I wonder why you would think they pretend. Any sufficiently large group will likely have its loners and social butterflies, and butterflies are the people who

I wonder why you would think they pretend. Any sufficiently large group will likely have its loners and social butterflies, and butterflies are the people who tend to be loud, joke around, and generally try and find (even if shallow) topics to talk about. I'd rather consider it as a character trait, than straight up dishonesty. It's also nice to have a few of those people in a group, otherwise any meeting w/o a clearly defined topic would become too quiet and depressive. They are the people who break the ice, I don't see why they can't be having fun doing that. I agree about the "zoom socializing" part though. Mainly because what Zoom offers is a fairly flat space where you're either one of the 20 people talking/hearing at the same time (so you gotta be loud) or you don't exist. You can't easily form a bubble of three people and discuss something all three of you care about, and any topic with 20 other people either becomes too exclusive (3 talkers and 17 listeners) or too shallow. (a 20-people grand debate about the weather)