It is always the case that new technology will have its reactionaries, those people who (shock horror!) delete their Facebooks, those modern-day Siddarthas who remain in the wilderness, indulging in handwritten lecture notes and other outmoded activities.

Skype, the globally successful video-calling service is no stranger to the technophobic reactionary. However, in this instance, they may actually have a point.

My initial charge against Skype was the obligation to remain patiently inside that little box, that four-sided prison which leaves you nowhere to hide. I found myself having to take half-time breaks where I’d duck out of range to brush my teeth, tidy some files or pretend I’m doing either of those things and actually just escape the camera’s glare and breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

A typical Skype “session” begins when you pick up and the other person leaks onto your screen, invading your room with their presence. Skype also forces you to see your own image superimposed onto a part of their room, or even over a part of their face. How wonderful.

This in itself prompts a frenzied state of panic: you check your hair, check your room, check that there are no dirty underpants within view. The conversation stutters into life as you adjust your face to the screen, perhaps trying to conjure a clever pose, concealing unwanted facial features.

Skype is as much about your own image as it is about seeing the other person and strikes caustically at our own insecurities. The process of seeing yourself reminds me of when people hear a recording of their own voice and claim, “that doesn’t sound like me.” It is difficult enough to speak with someone on the phone without now having to speak to this uncanny mixture of a camera, a face and your own (constantly-freezing) reflection.

The main thing that defines Skype is this combination of two cameras working together to simulate interaction. The problem with this as a communicative device is that unless the camera is coming out of the screen between their eyes you are never truly making eye contact with the other person. This disjointedness is the profound flaw in Skype, creating feelings of dissociation rather than association, of absence rather than presence.

If I were to go into the implications of this when applied to the fact that most people, if they’re being honest, tend to look at the small, projected image of themselves just as much (if not more) than they look at the other person then this becomes even more unsettling.

“Awkward” is how many people tend to describe Skype. And whilst my friend claims his long-distance relationship is being “kept afloat” by Skype, I say revert back to the phone, or to Skype without the cameras – after all, vanity gets us nowhere.