It ’s Not Just…The Strange Psychology of Zoom Holidays

A version of this article was published in It’s Not Just You, a weekly newsletter by TIME Editor at Large, Susanna Schrobsdorff. Subscribe here to get your dose of small comforts. Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. This week: The psychology of holiday Zooming, lessons from a recovering pessimist, and a moment of photographic wonder.🌞 Think about Pluto–how it continues to exist as itself, as always, oblivious to human categories. No one else gets to define you or determine your worth. Be a planet despite what they may call you.—Maggie Smith Are You Mad At Me? Show of hands: Who began Thanksgiving by telling a group of beloved family and friends to mute themselves? The great flaw of video platforms like Zoom for non-work gatherings is that only one person (or one little box of people) can talk at a time. This means chaos for people like my people (because no one knows who’s responding to whom). Or authoritarianism (because one of us is liable to appoint themselves the moderator and start calling on people like it’s a city council meeting). But even if you’ve figured out how to have a conversation with 12 people simultaneously, it’s still disconcerting because we lose so much of our nonverbal communication tools in this medium. On Zoom, there are no empathetic side glances, no covertly raised eyebrows, no eye-rolling. And if there is eye-rolling, there’s no way to know who the target is. So na...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Evergreen It's Not Just You TIME for Health Source Type: news