Are virtual meetings more useful than face-to-face meetings?

The prompt to this question was a request for a customer for whom I am doing a gardening job to come round and discuss the next development. I wrote to him saying that I have a photographic memory and would be very happy if he were to stand at a vantage point halfway down the steps and we can talk through the garden situation without my having to make a one hour round trip so to do.

10 years ago I was just becoming aware of Skype. My social media consisted mainly of text messages and emails. Now in 2024 the landscape has changed and in my view has become overloaded with clients such as rumble, x, tiktok Facebook, and of course Youtube. YouTube has made the great error of being censorious and so this has caused a rush to other clients such as Brighteon where you can say pretty much what you like.

Facebook has also lost its reputation. Algorithms that automatically query word strings or even individual words will mark down or ban the site for violating community headlines even though no actual human being has ever read the context. I’m sorry to say that even my local site nextdoor.co.uk also sensors me via these robots.

I am hoping that the election of Trump will drain the swamp so to speak and clean out these censorious instruments which I find very inhibiting.

One way out of this is to create your own environment for example a website or even your own server)  where the censoring does not apply but then the outreach is not so great and even then Google itself will make any evaluation of your site and if it is not within government guidance you are likely to be down graded or as it is called shadow banned.

Anyway, the conversation is really about ‘ if it is so easy to make friends and contacts and pass information without leaving your office or home what is the point in face-to-face meetings’. I’ll say straight off that I regard virtual meetings as a very distant second best to real meetings but there huge advantage of clients such as Skype or Zoom is that you can happily converse with someone in New Zealand or California as if they were in the next room and this enables conversations that could not otherwise have taken place.

It is possible to get into a state of mind where you are very lonely and yet at the same time had lots of contacts, people you speak to, people who know you, but this is not sufficient and does not provide nutrition at some level. I have been running  Zoom groups for a number of years now and have adopted the practice of inviting everyone on the group to come together in person for a party or perhaps to celebrate my birthday and this works very well.

There are a number of advantages of face-to-face meetings.

First and most fundamentally we are not designed to live alone and our group creatures and we flourish most when we are physically together (pack animals?) . We pick up all sorts of visual cues when we are in the same room as someone which indicate whether they wish to continue speaking or whether they want to move on and finish a conversation.

I believe we all have any etheric aura which radiates and some elements are only proximal say within so many meters, of the human body and this information itself gives us valuable reference points to the person with whom we are speaking.

Obvious point, you can’t share a drink with someone on the internet. I find that  any number over six or eight on a virtual call can easily turn into something else, more a ‘football crowd’ situation where the group is dominated by one or two people with stronger opinions and this is far less likely to happen than in a real face-to-face party with even 25 people when everyone has equal rights at all times to start a conversation.

I find that the discipline at a virtual meeting is variable to say the least, people are looking at other things, in one case doing the ironing, and listening in the background and not committing themselves to the full. In my own Zoom groups I do not allow blank screens i.e. turn on your camera please. No picture. No admittance.

Lack of attention – You can get away with it in virtual mode whereas if you at a face to face party divided attention would be noticed.

If someone has a face-to-face party is having social difficulties and perhaps sitting on their own in a corner it is much easier for the host to spot them and bring them in to a conversation. They can go and offer them food and drink as a way of reinforcing the value of their presence at the party.

There is another inhibitor with virtual meetings is that they could be being recorded somewhere and this is an inhibitor to  a more cautious person.  At a real meeting you could take someone into a corner and confide in them.

Another obvious point, you cannot bring a gift along to a virtual party whereas with a face-to-face partly the giving of a  gift on entry opens up a relationship perhaps a new one.

Not all parts of the world are equally blessed by good internet connection so you can get sudden cutoffs, interruptions, and loss of quality.

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