No Stupid Questions

::: spoiler You sound like a Solarian

In The Naked Sun Isaac Asimov portrays a world focused on avoiding physical contact with other people. The Solarians interact with each other largely through technology. They live far from each other, spread out across a sparsely populated planet. People are taught from birth to avoid physical contact, and live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Face-to-face interaction (referred to in the book as "seeing") is seen as a repugnant chore. Communication takes place through technology unknown of off their world: holography, 3-D television. Communicating with each other in this fashion is referred to as "viewing", in contrast to "seeing", which is face-to-face. Communication is frequent, but it is "viewing" of a transmitted image. 1

look me in my same face you would see if we turned cameras on every once in a while?

Not the same as interpersonal interaction, misses much of the communication we evolved to express and understand.

OTOH, I've had a few Zoom-only relationships where we're pretty tight, but that's rare.

LOL, one of those is my Zoom rep. We email occasionally, trade pics and jokes. Every few months we Zoom and shoot the bullshit about our lives. She gets me the skinny on upcoming stuff, where my account's at, what I might need or not need. Because we're tight like that, she jumps when I need a thing, and in turn, I read all her correspondence carefully.

Another is a coworker, nearly my best friend at the company. When we finally met in person at a team meeting, we were tight. Boss was like, "Had you guys met before today?!"

Again, pretty rare relationships. Know who I'm really close to? The guy who lives here who I used to work in the office with. Man came to my wedding. None of those remote people did. When he needs my help, I jump.

And if anyone wants to poo-poo interpersonal work relationships, I will ask that person what they think of long-distance relationships. The conventional wisdom is that they don't work out. (Yes, I know those are different. But how different and why? Think on that.)

Great post and question! Much food for thought as we navigate this new world.

Anyway, I had some thoughts earlier tonight, both pro and con.

https://old.lemmy.world/comment/8056815

Because I can’t seem to act the same remotely as I do in person. I have trouble reading the room and responding as expected.

The benefit is that there's no practical benefit but they get mad when you point out that they're just making you come in to sate either your busy body co-workers being terminally extraverted to the point where even just going to the bar after work doesn't stroke them off hard enough, or to sate the middle manager's wanting to squeeze you for in office metrics so the higher-ups stop asking what in the fuck the middle managers even contribute when the best the workers do is the time when it's impossible for said middle managers to be metric squeezing them the entire day.

It helps with team building exercises that make you feel like a toddler.

The extraverts had the tables turned on them in 2020 and have been itchy for a captive audience ever since. It's a drug fix for these people, nothing more. I've skipped every cross country in-person team building gibberish since 2020 and will continue to do so.

I think everyone just pretends to be honest. They're a few fucking weirdos who enjoy waiting 5 extra hours for their delayed flight and having to rent a car to drive to some conference that could have been conducted virtually and all that other bullshit, but I'm fairly confident that most people would prefer NOT to do that and to simply wfh. Webcams are fine with me. I have friends. I have a wife. I have a family. I don't need to see work people in real life. It literally adds zero benefit to my life. Also a lot of people suffer from chronic pain like back problems. Commutting and flying and sitting 8 hours a day in some piece of shit ergo chair from 1988 is literally torture for them. Work culture has no sympathy for disabled people. They can go get fucked. Work from home for life all you motherfuckers.

I find personally it's easier and more relaxed to hang out in person. But that's with friends, so unless you're on close terms with everyone that does seem like a big hassle.

I wonder though where you meet up, and what you do. I can totally see myself wanting to do a meetup like that if it's somewhere fun, like a big city, and there's some events planned out.

Some people really like in-person socialization. There's something lost in the webcam only meeting. I'm glad you adapted well to the circumstances of the pandemic, but not everyone faired so well. I can tell ya I went a lil bonkers not being able to see people in person.