Why i love video chat

I have read so many articles from people saying why they hate video calling. It seems that most of these authors think that video calling is awkward and never know what to do during the call. People seem to be too image conscious, they think they have to stay focused on the person they are calling for the entire time of the call, etc. Why all the fuss in video chat when it was supposed to be one of our most anticipated future technologies?

It seems like people make more video calls than they are supposed to. Video calls are what television was to radios. Video calls add excitement to calls. When I make a video call with my friend, I don’t look him in the eye during the entire call and I don’t expect them to. We look at each other, he / she shows me something in their room (mostly) then they could browse a website while I do the same and we keep chatting. It is only for adding images to an audio conversation. No one expects you to stare into the eyes of someone you are conversing with in real life during the entire conversation. That would be creepy.

Phone calls are great for chatting, but video adds more excitement and feelings and the more you video chat, the more you see the added excitement you get when you can see the person you’re chatting with. If the person is a friend, there is no need to be uncomfortable, 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 as well. So why should there be a fuss then?

Even if the call is with a partner, why would there be discomfort, you are not looking at the person you feel for? Seeing the person should excite you more, just like when you see them physically.

Video chats are amazing. Human beings are known to be visually stimulating and video calls add more emotion to conversations, they are the closest thing to the feeling of actually being with the person you are talking to. People who think that video chats are not part of human nature speak like people who thought television was a fad or thought that no one wanted computers in their home.

Video calls are the evolution of synchronous online communication. There have been some people who say that people nowadays prefer asynchronous communication, but until the day when people stop talking to each other face to face, synchronous communication online and offline will continue to exist. (I don’t know about you either, but I hate waiting for answers) Asynchronous communication from now on will exist and coexist with synchronous communication, but I don’t expect synchronous communication to dominate anytime soon.

Neither are first-time conversations awkward. First dates are often awkward, first calls are too, etc. If people were to argue that most video chat apps have sub-par video quality or have sound delays, that would be a much more compelling argument. But arguing that video calling is not human nature is ridiculous because humans have constantly challenged what people previously thought was not their human nature.

With the bandwidth getting cheaper and better and better and better video chat apps, video chat will reach its potential.