I finally got video chat working!
After rebooting into Windows for a few weeks, because Pidgin and Skype don’t do video chat in Linux, I discovered that if you run Empathy (which is shit), you can video chat with people on Gmail. In 2 out of 3 calls, one person can’t see the other, and you have to hang up and try again. It crashes, the video locks up permanently, and while working correctly, it uses 100% of the CPU, but it works!
Take that, capitalist pigs!