You cannot escape social norms. The act of rejecting them doesn’t free you from them. You will be judged for rejecting them and others will adapt to it, either by rejecting them too and creating a new social norm, or shunning you and attaching a certain rejection to a specific social signal. There’s nothing artificial on it. The logic you describe is very oblivious to how social norms and social actors work.

Also here we are talking about webcams not really as technological artifacts, but as social tools. Obviously it’s not a technical requirement to be presentable, but a social requirement, that’s implicit in the discussion.

“Virtual backgrounds as the norm” is an interesting practice, pretty much like school uniforms erasing difference in class by dressing everybody the same.

virtual and blurred backgrounds still signal a lot. Not only they let the viewer know that your environment is not nice, but they also become aware you’re somewhat ashamed of it, enough to be willing to hide it.