If you haven’t yet been invited (I know) to Clubhouse and joined the audio-based app, you’re part of what feels like an increasingly endangered species. There’s always that moment when a new product or trend pops, when it becomes not just the property of early adopters or insiders but something like the stuff of common culture.
Facebook was a weird thing in Cambridge and then your grandma was scrolling through her news feed and liking pictures with the strategic consideration of a drunken sailor. Snapchat seemed like an idea both obvious and unnecessary until every single person younger than you was using it. I’m not sure we really needed another $14 salad option, and then Sweetgreen became as ubiquitous as fire hydrants.
That’s what has happened to Clubhouse. Its user base has quintupled in the past month. It is outpacing TikTok and Instagram in App Store downloads around the world, despite only being available on the iPhone and needing an invite from someone already on the inside. The NY Times has started lavishing attention on the app, which is the surest sign that it has already arrived.
For the uninvited/initiated, Clubhouse is solely voice based. It’s a place for the ear, not the eye. You enter different ‘rooms’ that are organized thematically, and the essential ethos is free wheeling: you mute and unmute your little icon, and the effect is something like a conversation, with people taking turns, interrupting, jumping in and following up.
If a podcast is like ordering in dinner, Clubhouse is like being in the kitchen with a bunch of people, drinking wine and throwing things in the oven. It allows thinking out loud in real time. It can share some of the frustration of talking in a crowd: finding a room you want to be in is still to scattershot, and the whole experience could be more user friendly.
Still, talking and being heard has hit a nerve. Among my friends, everyone is talking about it, and on it. My relationship to it seems pretty typical: initially thinking of it as a hang out for CEOs and investors, to being shown it skeptically on a date over the summer, to being invited by a girlfriend in the fall and laughing together about its messiness, to feeling like it’s essential to how we talk. I hosted my first event on it last night.
Every technology or app that takes off is fueled by a key insight into what people want or need at a particular moment. These products aren’t windows onto a wider world, necessarily. They are mirrors onto our own riot of desires and lines into unmet needs. In the process they create new wants: I still remember the criticism that the iPad would founder because it was a technology tweener. It’s since made space and found a space. What pleasure node is Clubhouse hitting?
The first thing to note is that this explosion is happening against the mute backdrop of the pandemic. People want to connect, and they want to talk. They don’t only want to consume media, or hear a pristinely edited podcast: they want to talk to it and to each other. Like turning a faucet just a little bit, Clubhouse taps into this pent up demand by offering a facsimile of in person interaction that feels just enough like the real thing that it practically is.
The continued rise of audio even at a time when the world is saturated with images confirms that we are sensorily promiscuous, needing to see and hear. The other app that has achieved escape velocity recently is TikTok, which has perfected the art of addictive videos algorithmically tailored to hold your attention. Clubhouse and TikTok are this generation’s Twitter and Instagram, although we still have those too: attention seems infinitely dividable. More is more.
What do people talk about on Clubhouse? I’ve spent a few days hanging out on it, and the range of things is astounding. There are rooms on dating and yoga, karaoke auditions and how to pitch a start up, housing policy and what it was like to serve in the Trump Administration. People flirt and argue and listen to the sound of their own voices. You drop into the rooms and when it’s time to go exit by tapping the “leave quietly button.” You might look at the same and see that five minutes or five hours have passed.
If Zoom replaced the business meeting and the happy hour (lamely), Clubhouse seems set to claim something like the dinner with friends or apartment party. You don’t really linger on Zoom: the pressure of the visual makes spending too much time there feel like over exposure. Clubhouse has revealed that faces and backgrounds can be distractions. In an image saturated culture, the freedom to be just a voice is one that many people are claiming with gusto. And you can do it while doing other things, vital in a multitasking world.
Everyone agrees that much of our online culture is toxic, appealing to our worst instincts rather than our better angels. Clubhouse, which is audio and ephemeral (the sessions are not recorded), might suggest that the primary culprit is the written and permanent word. What if you could say what you think, and not have it be what you think for forever? How cool if audio could push us in directions more authentic, thoughtful, and just fun.
A confession: I have been a passionate voice note leaver on iMessage for a long time. I like the way they lets you think out loud, making it up as you go along, freewheeling and distracted or particularly intent. It feels human and attractively imprecise at a time when all of the screens can make us fear that we are cyborg adjacent. I love the idea of getting to know someone via their voice, its stops and starts punctuated by a laugh or pause. Even the most familiar one can surprise, and the most surprising one can feel familiar.
That is the great promise of Clubhouse: that it takes us deeper into one another’s messy minds, that it rubs our voices up against each other and makes us more intimate with the fears, thrill, and wonder of really really hearing each other. It is a useful step back that might take us forward. Even as vaccination gains steam and Covid cases fall nationally, it might stick as a gathering spot for the unlikely and surprising.
No images, no filters. Just the stunning portrait of the sounds we make and the words we speak.
Let me know if you need an invite-
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