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Originally Posted by ChickenNoodleSoup
Re the blurring: for those of you who think it's normal, think about the facts that a) it doesn't cut out perfectly around you and you can see a little background clearly floating around the person, that just looks weird, and b) it can bug and show the background. I have had video calls for 10 years before the pandemic and it was so normal to see a cleaned up background, I personally even have invested thoughts into what I display in the background of my camera. The blurring only came on as people who had to work from home had to have a background and didn't want to show it. This was an absolute non-issue before, and now it's like "oh, what might he have that" and then hit the screenshot button as soon as it bugs. If you don't invest into a greenscreen, just put your normal room in the background, have a small shelf with a few cute things on it that aren't too personal and you're all set.
Edit: if you are in a different from usual location, I understand blurring a bit, though it's a joke for privacy. But I see regular business people at their office blurring their background. There's a shelf with a few folders there, come on, nothing to hide! Eyes have developed to deal with things in the background of a person talking to you...
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Thanks, CNS. It's interesting hearing about how video calls were pre-pandemic. I'd experienced a few work ones before that, but nothing regular. And I think everyone was at their respective offices (well, cubicles!) at the time (we were meeting with some people on the opposite coast), no blurring.
I do think part of it was that even though the background was blurred, I could still see a general shape of it (I think it was a bed?), and so part of my brain automatically was like, "Hm, what's there?" And so it took energy to try to push that part away and focus on what we were discussing.
I had emailed him about it Monday evening, and he said he could figure out a spot with a neutral background for today's session. Which he did (some sort of desk), and I do think it helped. I know it may not seem logical to many people why it helped--it just did. I thanked him, and he said it wasn't a big deal to do at all.