I think his concern, along with several others, is that you are seeing a lot of things that aren't there. As I said in another thread, visual cues are a great source of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Being aware that people can't see you can certainly improve your verbal communication skills.
Our company has offices in several countries, and long before the pandemic it was a given (part of new employee training) to not rely on these cues.
If you're operating in the US, it is still multicultural. As a simple example, about 40% of the US is introverted, yet most strongly extroverted people have little understanding of the differences. And they very often misread the facial expressions of introverts.
> I’m not sure why you would pick the lowest common denominator and choose the lower bandwidth, less engaging, less human way of collaborating.
In all these threads, you've failed to understand the low signal to noise ratio that video brings. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but comes with a thousand more falsehoods than words do.
As an example, where I work, meetings are a heck of a lot better than when we used to have them in person at work. The few that insist otherwise are simply unwilling to accept that they have not adapted, and the problems lie with them, and not with the format.