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The Zoom Gaze

  • Autumm Caines (author)
Chapter of: Social Media & the Self: An Open Reader

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TitleThe Zoom Gaze
ContributorAutumm Caines (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.32376/3f8575cb.fe579632
Landing pagehttps://www.mediastudies.press/pub/caines-zoom/release
Publishermediastudies.press
Published on2021-07-15
Short abstractSINCE THE PANDEMIC began, the seemingly mundane protocols of Zoom have become a significant part of many people’s daily lives: finding the right link, setting up the peripherals, managing the glitches and slippages in this supposedly “synchronous” form of communication
Long abstractSINCE THE PANDEMIC began, the seemingly mundane protocols of Zoom have become a significant part of many people’s daily lives: finding the right link, setting up the peripherals, managing the glitches and slippages in this supposedly “synchronous” form of communication. At first, of course, video conferencing was a godsend—a way that things could continue to go on with some semblance of normal. But it quickly became clear that video conferencing is not simply a substitute for face-to-face encounters. It incurs effects of its own. Not only did Zoom open our homes to unanticipated scrutiny and our schedules to an all-day influx of appointments, it immediately became clear how much more tiring it was to Zoom than to meet. As of this writing, the term Zoom fatigue returns almost 700,000 hits on Google, many of which are listicles on how to combat it. But others try to explain it. One theory is that the hiccups in synchronicity due to bad connections can cause false starts and interruptions, which create communicative friction and frustration that make it hard to maintain conversational etiquette. L.M. Sacasas speculates that the fatigue stems from dealing with reflections and projections of ourselves, making up for the work that bodies in space do. Zoom makes us work harder to convey and receive subtle signals from one another over video. Geert Lovink lays out a meta-analysis of proposed reasons, including what he terms “video vertigo,” a downward spiral that comes from compounding work and leisure in the same space: You need that planned happy hour video call with friends to re-up your energy from so many work calls, but you are too exhausted from work calls to get on another call for happy hour.
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