To me, watching nine talking heads in front of animated fractals, strobing Escher drawings, and looping gifs of hockey fights for a half hour while attempting to make sense of an invoicing discrepancy just is not conducive to a focused meeting environment. There you have it, 40+ super high quality animated webcam overlays you can easily add to your stream to make it stand out from the crowd. BUT, I still believe it would be extraordinarily distracting. If someone wants to go all trippy and encourage everyone to have at'er with animated backgrounds - so be it. Rather, there has to be some limits that are outlined by the meeting organizer in advance. That being said, it's not like I oppose it.

Combine that with the 'Hollywood Squares' type of layout of Teams and it's an invitation to a world of spasms and seizures. A chat thread that is peppered with an occasional emoji or gif is completely different from having to manage a meeting - professional OR informal - with someone whose background look like I just ate a bag of magic mushrooms.

Gif webcam