One Key Lesson Zoom Taught Us About How We Can Connect More Meaningfully
We often forget to consider why it is we gather. Zoom social hours are where this absence of intentionality is most deeply felt.
My beef with Zoom, like the origin of most beefs, came from a place of insecurity. I felt like a particularly petulant child who recognized she’d received the knockoff version of a toy and viewed it as an affront to her sensibility. The other kids, while noticing the same difference, seemed less troubled by the alternative. “Well, sure, I wish we were all hanging out in person, too, but it’s better than nothing.” The thing is, I begged to differ. I preferred the “nothing” option, and that made me feel insane.
And like any self-respecting person who saw herself barely edging out of social consensus, I took to the internet to do some self-indulgent validation of my opinion. After extensive placation, something unexpected happened. My resistance grew tiresome and, frankly, a little bit boring. I became curious and started considering social gatherings from a much broader lens. Was it merely the digitization, the “ones” and “zeros” of Zoom, that obscured what would otherwise be a very satisfying social gathering? Or had Zoom simply shed light on something that’s been compromising the quality of social get-togethers even before quarantine? I suspected both factored in, but as with many things in life, we play a much more significant role in the outcome than we realize.
When Zoom first came on the scene, I genuinely didn’t have feelings about it, other than the detached amusement someone in a relationship might have with the release of a new dating app. Due to my temporary exit of the corporate scene into one of the “sabbatical,” I saw the video conferencing medium as something I could politely bow out of and observe from the bleachers. Then, in tandem with the stay-at-home orders, came the sweeping movement of Zoom social hours.
It wasn’t long before my friend group set up a weekly Zoom group call. My immediate thought was to grumble about how unnecessary it all felt, a reaction that ironically indicated its very necessity. The first couple of Zoom chats predictably fell into a pleasant camp of catch-up. Still settling into the novelty of quarantine, we occupied the time discussing how we all were coping with the change.
It wasn’t until the subsequent fourth or fifth hangout I sensed a slinky stagnation that would permeate the group calls moving forward. Our Zoom meetings fluctuated between periods of awkward silences and moments when everyone wanted to speak up at once. My focus grew scattered, wading in and out. Topics of conversation had a hit-or-miss quality as if we were all stewards of improv running with the first person, place, or thing that came to mind. We were under the duress of strange circumstances that limited our ability to live out our full lives. Understandably, we were going to be short on content.
Every topic of conversation probably went on for a bit too long due to an ambiguity of what should be talked about if it shouldn’t be the autocorrection that someone’s phone made from “wide” to “wife.” (A rather fond highlight of one Zoom session.) When someone made an Uptown Girls reference, we dove into the suspicious details of Brittany Murphy’s death for fifteen minutes. Others politely stood by the sidelines, waiting to move on. (A bookmarked tabloid link will show I was in the former group.)
Conversations continued to ricochet like this. Interest waned, and interruptive silences flickered until the host of the meeting announced she had to go. Her departure unexpectedly ended the session for the rest of us. Abrupt as it was, the end of the video call brought on a sweet wave of relief. I inhaled a handful of lentil crackers, as I tried to comprehend the vigorous ascent of this unfamiliar, elusive brand of anxiety. Why did interacting with my closest friends leave me so dissatisfied?
Perhaps the time of the hangouts, which consistently landed in the late, languorous afternoon (due to availability and time zone differences), made the listening and the speaking inherently trying.
This recognition of anxiety introduced an exercise that was equal parts self-revelatory and self-deprecating. There was a hyperawareness of the self, and its unwelcome presence was greatly felt. Everything that came out of my mouth felt stilted and a little stale as if I uttered it twenty seconds too late. Something that once came with little effort, like the use of simple idioms, left me tongue-twisted. I’d use the wrong prepositions (“Too close to comfort”) or the word “solicit” when I meant “loiter.” It was as if my long-forgotten ESL roots had come back to haunt me.
But in person, any self-consciousness mercifully melted once my attention was immersed in conversation. It is in those more intimate one-on-one conversations we can all most comfortably shed our performative garb. It’s then that we feel the mutual warmth of genuine connection, the kind that fosters intimacy, and rejuvenates the collective social reserves. These IRL interactions naturally drift in and out by mingling, bodies floating from one conversation to another. There was a graceful fluidity I had overlooked when it was the default.
In contrast, the flow of social Zoom calls are similar to the flow one might experience when learning how to ski or drive stick for the first time. The movements are inconsistent, choppy, and leave you feeling a little bit exhausted. Could this shift be analogous to learning a new skill set, requiring us to patiently wait for our subconscious to calibrate to the social machinery? Much like the widespread insistence on learning Zoom etiquette, this did not feel like the whole story. While muting might minimize some of the unnecessary interruptions, the focus on etiquette felt like a matter of form over substance. It wouldn’t necessarily resolve the lack of intimacy or need for social fulfillment.
Of course, if I am pining for intimacy, some might argue I should forego the medium altogether and pick up the phone. In a sense, I have to agree. Using video conferencing instead of the phone for close conversations is like attempting to fit a square peg into a round hole just because the square peg has a new satin finish. A phone call with a close friend has always been an effective antidote to feeling disconnected or isolated. Nevertheless, it leaves a void in its wake where group gatherings are concerned. Are our only two options to weather the lesser-than equivalent of what we had or avoid social Zoom hours altogether?
In the tempting dichotomy of resistance and resignation, my mind is predisposed to make the choice expending less energy, i.e., deciding to skip the Zoom calls. Had there been a designated start and end to social distancing, I wager I would have done just that. But as time thrummed on, and with it, a perpetually shifting timetable, the social conundrum had grown more pressing. A rebellious area of my mind roused to seek a different paradigm to make sense of it.
Adrienne Maree Brown, the author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, discusses the concept of intentional adaptation and its role in shaping the world we want to inhabit. One of the premises is that no matter the circumstances of life, change is a certainty. In the face of change, Brown asserts, “we spend precious time thinking about what has changed that we didn’t choose or can’t control, or thinking ahead to future stress… instead of moving towards anything in particular, we are in nonstop reaction.”
Instead of simply reacting to the circumstance at hand, Brown suggests we reframe it as an opportunity to imagine a future that is bigger and better than what we previously had, to discover rather than recover what we have lost. It is only with intention that we can articulate the feeling that is missing and subsequently cultivate it in a progressive direction. Admittedly, this broadened my perspective. Even so, I found it inherently difficult to articulate feelings, especially those that were absent.
But then, I stumbled across a breadcrumb. It was a WhatsApp notification. In fact, it was a barrage of WhatsApp notifications. For months, I had been part of a group thread for Dinner Confidential, a women’s organization led by hosts who hold dinners and facilitate group discussions that traverse topics on what it feels like to be a woman in today’s world. Each monthly dinner has a theme; hosts provide questions to dinner guests to reflect on beforehand. The dinners, hosted through Zoom, not only persisted but inspired offshoots of even more Zoom hangouts. (The nerve!) Every time I opened up WhatsApp, I couldn’t help but notice the group thread’s effusive energy as it stood in stark contrast to my increasingly half-hearted attempts at connecting online. Sybil Ottenstein, co-founder of Dinner Confidential, found that, while Zoom dinners were undoubtedly different from those hosted in-person, “[the dinners] are still able to provide a really nourishing and connecting experience for people online.”
As it is, the dinners have a built-in structure that transitions smoothly onto the digital platform. The organization’s emphasis on active listening allows each guest an allotment of time to feel completely heard in sharing her experience without receiving any feedback from other guests. In this way, it safeguards against interruptions and lessens one’s dependency on audible feedback as a sign of support. The format of the dinners is akin to a laissez-faire equivalent of a focus group. Hosts act as moderators and take a more active role to help steer the group discussion to avoid lulls. Cognizant of Zoom burnout, hosts have modified their original approach by shortening dinners and incorporating breathing or meditation “to bring the body into the experience” at the beginning of the dinner.
While executing such intentionality in a group gathering is not exactly a new practice, it’s not thought about very often in social gatherings. In The Art Of Gathering, Priya Parker, a master facilitator and strategic advisor, reframes how we should view and conduct gatherings to get more out of them, whether that’s meeting the social needs of a specific individual or of a collective. Parker writes, “There are so many good reasons for coming together that, often, we don’t know precisely why we are doing so… We end up gathering in ways that don’t serve us, or not connecting when we ought to.”
Once there is clarity on the purpose of a gathering, Parker proposes the host use structure and specificity to create higher levels of engagement and meaning-making. I suspect Dinner Confidential’s intentional inclusion of these elements is how it is able to offset the disorder and aimlessness that sometimes plagues Zoom social hours. I have typically been of the mind that structure stifles, but, when applied with intentionality, structure is a necessary vehicle for changing some aspect of our lives. It’s how we progress meaningfully. Without structure or specificity, Parker says we are not able to take advantage of opportunities for gatherings to be a source of growth, support, guidance, and inspiration.
While I am not necessarily advocating assigning moderators during our Zoom happy hours, I wonder what is possible if we devoted more time to get clear about our social needs, so we could act with intention to serve them.
For starters, I envision a Zoom gathering where we take turns reflecting on the most challenging part of our week, while the rest of us simply hold silence or space for one another. Or a birthday Zoom where we each play songs that encapsulate our relationship with the individual celebrating the birthday. Or for the dance-deprived among us, playing a shared music stream while holding live dance parties.
Perhaps, we could allow our feelings and social needs drive the agenda instead of the surface-level minutiae we are vaguely compelled to regurgitate in our everyday conversations. When social distancing ends, many of us will be tempted to remember Zoom as the time technology failed to deliver in a social capacity. Even so, I wonder if Zoom is holding some kind of distorted mirror to our subconscious social proclivities like our self-consciousness or our compulsion to (sometimes thoughtlessly) fill moments of silence.
It is as if Zoom magnified our rough, performative edges that generally keep us emotionally isolated and avoidant of the values that bind us together, like really listening to one another or empowering us to talk about difficult issues.
Sometimes the perspectives that hold the most valuable insight require us to examine the root of unpleasant feelings. When we do, we can excavate new paths to deeper, more meaningful connections than we ever thought possible.
