focused on the person they are calling for the entire time of the call, etc. Why all the fuss about video chat when it was supposed to be one of our most anticipated future technologies?
It seems like people are making more video calls than they are supposed to be. Video calls are what televisions were to radios. Video calls add excitement to calls. When I video call my friend, I don’t meet my friend’s eyes during the whole call and I don’t expect them to. We look at each other, he/she shows me something in her room (mostly) then they could browse a website while I do the same and we continue chatting. It is only for adding images to an audio conversation. No one expects you to stare into the eyes of someone you are conversing with in real life for the entire duration of the conversation. That would be creepy.
Phone calls are great for chatting, but video adds more emotion and more feeling, and the more you video chat, the more you see the added excitement you get when you can see the person you’re chatting with. If the person is a friend, there’s no need for awkwardness, just sit down and talk. Just like in the physical world, they don’t necessarily care how you look and you don’t care how they look either. So why should there be a fuss then?
Even if the call is with an important person, why would there be discomfort? Aren’t you looking at the person you have feelings for? Seeing the person should excite you more, just like when you see them physically.
Video chats are awesome. Humans are known to be visually stimulated and video calls add more emotion to conversations, they are the closest you can get to the feeling of actually being with the person you are talking to. People who think that video chatting is not part of human nature speak like people who thought that television was a fad or thought that no one wanted PCs in their home.
Video calls are the evolution of synchronous online communication. There have been some people who say that people today prefer asynchronous communication, but until the day people stop talking face to face, synchronous online and offline communication will continue to exist. (I don’t know about you either, but I hate waiting for answers) Asynchronous communication will exist and coexist with synchronous communication from now on, but I don’t expect it to dominate synchronous communication any time soon.
Also, no first-time conversation is awkward. First dates are often awkward, first calls are awkward, etc. If people were to argue that most video chat apps have poor video quality or sound delays, that would be a much more appealing argument. But arguing that video calls are not part of human nature is ridiculous because humans have constantly challenged what people previously thought was not their human nature.
With ever cheaper bandwidth and more and better and better video chat apps, video chat will reach its potential.
