Can Clubhouse Save The World? Maybe.
“Is it possible…we’re starved for connection right now…maybe we’re tapping into something we’re missing?” -Angus Blake (A Clubhouse user I found myself listening to at around 1:30 in the morning.)
It’s no secret that our world has become polarized. The voices at the extreme fringes of the conversation have become the loudest, while those with more reasonable, middle-of-the-road viewpoints, unable to condense the nuances of their opinions into 140 characters, have checked out of the conversation entirely, or else — as is to often the case — moved closer to the extremes so that they might be heard. And this polarization is ripping the world apart at the seams, whether it’s causing Britain to leave the EU, or men in horns and warpaint to storm the US Capitol building.
Enter Clubhouse.
Imagine, if you will, a long hallway, lined with doors. The kind of hallway you might find in any university building — only better. Behind each of these doors are people engaging in conversations. Real conversations, where they ask each other questions, and answer them; where they disagree respectfully, and cite evidence to back up their opinions. Some of these rooms may have hundreds, or even thousands* of people in them, while others may have only a few. And you can open any of these doors and drop in on these conversations just like you might have in college. You can participate and argue, or you can stand at the back of the room for a while and listen, and that’s perfectly ok too. This is what it feels like to explore Clubhouse.
As I describe this experience, I’m realizing that it sounds like a dream that someone might have after being held hostage by the clickbait culture of the last several years. And it very well might be. I found myself wandering around in Clubhouse in the wee hours of the morning, when I should have been asleep. After having spent a couple of weeks asking anyone I thought might be in the know for an invite (I’ll get to that in a minute) I finally broke down and posted my request to my Facebook wall. It was answered a short time later by a former student who is far cooler than I am, and I was so excited to join the community I’d been hearing whispers about that I dove right in and lost myself, sleep be damned.
Within an hour, I had listened to several conversations, and even checked out other rooms that had been created just for fun (every self-respecting university hallway has a room for people who want to sing karaoke, right?). In one room, a former FBI negotiator talked about how patience can be used as a weapon. Then, I moved into a conversation between comedians of color, discussing how the industry has changed for black comedians since the 90s. I checked out a presentation to tech entrepreneurs about time management, and then listened in on a discussion of the biases inherent in AI systems and the necessity of legislation in that arena. It really was like the best parts of being in college (those random encounters with strangers on the quad that would take up your afternoon and make you miss your 1:00 Chem Lab) without any of the crippling debt or buyer’s remorse.
And does that feeling of exclusivity make it all the more sweet? Absolutely.
Anyone who’s ever stood outside in a miniskirt in October, waiting in a long line to get into a nightclub can probably attest to the fact that once inside, you feel grateful. You feel special. You feel like you are getting to experience something that others do not. And that feeling is good. (It’s even better when you’re almost 40, and your much younger, hipper student tells the bouncer “she’s with me” so you don’t have to keep waiting in the cold…just sayin’). Right now, Clubhouse is an exclusive invite-only space with a waitlist that is reportedly a mile long. So, if you want in, you’ve got to know someone who is a) already a member and b) thinks you would be a good enough addition to the space to give you one of only two invitations they receive.
The effects of this exclusivity are significant. Not only does it cultivate a sense of community and pride, but I suspect that it also curates the conversations a bit. Every room I have dropped into so far has been full of clearly highly-educated individuals — the kind who read books, rather than Twitter headlines. And I don’t necessarily mean that they are college-educated (though many likely are), but they are well-read and well informed individuals with opinions that they don’t feel can be easily expressed on other forms of social media. As one user I listened to pointed out “clubhouse is designed for people whose thoughts cannot fit in one tweet.” While I think that this is clear, I wonder about what might happen when the platform scales up — which it will. The app is currently only available on iPhone and boasts over two million users. Even the development of an Android app will open up that space to a larger user base. Once that exclusivity is gone, and people are joining without being “referred” by their educated friends, I suspect that the education level of users may shift closer to the mean of society as a whole. I think arguments can be made about whether or not this is a good thing, but we don’t have to look any further than Facebook or Twitter to see what happens to the level of intellectual discourse with more widespread adoption.
That said, Clubhouse has a few things going for it that other social media spaces do not — the first being the use of voice. There is an accountability that comes with having a live, verbal conversation with someone in a room of 300 people that is not there when you are able to post a mean text retort and then walk away from your screen for a few hours. It forces a level of civil discourse that is deeply needed if this world is ever going to be less polarized. This accountability is further rooted in the rules and etiquette of the app, which demand respect and civil conversation, as well as the app’s structure: the host of a room has the power to mute a speaker and thus retains a bit of power to curate the discussion. This does not seem to have the effect of restricting speech or preventing arguments, but it does force speakers to to frame their arguments in a respectful manner, lest the entire room turn against them.
Another great feature of Clubhouse is that, unlike Instagram or Facebook, no one cares what you look like. The only visual representation you have of a person is one small profile picture. This makes it clear from the start that the app values critical thought over appearances and is likely to ensure that the app won’t become overrun with Instagram models and men people who listen to their crazy ideas because of their beautiful faces. On Clubhouse, users gain followers by speaking aloud. You follow them if you like what they have to say or how they say it. I considered for a while that this may turn the app into yet another echo chamber, where all of the people we listen to share ideas closely aligned with our own, but quickly realized that the structure eliminates this possibility as well. When an open verbal conversation has 300 people listening and/or participating in the discussion, it is unlikely that you would find yourself in many rooms where everyone shares the same viewpoint. Furthermore,while you can block individual users, the amount of time that it would take to block every person in a room who disagreed with you would be such that someone who wished to do so would probably just leave the room, or stop using the app altogether. And this is a GOOD thing. We need to hear opposing viewpoints — but we need them to be presented in responsible, accountable ways that seek to keep the discussion going, rather than end it entirely.
So is Clubhouse going to save the world? I don’t know. But in the era of COVID, when I can’t simply walk into a coffee shop and find myself in a discussion about music or politics or pop psychology, I find that the format brings me a sense of hope and human connection. And in that, there’s potential.
