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The board · Amsterdam · Switch

There is a call button in every chat and I have never seen anybody use it

Posted as nobody_uses_video, 30 August 2026

Looking for
five minutes on camera before anybody invests a month
Experience
Six years, three arrangements, one of them excellent.
Around
the west, Amsterdam

There is a video call button in every conversation on this app. It has been there for years. In six years I have been offered it exactly twice and both times by the same person, and I have proposed it perhaps forty times with about a one in five acceptance rate.

I do not fully understand the resistance. Five minutes on camera answers, at no risk to anybody, the questions that otherwise take a month of typing: whether a person is who they say, whether they can hold a conversation, whether there is anything there at all. It has saved me at least three pointless first meetings and produced one immediate no from somebody I had been writing to for a fortnight.

Thirty six, the west, switch, six years in. Three arrangements and one of them was the best thing I have been part of.

So this is my terms paragraph and it is short. A few messages, then five minutes on camera, then a public coffee if we both want one. I will go first, I will keep it brief, and I will not be offended by a no as long as it is said.

Not looking for anybody who wants six weeks of typing first. Not looking to be told that a call is a lot to ask. Not looking for a person who is only comfortable in text.

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What to have sorted before you reply

Which direction is on the table this month is not in the post, and asking flat out reads badly. That takes a conversation, and a conversation needs a room you can walk out of.

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