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.
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.
I wanna make sure my hair looks nice and that the camera is positioned properly
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.
Yes. IIRC it’s one reason video conferencing is so exhausting
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.
Yeah. I look at whoever is taking, even when it’s me.
Pretty much this, exactly:
Yes, I make multiple video calls per day for my job and my eyes always drift to myself.
I find it weird to look at my thumbnail video, so I almost never do that.
- If I have the chance, I don’t even enable my webcam. It depends on the workplace…
- Generally, I always look at my notes, because I’m unable to keep all the necessary things in my mind while talking.
- If no notes are needed for whatever reason, I just look at others in the meeting.
If I look at myself, that happens maybe at the very beginning to check what’s in the picture, but I always hate looking at myself.
I combat this habit by placing a window over the top of whatever app I’m using for the video call so my eyes stay on the camera. That strategy is foiled the moment screen sharing becomes required, but more often than not I know exactly what they’re talking about. As I’ve never been on the receiving end of this strategy who knows if it makes me look better or like a weirdo…
who knows if it makes me look better or like a weirdo…
both. I’ve recently realized that during our 1on1 calls my boss is “looking at me”, which always made me feel more listened, overall better.
I mentioned that on a different, informal call, like, “are you using some tricks…” and he told us he’s doing no tricks, it’s just that the camera happens to be close enough to the screen where he places the call window, and that’s a laptop which is far enough that the angular difference is negligent. So that made him look better.
(And I think it’s even better than looking at the camera; he was kinda looking at both, me & the camera.)
But I suspect that this can bite back quickly if you’re in a meeting with several people and say, for a minute you (say, Alex) are exchanging ideas with one person, say, Bob while others (Cathy, Dan) are listening. The weird part is that in Bob, Cathy and Dan’s visual experience you’re directly looking at them, which will seem natural to Bob, but strange to to Cathy and Dan since they know you’re talking to Bob right now so why the heck you keep peeking at them for so long, as if you want them to jump in to the convo or something…
If the situation was similar as I’ve described for my boss (smaller screen, further away), then it can even be affected by the way Cathy and Dan’s videos are arranged on your screen. Not all are going to be closest to the camera, only the closest one to the camera could feel an eye contact, but that’s not going to change according to who you are talking to. (There could be some technology or call UI design to help with that…)
Overall, I think with some video-calling experience people will generally adapt for the situation over time, but it may differ individually…
Yep. Everybody does. Watch where their eyes are pointing, you can tell. I hide the window on apps that let me (or un-maximize the window and slide it off the screen a bit if I’m on one side).
From where their eyes are pointing I can only tell whether or not they’re looking at the camera, but if they are looking elsewhere, I have no way of knowing if that other place is my face or theirs or anything else (even outside scope of the talk – it could be a bug crawling on their desk for all I know).
I am not a child. I move my frame dead center so I never drift.
This is at minimum my second rodeo
I just love looking at myself I think I’m great haha I also like to make sure that my facial expressions are matching my inside emotions …a lot of the time they are and I like the reassurance of that… I also like to practice facial expressions and then look at myself to make sure I’m executing them correctly. But mostly I just like my face and what it does haha
I just love looking at myself I think I’m great haha I also like to make sure that my facial expressions are matching my inside emotions …a lot of the time they are and I like the reassurance of that… I also like to practice facial expressions and then look at myself to make sure I’m executing them correctly. But mostly I just like my face and what it does haha
… -agen.
Wha?
This is why customer service folks often keep a mirror by the phone, looking at their own faces helps to keep their emotions in check when dealing with a difficult customer.
funny how lot of comments are saying “i also look at my face while other person is talking”
what I meant when I was writing this post: looking at my face while I was talking.
…on second thought, I’m not sure, I might as well just be looking at myself 100% time.
When I’m talking, I try to look at the camera (which is on my middle monitor). Depending on which monitor the video call is displaying on, sometimes I’m not even looking at any of the participants.
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.
I look slightly above their eyes, at the forehead or even as high as their hairline. I do not break contact with their upper face.
At work I hide myself. Wish we could on FaceTime, it’s super distracting.
