Kaci Alvarez, a 20-year-old journalism student living in Ontario, Canada, used to watch YouTube videos before going to bed. Her ears ring, and she found that the sounds of some online videos, especially the voice of a YouTuber named Ryan Klepacs, relieved the din. Two years ago, after Alvarez tuned into a live video Q&A that Klepacs hosted for fans, the two met, and they quickly started dating despite living hours apart by car. One evening, while they were Skyping, Alvarez e, without ending the call. When they woke up the next day, the videochat was still running.
Having a camera running through the night (or even just during a nap) might strike some as invasive, but the people I spoke with said the practice made sense to them: Couples who live in the same place can share a bed, so why shouldn’t they be able to do the same, albeit virtually?
Couples remotely share a bed for many reasons, ranging from the pragmatic to the romantic. For one thing, it comes with the obvious benefit of confirming a partner’s fidelity. “You can’t cheat on me while I’m watching, basically,” said Krissy Celess, a 24-year-old rapper and salon owner in Miami whose boyfriend lives nearby, in Fort Lauderdale, but travels a lot for work. The routine can also be soothing. Many people I spoke with slept over videochat every night; some said they couldn’t fall asleep without their partner on the screen. When Alvarez visited her parents, who have limited Wi-Fi service, she and Klepacs conserved data by not videochatting during the day, so that they could fall asleep together at night. “It was mandatory for us,” Klepacs told me.
The absence of touch may make videochatting less physically intimate than sharing a bed, but simulated proximity can create a different type of intimacy: While one might share a bed with a one-night stand, one would presumably never fall asleep with a stranger on FaceTime.