[forgetfreeman]

I feel like unrelated issues are being conflated here? The issue of one on one interpersonal communication should be a solved problem given email, text, phone, video call (one on one video calls don't suffer the same flavor of hideousness inflicted when the headcount starts to grow).

By comparison large headcount meetings are gross sadistic and pointless in person regardless of communications format selected. Either they're intended to let a small number of individuals convey information to a larger group (send a goddamn email already, if you're really fancy video your canned remarks and send a link to the video in the email), or they're intended to elicit some kind of exchange among a large group, at which point you end up with an hour and a half of nothing of substance being accomplished while some/most/all of the meeting participants are sitting there fighting their soul's urge to simply vacate their body on the spot. Then there's the ever-popular multi-departmental standup meeting, in which a bunch of people convey pointless detail at length about shit that is wildly irrelevant to the jobs of most of the other attendees to no obvious purpose.

Full Disclosure: I intentionally ignore my email under the assumption that if it's really important someone will pick up a phone and call.