# Do you wonder what virtual cow-orkers look like? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 23, 2025, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706 "2025-05-23T13:41:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/21 "2025-05-23T18:55:54Z")
Given the linkage between Scott Adams and the term, it doesn’t feel very SDMB-compatible these days. It’s certainly not nearly as local an in-group term as e.g. Hi Opal. See also the current thread: > [@Scott Adams says he is dying](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scott-adams-says-he-is-dying/1018677): > > Scott Adams revealed today that he, like Biden, has aggressive Prostate cancer and says he will be gone by the Summer. A few years ago he revealed himself to be a pretty awful person (I suspect his first divorce broke his brain because he seemed more normal before then) and he always seemed to me to not be as smart as he really wanted to present himself to be but Dilbert gave me some laughs in its time and it sounds like he is going through some rough symptoms. I guess all you can do is hope h… ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/22 "2025-05-23T19:06:51Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Given the linkage between Scott Adams and the term, it doesn’t feel very SDMB-compatible these days. Aw man - another cancel culture warrior! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/23 "2025-05-23T19:50:34Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I don’t even really wonder about the race/gender/etc of posters - nearly all of whom are using fake names. I’ve periodically been surprised to find someone I assumed one gender was a different one - but then I forget what I learned pretty quickly. TL - I THINK I originally thought you were male, but then saw you were female. But I wouldn’t bet on any aspect of that. Right the second time: I’m female. It’s in my profile; you can see it if you click on my avatar. I lose track of who is which gender all the time on the boards. Usually it doesn’t matter. Occasionally, depending on the subject of the thread and of the particular post, it is relevant; in which case I’ll try to check. It’s my vague impression, @Dinsdale, that you’re male; but that impression’s pretty vague. I don’t visualize much, and am partly faceblind. I’m likely to have a poor idea of what people look like even if we’re in the same room facing each other. I rarely notice, online or on the phone or whatever, if instead of a poor idea I’ve got none at all. > [@ZonexandScout](#): > > I don’t have virtual co-workers, but I do teach all-day classes where every attendee keeps their camera off the entire day. My camera, of course, is always on except for class breaks. It is quite challenging to “sit and deliver” material for a total of 8 hours just staring at a dozen blank boxes on the screen. That would bother me; mostly because I’d keep thinking that I should be seeing something in the blank boxes, and because I’d keep wondering whether any of the supposed listeners were actually there. Message boards don’t demand chronological congruity, so I can just assume that even if you’re not here at the moment, you’ll probably come back eventually; and even if not, somebody else will most likely see my post. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/24 "2025-05-23T19:58:56Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But if I can hook that story to “John” or “Jane” it sticks. And the next time they mention John or Jane I can instantly recover their backstory to hook whatever new hunk of info into the existing skeletal webbing of my understanding of them. That’s interesting. Names slip through my grasp. I told my daughter, “Douglas Adams just said he’s dying of cancer”. She was confused, of course. To her, Scott Adams and Douglas Adams mean different things. To me, they are really similar names. I frequently get lost in books that have a lot of characters, especially if they are mostly referred to by name, and not by how they relate to other people. I can keep track of “the king’s eldest daughter”, but not her name. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > Brains be weird Yup. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/25 "2025-05-23T20:52:47Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I can keep track of “the king’s eldest daughter”, but not her name. And I’m the polar opposite. “King’s eldest daughter” is exactly how GF tends to label these many folks. To me that’s a pile of incomprehensible spaghetti. Which is sort of an analog to the common (possibly sexist, or at least stereotypical) trope about geographical navigation. Namely that women navigate by reference to landmarks: “starting from home, exit our tract turning right, turn left at the Shell station, right at the Piggly Wiggly and it’s just past Dunkin Donuts on your left” but a man navigates by identities and would say / think “starting at home, exit the tract going north on Elm Ave, then east on Bogus boulevard for 4 blocks then it’ll be on the north side of the street in that 5th block.” > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I frequently get lost in books that have a lot of characters, especially if they are mostly referred to by name, and not by how they relate to other people. I have that problem when the names are weirdly foreign. But I can’t fall back on the relationships either. So I get double-lost. When most of the characters have e.g. Russian names, I read e.g. Dostoyevsky as “D ~~~~~~~~~y” which is the same as Dimitri I mean “D~~~~~~ i”. I was quite interested to read _The Three Body Problem_ by that up and coming Chinese SF writer _Liu Cixin_. I had to quit halfway through book one of three because I had no idea who anyone was; every Chinese name was the same: “ ~~~~ ”. Which was a shame because what I could comprehend of the story was great and even unrelated to the story itself it was very interesting to see more or less current Earth politics & science told from a China-centric POV. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/26 "2025-05-23T21:22:11Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The difference today is that you sometimes do get to see the people you are dealing with. When video conferencing was expensive I was on weekly audio conferences with someone who I never saw until she showed up at our location for a visit. My wife has done six or seven books for an editor she has never seen, and I don’t think even ever talked to on the phone. > My writing group meets almost exclusively on Zoom, though almost everyone turns on their cameras. When we have lunches some people say they are surprised that someone they just met in person is tall or short. In 2021 I taught a college writing class on Zoom. As well as serious content-related questions, I’d have students do short icebreaker-type questions like “What’s your fave ice cream flavor?” or “what did you have for breakfast?”. A month into the course, I asked “How tall are you?” There was collective surprise when a slim, slight-looking student said he was 6’3" and a woman with a loud voice and commanding presence said she was 4’10". ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/27 "2025-05-23T21:34:57Z")
Huh, I’m okay with foreign names so long as they look different. Dostoyevsky longer than Dimitri, and the first is mostly round whereas the second is mostly vertical. So those look different. John, James, Joseph, and Jason are all pretty much the same word to me. But it’s the opposite of how men and women stereotypically navigate. Women usually use landmarks (things with names) whereas men theoretically think about how far North and West they need to travel. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/28 "2025-05-23T21:56:34Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > the common (possibly sexist, or at least stereotypical) trope about geographical navigation. Namely that women navigate by reference to landmarks: “starting from home, exit our tract turning right, turn left at the Shell station, right at the Piggly Wiggly and it’s just past Dunkin Donuts on your left” but a man navigates by identities and would say / think “starting at home, exit the tract going north on Elm Ave, then east on Bogus boulevard for 4 blocks then it’ll be on the north side of the street in that 5th block.” I’m female. I find my way to unfamiliar places by the second technique given (and given as male), in combination with parts of the first (I’ll have written down something like “go north/left on Rt X and turn left on County Y; Business Z’s on the corner. Then six miles and it should be on the right with a sign. If I get to road/landmark Q I’ve gone too far, turn around and head back.”) I find my way to familiar places by what I can only call “the back of my head knows how to get there” – I’ll have a proprioceptive idea of where the place is compared to where I started, and I’ll know by name (not necessarily the name on the sign, as roads around here often have multiple names, and sometimes the name I’m using is one I’ve made up) the roads I’ll take to get there and will know whether it’s left or right turns; but finding the correct turn to take is actually done by a form of recognition I can’t explain if I’m giving directions. I know when it looks right without having to read a sign, and often before I can read the sign or if in bad lighting/weather I can’t read it at all; but I can’t explain to anybody what “looks right” looks like. I might have memorized particular landmarks when learning how to find the place and be able to tell them that, but that’s not what I’m really doing when I find it. – I’m likely to be equally confused by “king’s eldest daughter” and by character names. Characters who come up often and are distinctive in voice and/or behavior I can keep straight. When somebody refers on page 260 to someone who hasn’t been seen since page 113, I’m often hunting back through thinking “who the hell is that anyway?” When six people are all talking and behaving the same – actually I might just find something else to read. > [@gkster](#): > > There was collective surprise when a slim, slight-looking student said he was 6’3" and a woman with a loud voice and commanding presence said she was 4’10". She probably _needed_ to have a loud voice and commanding presence. She’s probably spent most of her life determinedly insisting on not being ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/29 "2025-05-23T23:20:44Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > “King’s eldest daughter” is exactly how GF tends to label these many folks. Dating cross-culture again? “Eldest Son” _is_ the name of my BIL’s eldest son. A name. What he calls his eldest son. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/30 "2025-05-23T23:23:39Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Even the avatars here that are pix of some person are generally not pix of the actual Doper. Not that it matters a whit, but mine is really me. Granted it is me 67 years ago but it is me. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/31 "2025-05-24T00:36:56Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Dating cross-culture again? “ Nope. Generic white 3rd or 4th generation American just like me. I’m certainly glad to learn of the relationship leading from her to them. That’s an important attribute. But it’s almost like she’s reluctant to give their names until _after_ she’s established the connection path and fleshed out all the rest of the bio details; it’s almost like the given name is an afterthought. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/32 "2025-05-24T00:48:23Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > navigate by reference to landmarks: I navigate mostly by the sun. It was weird visiting relatives who live North of the sun. That and the very common method “navigating left” (or right). People who are lost often go around in circles, and unless I can see the shadows, I’m one of them. My wife is the opposite: from our house, she has no idea which _direction_ is the CBD. She’s lived in this house thirty years, the sun always rises east of us, I know that the CBD is west of us, towards sunset, but she doesn’t make that connection. Loss of the sun doesn’t confuse her, because she never considers it anyway. For specific destinations, my family (both genders) navigate by distance and count: “second left”. My SIL’s family think that is unhelpful, if not actually perverse: to them it’s “at High Street”. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/33 "2025-05-24T01:20:19Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > it’s almost like the given name is an afterthought. That’s pretty much how i feel, honestly. I remember someone here was today at me for posting about something and not giving the person’s name. But while the story was interesting, it was a person I’d never heard of and would probably never hear of again. And the idea of laboriously typing a given name (something swype doesn’t do, in general) seemed absurd and pointless. The person who complained felt like i was intentionally withholding important information. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/34 "2025-05-24T02:57:43Z")
When driving, N S E W I can do. “Driver’s side” and “passenger side” works fine. “Right” and “left”? I drive past the intersection trying to figure out what it means. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/35 "2025-05-24T03:00:46Z")
I remember the first time I presented at a continuing professional development seminar online, way back in 2012. No zoom. I just had a black screen and I talked to it. The organizer was just a voice in my headphone. No feedback possible from the listeners. After it was done, over the next couple of weeks I got compliments from people who had heard it, including my Big Boss. They found it interesting, but it was about the equivalent of listening to the radio for them. The first time I presented to a law school class by Skype was better, but to make the technology work I had to go to a particular room in the basement of the courthouse that had the special kind of computer hookup needed. I would have preferred going in person, but Saskatchewan’s winter intervened. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/36 "2025-05-24T04:04:37Z")
My first real job in Japan was working for a document company and I handled the translation department, including talking to freelance translators. I talked to some several times a week for several years. Some of them I never met. It was always really weird meeting them after only knowing their voices for so long. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/37 "2025-05-24T06:34:46Z")
We hired a new person in June 2020, who only worked part-time. I didn’t meet her until 18 months later. She walked by and recognized me, as we had seen each other on Teams. I was sitting, and we were approximately face-to-face. And I am not tall. Unless there are technical difficults, most people have their cameras on for smaller meetings (2-10 people). For larger meetings or presentations, all cameras are turned off, except for the speakers. This means there are some people I haven’t seen very often, but anyone I talk to on a 1:1 basis will have their camera on. Everybody at our company has a laptop or phone with a camera. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2025, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/38 "2025-05-24T16:32:40Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > When driving, N S E W I can do I find that useful in overall orientation, if I’m somewhere where I can identify it, which on unfamiliar ground I may not be able to do. But it’s often confusing as to a particular turn, because while Route X N is presumably heading north over its general course, at the point where I’m supposed to turn onto it it may indeed be headed north, but it may instead be headed east, west, south, or anywhere inbetween. And then there’s loop roads circling around cities, which are guaranteed to be doing all of those over their overall course, but which persist in being named things like 390N and 390S anyway. Aside from that – it’s often cloudy around here; and sometimes dark; and near solstice the sun isn’t going E to W it’'s going SE to SW or NE to NW; and around equinox near noon it’s pretty much straight up and not useful for any direction. The Finger Lakes, at least, more or less stay put; they orient almost exactly N/S along their length. (More or less: kindly do not build or buy a house right on the edge and then complain when it floods. Which people do, all the time. And which the lakes do, with some frequency, even before Climate Weirding.) ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/39 "2025-05-25T00:03:37Z")
In Montreal, North is not North. But I do use the island-level orientation for directions. Also “up”. You go “up” when driving east or west away from the Main (Boulevard St Laurent) and “up” when driving “north” away from the St Laurent river. Unless you’re in like that one chunk of the city on the other side of the canal, then “up” is South…follow the building numbers. In terms of invisible coworkers; I’ve met maybe a quarter of my colleagues, and most of those only for a couple of hours once or twice. I’m 100% remote, a couple of provinces away. I had a contract in hand - unsigned - when, during the hiring process, I was flown out to meet the hiring director. I’d had a professional relationship with him for a decade as industry colleagues but had never even seen a photo, let alone a video call. Meeting him was vaguely alarming as I apparently had made assumptions as to his appearance and he didn’t fit those assumptions at all. Talking to a complete stranger’s face, who had a familiar voice and whom I “knew well” was definitely surreal. I could have signed that contract, so was essentially hired sight unseen (I negotiated a little more and signed another one!). I’ve seen him once since, for a handful of hours. I have no expectations of seeing him again any time soon. I’m phone-friendly with one project manager that I’ve never met, but I’ve declared if I ever go out there I’m inviting myself over for supper. Post-covid remote work cab definitely be very odd. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2025, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706/40 "2025-05-25T01:14:40Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#): > > Meeting him was vaguely alarming as I apparently had made assumptions as to his appearance and he didn’t fit those assumptions at all. Talking to a complete stranger’s face, who had a familiar voice and whom I “knew well” was definitely surreal. Yeah, that’s how I felt whenever I talked to the freelancers as I posted above. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-wonder-what-virtual-cow-orkers-look-like/1018706.md?page=1)