This disturbingly reminds me of the Teleputer footnote / anecdote from Infinite Jest, in which it was imagined that for video conferencing, people’s vanity and status competition would lead to essentially an elaborate arms race for third-party digital beautification products, like digitally-aware face-altering masks, because even though the spirit of video conferencing technology was to make it easier to share your personal, casual self in sincere, quick & easy conversation (just hop on a call), it would just get subverted by the feeling that one’s true, unaltered appearance wasn’t good enough.

Kind of like Instagram lifestyle curation because everything in your life must be a photogenic and epic Big Deal That Makes You A Somebody.