Random Video Chat Etiquette: Nine Rules That Actually Help

Almost nobody gets skipped for being boring. People get skipped for being hard to see, hard to hear, or hard to talk to — three problems that have fixes, and none of the fixes are about personality. Nine rules, roughly in the order they matter.

1. Put a Light in Front of You

First, because it outranks everything else on this list combined. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette; a lamp behind you does the same thing after dark. The other person can't read your expression, and half of any conversation is visual.

One lamp, in front of you, roughly at face height. Four seconds of work. If the picture itself is the problem rather than the lighting, the browser setup page covers camera permissions and bandwidth.

2. Open With a Question, Not a Greeting

"Hi" gets a "hi" and dumps all the work on the other person. "Where are you from?" gets an answer you can build on. The gap in outcome between those two is wider than any gap in charm.

3. Don't Open With a Compliment About Appearance

Everybody does it, which is exactly what makes it the least interesting thing you can say. It also frames the next five minutes as an assessment, and nobody opens a chat app in the evening hoping to be assessed. Save it for later, when it means something.

4. Say Something in the First Five Seconds

Silence ends more chats than anything else. Five seconds of nothing feels like thirty on video, and both people read it the same way. A bad opener still beats a pause.

5. Follow the Thread You're Given

Every answer contains the next question. A country contains a city, a city contains weather, weather contains what people actually do there in August. People who run dry are usually reaching for a new topic when the old one still had four questions left in it. There are forty specific questions here if you want a stock to draw on.

6. Leave the Pauses Alone

Filling every silence reads as nerves. Sitting through one reads as being comfortable, and it gives the other person room to say the thing they were working up to. Video also runs a beat slower than talking in person — that's latency, not disinterest, and people misread it constantly.

7. Skip Freely, and Don't Take It Personally

Skipping isn't rudeness. It's the format, and everyone is doing it in both directions all evening. Being skipped tells you something about fit and almost nothing about you — you were on screen for four seconds, which isn't enough time to have been judged as a person.

8. Leave Properly When You've Actually Been Talking

Skipping in the first ten seconds needs nothing at all. Ending a conversation you've both been enjoying is a different thing: "it was nice talking to you, have a good night" takes two seconds and is the whole difference between leaving and being rude. You both knew it was going to end at some point.

9. Don't Push Anyone Off the Platform

Asking for another account in the first few minutes reads as wanting to be somewhere else before there's any reason to be. It's also the opening move of essentially every scam on these platforms, because off-platform means away from the reporting tools — so even when you mean nothing by it, the person on the other side has no way to tell. If a conversation is worth continuing, continue it here first. More on why in the Safety Center.

Two Things That Aren't Etiquette

You don't owe anybody a reason for leaving. And you don't owe anybody politeness if they've made you uncomfortable — skip, block and report exist so that you never have to weigh manners against your own comfort. Use them without hesitating. Nothing on this list applies to someone who's behaving badly.