This is it. The issue is exhaustion compensating for all the audio problems-- dogs barking, room echoes, compression, images out of sync, the delay in reactions (constantly being unsure if you were heard- not knowing what the correct volume you should be speaking is), being asked to repeat yourself, and the mix of your audio with those of others.

It's a lot to process. With 15 people on "speakerphone", the audio is IMO the biggest and most taxing problem.

Its normally partipants with bad mics, headphones, AGC and the crappy audio support in windows.

I do a number of actual play games and it's the players trying to use the built in mics/headphones that have difficulty hearing the group conversations.

I use a high quality external sound card and don't have that problem - hangouts does seem to disconnect me when I don't speak for a while as my noise floor is so low

I get a similar kind of exhaustion when talking to assistants like Siri.

Siri has a huge latency problem. I say "Hey Siri" and its' precious seconds before she's listening (articles online tell us that it's possible to just ask the entire question without waiting for the beep -- but doesn't work, sometimes Siri's just not ready.). Someone at Apple clearly needs to reengineer Siri -- I say this as someone who's bought into the Apple ecosystem.

Siri is the like the Apple Maps of voice assistants.

Alexa (at least Echo gen 3) doesn't have this delay. I can talk with Alexa without getting frustrated at the latency. (unfortunately Alexa doesn't handle pauses or stumbles in sentences well)

it is interesting. I don't get exhaustion because I don't talk to the assistants that much, but people talk to their virtual assistants in a different cadence or register. Instead of "alexacanyoutellmethetime?" it is "ALEXA...WHAT...TIME...IS...IT."

Owning an Alphabet Corp Branded Espionage Hockey Puck (tm) myself, I must admit I'm fairly impressed at how far voice recognition and natural language processing has come, despite this. I remember when you really had to talk in that stilted, properly pronounced, methodical way, and then tentatively wait for a response for what seemed an age -- and it wasn't that long ago (maybe like, four or five years?). Nowadays, I can vaguely mumble at mine from the other room without thinking too much about sentence structure or how I'm pronouncing words or the volume or speed of my dictation or switching off things making background noise, and it usually does the right thing, and responds about as quickly as a person. It definitely feels a lot less mentally draining!

I talk to Siri casually when I request her the few times a week I do.

FWIW I say please & thank you too, and am opted-in to "Improve Siri" which Apple really ought to known to make opt-in from the start.

I also have type-to-Siri (in accessibility settings) for things like "What's playing?".