For the past three weeks, I have been slowly, methodically erased.

Not existentially (though give it time), but technologically.

First, my laptop camera at home blinked out. No warning. No flicker of rebellion. Just gone. A quiet resignation from the land of Zoom squares and forced eye contact. Then my desktop at work followed suit, as if it had been watching, waiting, taking notes. My secondary phone’s camera, because of course there is a secondary phone, also surrendered shortly thereafter.

One by one, like dominoes. Or like a coordinated walkout staged by a very fed-up union of lenses.

Suddenly, I was a voice. A disembodied presence. A mysterious black box with initials. A modern-day oracle, minus the credibility.

“Can you turn your camera on?”

Ah. The question of the hour. The question that separates the seen from the unseen, the engaged from the allegedly disengaged, the pajama-wearers from the performative professionals.

“I would love to,” I say, with the sincerity of someone who absolutely would not love to. “But my camera isn’t working.”

And for once it’s true.

Which brings me to a story I saw floating around LinkedIn (and like all good LinkedIn stories, it may or may not be real, but it feels real, and isn’t that what matters?). An employee, brilliant in his quiet rebellion, reportedly pre-recorded a video of himself looking engaged in which he was nodding, smiling, occasionally furrowing his brow in thoughtful concern, and looped it during virtual meetings for an entire year.

A year.

Let that marinate.

He attended nothing. He contributed less. And yet, there he was being the ideal of “present.” Until, of course, he was discovered and promptly fired. Because nothing says “team player” like outsourcing your consciousness to a looping MP4.

And honestly? I have questions. Not about the ethics (those are…flexible in the modern workplace), but about the effort. The commitment. The cinematography of it all. Did he have multiple outfits? Seasonal lighting? A special “Q4 intensity” version?

Also, how many meetings did he skip that truly could have been emails?

But I digress.

Back to my cameras. Or lack thereof.

Because here’s the thing, when multiple devices fail in rapid succession, the rational mind goes to hardware issues, electrical surges, maybe a shared manufacturer defect. But the psychologistmimi mind? Oh no. We go narrative. We go metaphor. We go straight into the deep end of “what is the universe trying to tell me?”

And what if this isn’t a glitch, but a message?

What if, after years of showing up, performing, nodding at the right moments, arranging my face into expressions of attentiveness and concern, the universe gently (or aggressively) pressed “video off” on my behalf?

What if this is cosmic permission to be unseen?

To listen without being watched. To exist without the low-grade performance anxiety of wondering, Do I look engaged enough? Too engaged? Is my face doing something weird? Why am I blinking like that?

Because let’s be honest. Virtual meetings turned us all into amateur actors in the long-running series “Professionalism: The Close-Up.” And not all of us auditioned for that role.

Maybe my cameras didn’t break.

Maybe they retired.

Maybe they looked at my calendar, at the back-to-back meetings, the subtle pressure to be “on” in every sense of the word, and they said, collectively, “Absolutely not. We’re done here.”

And who am I to argue with such clarity?

Of course, there is the practical inconvenience. The occasional skepticism. The IT tickets that go nowhere. The vague sense that I am now one step away from communicating via carrier pigeon.

But there is also something oddly freeing about being a voice in the void.

No lighting adjustments. No strategic camera angles. No silent self-critique running parallel to the actual conversation.

Just presence. Without the performance.

And maybe that’s the story here. Not about malfunctioning cameras or rebellious employees with looping videos, but about the strange relief of stepping out of constant visibility.

Because in a world that increasingly demands we be seen at all times, there is something quietly radical about disappearing. Just a little.

Not completely. Not irresponsibly. (Let’s not all go full pre-recorded-loop-guy.)

But enough to remember that we are more than our squares on a screen.

That sometimes, the most honest version of ourselves is the one that isn’t being watched.

And if the universe needs to short-circuit a few devices to make that point?

Well.

I guess I’ll stay on mute and off camera for now.