There’s a particular kind of tiredness that comes from being on camera. People who’ve worked through the WFH years know it. Five hours of being a face on a tile, listening, smiling at the right moments, controlling what’s visible in your background. The drain has a name now — Zoom fatigue — and it’s a real thing, with real research behind it.
The fix that everyone reached for was “turn the camera off,” which works fine in a meeting but is weird as the default for socialising. Voice chat skips the awkwardness by just being voice-only from the start. Nobody’s wondering why your camera’s off. Nobody’s subtly judging your room. You’re both just talking.
What you actually lose by not showing your face is much smaller than you’d expect. The vast majority of conversational signal is in the voice — tone, pace, breath, hesitation, laughter. The face contributes some emphasis but it’s mostly redundant with the voice signal. You can tell when someone’s smiling by how they’re saying things. You can tell when they’re uncomfortable. You can tell when they’re actually interested versus politely pretending. The face just confirms what the voice already told you.
What you gain by not showing your face is large. You can call from bed. You can call while doing the dishes. You can call when you’re tired and not looking your best. You don’t have to perform a version of you that’s photogenic enough for someone you’ve never met. You don’t have to think about what’s behind you. The mental overhead of being on a call drops by a significant amount.
The other thing — and this is the bit that’s harder to put a number on — is that the absence of a face changes who you talk to. On a video site you cluster with people who look like you, dress like you, live in spaces that look like yours. On a voice site you cluster with people who sound interesting. They’re different sets. The voice cluster tends to be wider.
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