Skype Fail

This past year I learned of the wonders of Skype & Face Time (video chatting over the Internet). It's a wonderful way to stay in touch with family and friends. Sure, there are phones, email, and Facebook. But, it's different when you actually get to see the person you are communicating with. There are so many unsaid things that can be inferred by facial expressions and pertinent pauses in conversation.

You can even have pizza dates as Sarcastically Delicious (aka boyfriend) and I do since he recently moved away for school. We even will watch NFL games together.

But, I've noticed something that I do that probably makes me seem like an egocentric video chatter. When you face time or skype a video stream of your image shows up in a little box in the corner of the screen. Sometimes I find that I end up looking at myself more than the person I am chatting with--and no it's not because I like to look at myself--it's more because I'm worried about what I look like. Usually I will video chat with my laptop, but then I started using my iPad and Sarcastically Delicious asked why I looked orange and puffy. Apparently there is a different in picture quality between the two devices and also a difference in lag time between video and audio. Sometimes S.D. says I look like a badly dubbed Asian movie.

Regardless of the device, I've become self conscious about looking like a life size Cheeto on the web or a character from Kung Pow (which if you haven't seen and you like stupid-funny movies, i highly recommend) So rather than enjoying the full experience of web chatting, I'm looking at myself forty to fifty percent of the time, rather than devoting one hundred percent of my attention to the person I'm talking to. Chatting fail.