Why I love video calls
I have read so many articles of people saying why they hate video calls. 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 too self-conscious about their image, they think they have to stay focused on the person they are calling for the entire duration of the call, etc. Why all the fuss over video chat when it was supposed to be one of our most anticipated future technologies?
It seems as if people are making more video calls than they are supposed to be. Video calls are what TVs were to radios. Video calls add excitement to calls. When I make a video call with my friend, I don’t look into my friend’s eyes during the entire 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 used to add images to an audio conversation. No one expects you to stare into the eyes of someone you’re conversing with in real life for the entire conversation. That would be creepy.
Phone calls are great for chatting, but video adds more emotion and more feelings, and the more you video chat, the more you see the extra thrill you get when you can see the person you’re chatting with. If the person is a friend, there is no need for awkwardness, just sit down and talk. Just like in the physical world, they don’t necessarily care what you look like and you don’t necessarily care what they look like either. So why should there be a fuss then?
Even if the call is with an important person, why would there be awkwardness? Aren’t you looking at the person you have feelings for? Seeing the person should excite you more, like when you see them physically.
Video chats are amazing. Humans are known to be visually stimulated and video calls add more emotions to conversations, they are the closest thing to the feeling of actually being with the person you are talking to. People who think video chats aren’t part of human nature speak like people who thought television was a fad or thought nobody wanted PCs in their homes.
Video calls are the evolution of online synchronous communication. There have been some people who say that people today prefer asynchronous communication, but until the day people stop talking face to face, online and offline synchronous communication will still exist. (I don’t know about you either, but I hate waiting for answers) From now on, asynchronous communication will exist and co-exist with synchronous communication, but I don’t expect it to dominate synchronous communication any time soon.
Also, no first-time conversation is awkward. First dates are usually awkward, first calls are awkward, etc. If people were to argue that most video chat apps have poor video quality or sound lag, that would be a much more compelling argument. But arguing that video calls are not part of human nature is ridiculous because humans have consistently challenged what people previously thought was not their human nature.
With bandwidth getting cheaper and more and better and better video chat apps, video chat will reach its potential.