The Floating Head Phenomenon
5 comments
·November 10, 2025nrhrjrjrjtntbt
I'd say what we can do now with Zoom et. al. is bloody amazing from the 90s perspective. I dreamed of just a video phone. They started making them late 90s but both ends needed a special telephone line.
Cthulhu_
I vividly remember a shot TV segment about the House of the Future, which in addition to a lot of stuff we now call IoT or smart home, included, of course, a video phone.
bediger4000
This happened to me. I got a new job just before the pandemic, so I did not meet many co-workers until well after. Everyone was taller or shorter, or even not recognizable when in person. Very strange.
sitch_norm
To the best of my knowledge, scientists haven’t studied the disorienting feeling that occurs when digital expectations meet physical realities, but if / when they do, I think they should call it the Floating Head Phenomenon.
This weird disconnect can happen in real life, too. During the pandemic, I needed to get physical therapy. For almost the entirety of that, we all needed to be masked so I never saw my PT's complete face.
The masking requirement was lifted a couple of weeks before my PT completed, and I saw her full face for the first time. I found it incredibly disconcerting because my mind had imagined what her full face looked like (without me being aware), and her actual appearance was very different from what I imagined.