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What is Remote Work Doing To Your Social Life
How technology is changing the way we think, act, connect, and question.
Table of Contents
Have you ever read those articles about looking and sounding your best in a virtual meeting? You know the ones…
- 5 Tips to Project Confidence on Screen
- Stand Out in Your Next Stand-Up
- How to Be A Better Storyteller On Zoom
Granted we could all use some pointers when it comes to choosing backgrounds, avatars, and child-free zones for our home office. But there’s one unsettling piece of advice that frequently comes up in these articles and it usually goes something like this:
“Try to focus on the camera when you’re speaking to a virtual crowd. Doing so initiates eye contact with your audience and makes you look more credible, trustworthy, and attentive.”
We all know eye contact is important. And this “golden tip” is endorsed by many public speaking experts, including TED’s Director of Speaker Coaching. What more evidence do you need, right?
Well, like many people, I’ve spent the last few years working a fully remote 9-to-5 job. But I’ve also studied performance in everyday life, especially in the context of remote work. Here’s why I think it’s important and necessary to question these so-called best practices not only for your mental health—but also for your overall performance.
The death of eye contact
You will watch me and you will like me
Let’s set the record straight. We all know there’s something inherently jarring about looking directly into a camera lens rather than the eyes and/or faces of the folks you’re actually speaking to. There’s a very good reason for this. One we take for granted.
The practice of looking directly into a camera to produce some kind of intimate, dramatic, or comedic effect comes from photography and film—later adopted and normalized by social media influencers and content creators.
The important distinction here is that it typically happens in the absence of an audience, unlike a virtual meeting where you’re addressing coworkers in real-time. Think about it. When you’re leaving a video message for someone on your smartphone, you look at yourself on screen—not the camera. Because we naturally stand in for the audience when it’s not there. Of course, we’re also tempted to look at ourselves in the presence of a virtual audience, thanks to a combination of vanity, visual distraction, and a barrage of intrusive thoughts.
Do I look okay? Anything stuck between my teeth? Can they tell I have gym shorts on?
But in reality, you’re probably not going to look directly at the camera unless there’s a conscious attempt at self-staging, like taking a selfie or a family photo, or recording one of those dehumanizing one-sided video responses for a job interview. For many of us, the expert-approved tip feels affected because it is affected.
Like it or not, locking eyes with the camera in office meetings not only dehumanizes the conversation, but inadvertently shows you’re a little too concerned with yourself.
Trust me, I’ve tested it out with colleagues in a recorded meeting and watched it back. It’s weirdly narcissistic and I’m uglier for it. Although the post-COVID-working world made “screen actors” out of many of us, office chats (virtual or otherwise) are about connecting with the people we work with—not getting intimate with the technologies that serve us.
Manifesting likability on a Zoom call:
“Love me! LOVE ME!”
Not to mention, you’re likely to miss out on non-verbal feedback (e.g., real-time facial reactions) that could help you address any visible confusion. Some folks are quick to add that peripheral vision helps. But not only do these practices make you arguably more self-conscious and neurotic (as you anxiously go back and forth between cam and screen), they also create the illusion of eye contact, which isn’t the same thing at all as building genuine trust with your co-workers.
When a performance is lazy and disingenuous, a discerning audience can usually tell.
Being on camera
Work from home: Then and now
When the camera’s on in your home office, you’re made to feel like all eyes are on you. When in fact you’re just another disembodied voice on screen. Yet you’re expected to go out of your way to bridge this technological gap.
As with many things, technology becomes a surrogate for the physically unattainable.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are numerous benefits that come from working from home, like greater flexibility, no commuting expense, no “dress code”, more time to exercise, take healthy breaks, etc. I love those parts and, in my experience, the pros greatly outweigh the cons. It’s an absolute game-changer because it allows you, for the first time in corporate history, to work on your clock.
But there’s something to be said about the inherently passive, one-sided reality of a screen. And it’s important to understand what that’s doing to us in the context of remote work, so we can design our work habits around it instead of pretending everything’s normal when it isn’t.
Here’s what a typical virtual meeting usually consists of.
Looking at the camera, raising your hand to speak, sending emojis on cue, remembering to turn your mic on and then off and then on again and off again, commenting in the chat while listening to the presentation, chatting in private while watching the main chat while listening to the presentation, and, the classic… making sure you don’t share the wrong screen when you’re on. 
It’s mentally exhausting in a way we don’t quite realize.
Here’s everyone’s dilemma: how do you show you’re attentive, engaged, listening, AND look good doing it? At the end of the day, something’s gotta give. And it’s usually our mental health.
Smile! You’re on camera! All the time!
It all feeds into the anxiety and stress of having to perform for the technology rather than the people using it. On some level, this may even lead to more detachment—both from yourself and the people you interact with, which isn’t particularly great if you’re on a team.
Don’t you find it’s slightly harder to dislike someone once you’ve seen them as a complete person versus a floating head on your screen?
Sure, your resentment for a terrible coworker won’t melt away just because you’ve seen them in the flesh. But having that direct unmediated access allows you to see things that you simply can’t working from home. Like their palpable nervousness before a big presentation or their depressed sigh after a particularly rough day. Suddenly they’re just like us. Tired, distracted, and overworked.
All of these behaviors actually humanize us by placing us outside the constricted view of a screen and making us more relatable through the disclosure of unstaged moments.
In a way, it’s not the technology or remote work per se that’s causing anxiety. It’s the expectation and pressure to perform on screen as if it’s the same thing as being in person, which it most certainly is not.
Instead of pretending we’re all a big happy family working out of the same house, we need to acknowledge that it’s a different way to work, that there are inequalities and personal preferences that keep people from being camera-ready all the time. Let’s stop dictating other people’s acting choices. Let’s stop forcing each other to overact.
It’s a meeting. Not a Cribs episode. Calm the fuck down.
Connecting to disconnect
If you don’t post it, did it even happen?
Most modern-day communication devices and office apps are evolving to simulate not just any reality, but the kind that makes you the center of your own universe. To achieve this, they keep us insulated, self-obsessed, and perpetually distracted from anything that exists outside of it.
We already know this about social media apps. But work-from-home apps are just as insidious, if not more, considering they’re designed to keep you working “on the go.” Whether it’s at an airport, in a gym, or on a toilet. As a wise friend once noted: “You are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.”
We’re conditioned to believe that we can be everywhere all at once when, in fact, limiting your availability makes your presence more valuable. It gives you more agency as a worker and a performer.
Unlike film actors who retain control over their on-screen persona by establishing a regional distinction between the frontstage and backstage, we’re conversely expected to diminish this distinction in order to maintain a strong connection with our coworkers while working from home.
This creates a breeding ground for self-deception, which occurs when “what were originally two different roles—actor and audience—are compressed into the same individual.”
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with self-staging at work. We all do it and our survival pretty much depends on it. But calling on 9-to-5 remote workers to be more performative (when we’re technically working out of a backstage) is bound to affect our self-orientation, mental health, and social behavior in ways we don’t even realize. And that’s a scary thought.
“Front region control is one measure of audience segregation. Incapacity to maintain this control leaves the performer in a position of not knowing what character he will have to project from one moment to the next, making it difficult for him to effect a dramaturgical success in any one of them.”
Erving Goffman,The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Being yourself
So how can you “be yourself” on camera when the camera keeps you from “being yourself”? The blurred lines of remote work mean there’s no longer a clear distinction between where work ends and personal life begins. No clear boundary between actor and audience. Anyone can speak at any time.
It’s no one’s stage, which makes it everyone’s stage. On one hand, this is a disruption of traditional power structures typically found in a physical office space. On the other, it’s disorienting and makes you more susceptible to conformity and groupthink.
One way to reclaim your freedom in this nebulous space is to engage in perspective-taking exercises that broaden your window of perception, keep you sharp, and help you combat zombification.
➡️ Challenge your assumptions about yourself and the people you work with.
➡️ Question social norms established by giant corporations and tech companies.
Most importantly: challenge any work habits or acting direction that make you feel dead inside.
Because that’s the beginning of the end.
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