Last week I confessed to paying my electricity bill during a lecture.
That was me on the far side of the screen, drifting, with no one noticing.
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This one is a confession from the other direction.
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I once paused a job interview to look at someone's bed.
It was a recorded interview, one of a series I was reviewing for intern positions. Medical students, each talking to a camera from wherever they lived.

Most of them had made their beds.
One hadn't. The duvet was shoved into a corner. A bag sat on top of it, and around the bag, a pile of books and clothes.

I paused the video to check I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.
I was.
Then I pressed play and did my best to set it aside.

This isn't a piece about tidy bedrooms.

💡 ONE IDEA WELL

Nobody had told the candidates to make their beds.
The instructions said nothing about what should be behind them.
They just knew.

Somewhere between reading the email and pressing record, most of them had turned around, looked at their room, and understood that it was now part of the application. So they tidied it.

The candidate with the duvet in the corner hadn't done that. Maybe they didn't think of it. Maybe they recorded it in the ten minutes they had. Maybe their room always looks like that, like most rooms do on most days.

None of it told me anything about whether they'd be a good intern.

Whether they'd call for help at 3 am.
Whether they'd sit with a frightened parent.
Whether they'd check a dose twice.

The duvet couldn't answer any of those questions.

But I saw it. I stopped the recording for it.

I was there to mark one test.
The camera had set them a second one, and only some of them knew they were sitting it.

🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGE

I understand why speakers ask for cameras on. I ask for them too.

Talking into a grid of black squares is lonely. You tell your best joke and hear nothing. You ask a question and can't tell whether anyone is thinking or has gone to make toast. A screen of faces gives you something back. A nod. A frown. Someone's cat walking across a keyboard. It feels like a room.

I'm not arguing against that.

But I'd never asked who the cameras were for.

Mostly, they're for me. They settle the speaker's nerves. And the cost of that comfort gets paid on the other side of the screen.

Every face in the grid comes with a room, and everyone in the grid can see everyone else's.

Every face also comes with a mirror. Researchers at Stanford* surveyed nearly ten thousand people and found that staring at your own face on screen, which they called mirror anxiety, was one of the things driving video-call exhaustion. Feeling watched by a wall of faces added to it. An hour of your lecture is also an hour of them checking their hair and wondering if it's rude to eat.

And for a few people, being seen isn't about tidiness at all. A camera shows where they are, who's home, and who might be listening from the doorway. You won't know which square that is.

One of the researchers made a point I keep coming back to: fixing this shouldn't be left to the people suffering it.

In a lecture, that's us. We set the rules of the room.

⌨️ TRY THIS

Next time you're running something online, ask for cameras. Don't require them.

And say why. "I'd love to see faces if you're comfortable. It helps me know whether I'm making sense. Off is fine too." It takes ten seconds, turns a rule into an invitation, and tells the people who can't be seen that nobody is going to ask them why. When the cameras stay off, ask for the chat instead.

Then tell them about the mirror. Most people don't know they can hide their own face. In Zoom, click the three dots on your own video and choose Hide Self View.
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Everyone else still sees you.
You just stop watching yourself.
I've had mine hidden since 2020.
I don't miss me.

If the camera is part of an assessment, like an interview or a recorded presentation, this matters more. Tell candidates up front that what's behind them doesn't count, and ask everyone to blur their background. That way the ones who made their beds and the ones who couldn't are sitting the same test.

You can ask for someone's face without asking for their bed.

🧭 ASK YOURSELF THIS

Know someone about to type "cameras on, please" into a chat box full of strangers? Forward this to them.

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Speak soon,

Andy

PS. I'm writing this in bed with the electric blanket on. Melbourne has had its false spring. Please don't ask me to turn my camera on.

* Fauville G, et al. Video-conferencing usage dynamics and nonverbal mechanisms exacerbate Zoom Fatigue, particularly for women. Computers in Human Behavior Reports. 2023;10:100271. doi:10.1016/j.chbr.2023.100271​