For someone who have always had to connect with friends online for so long now, I have been met with countless mishaps in communicating with them especially on video calls. Nowadays, I would prefer voice calls to video calls, for many reasons and one is because too many things can go wrong while I'm at it. Video calls can be scary!
Hear me out! I've been through a lot in the screens of video calls. The prompt is asking for mute and unmute issues, I've had worse... Imagine me and my steeze at 100% on a video call and network decides to pause my partner's side of the call. Then I will start explaining myself to myself and the next thing I'll hear is "You said?"
I don't know about others but repeating myself after putting all my energy in the first one is something I'd rather not do. I have ended video calls just because I don't want to say what I have said again... Is it just me or have you ever paused yourself (no movement or speaking) just so the person will think it's network and end the call?
That's not even the thing, one aspect of video call I may never get used to is, the preparation before the video call begins. I was once in a long distance relationship that had me on a roller-coaster for every video call until I got more comfortable with the person. There were so many things I wished didn't happen but they did.
This is an overexaggerated gif of me getting ready for a video call.
One is dressing up so well, even putting some light make up and I end up looking nothing like I did on a normal mirror. And then, there is the one I'll be smiling on the camera and the person is seeing something I had thought I hid well behind me but I didn't at all. Somehow, the video call focus changes to something embarrassing.
One time on a video call, I muted to talk to a friend close by about the person I was having the call with. You needed to see the freedom I used in saying all I wanted to say and looking back to the video call and realizing that I didn't click on the mute button well. The person heard everything and knew I didn't want him to hear.
He laughed it off but I was so embarrassed and wished I had checked very well before I exercised my freedom. What about the time I had to move round our whole house, stepped out, climbed down the stairs, hoping for a reconnect to happen but never did. Bad network is the most frustrating part of having a video call, I tell you.
I think the biggest disaster I've had on a video call is hearing something so unexpected from a person and I burst into a laughter that made me snort out stuffs from my nose even when I didn't have running nose before the call. It was worse and crazy for me because the person it happened in front of was a crush, steeze down the drain!
First image was gotten from canva