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Except that's not true, having experienced it, I would say that ClubHouse produces intimacy as a service. I've had magical conversations on the application that

Except that's not true, having experienced it, I would say that ClubHouse produces intimacy as a service. I've had magical conversations on the application that I've never had anywhere else. Saying that it's just another product and that it can be copied in 5 minutes is missing the point. The choices that they've made, their decision to eschew everything except for voice, help create a medium that is intimate, thoughtful, and kind. And otherwise busy people are addicted to it. Someone I know said that talking on ClubHouse felt like being back at Stanford. Just the electrifying conversations. The sense of possibility. There's something special here. Recently, I decided that I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. To tell his story before a broader audience. And I started a ClubHouse room to do it, and people from around the world came together to help me. Including people who knew him! I'm just a stranger, but they heard me explain why I wanted to preserve this man's legacy and that was enough. People were happy to chip in and help. That's magical. And I haven't experienced anything like that before. There's this profound sense of intimacy that this platform produces that's missing elsewhere. I keep repeating myself, but there is something here. It's a mistake to discount it.

exogeny 6y ago
It's hard for me to think of anything less niche than "like being at Stanford" given the extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. The average person doesn't want to spend hours listening to thought leaders who are in love with their own voice pontificating randomly on topics that don't affect or address their lives in any way. To believe that they will to such an extent that A16Z is willing to give them a $4B given zero revenue, declining traction, and no clear business shows that all you need to do to gain ever-increasing valuations in the tech world is to serve up the exact kind of frou-frou, nebulous bullshit that you wrote and that VCs eat up.
- areoform 6y ago
  > given the extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies While I understand where you're coming from, this is the kind of conversation that has turned me off from most of the internet. On the months I've been on ClubHouse, I've never had an exchange like this. But elsewhere on the web? It's fairly common. Text is a hard medium to discuss complicated ideas in. It's too easy to be snarky. You get kudos for it. But that's harder to do in voice. Because you'd have to hear my reaction, and the reactions of others. You'd have to hear how off-putting it is. I prefer ClubHouse now, because the rest of the web is so snarky. And do you blame me? Given how you've reacted to me?
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    You're telling me right now Clubhouse has no trolls, and you believe the reason for this is because it's hard to troll with voice? I'm pretty sure it's because trolls have simply never discovered it. Honestly, I would vastly prefer to be snarky to people in real-time with my voice and hear their immediate, unedited reactions. For the first time I actually want to try Clubhouse.
    - areoform 6y ago
      > Honestly, I would vastly prefer to be snarky to people in real-time with my voice and hear their immediate, unedited reactions. That's very sad. You'll get booted the second you try and the conversation will continue on. You'll then get banned from the room/community. And if you do it often enough, from the platform. The person who invited you will also get banned if enough of their invitees do such things. That's one of the benefits of making it invite only. There's an inherent social graph to who is inviting whom; it's like a giant house party. You don't want to be the person who brought the asshole who harshed the vibe. Even if you don't care, the house rules are simple - bring bad guests often enough, and you won't get invited to the party. It's that simple. So yeah, use your shot to chill with interesting scientists, engineers, artists, and assorted people from across the world to troll them. It's yours to waste.
      - Judgmentality 6y ago
        I mean I already talk to scientists, engineers, artists and assorted people from across the world without Clubhouse. This has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with the platform. It sounds like fun to me. Personally, your description of how you use Clubhouse sounds sad to me. Different strokes for different folks, my man.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        Sounds like a gated internet community. Given the current state of online discourse, that’s understandable. But a little trolling, with the appropriate level of cutting wit, goes a long way towards skewering the bloviations of the thought leader class. It’s most unhackerlike to side with the mods.
- guscost 6y ago
  > thought leaders who are in love with their own voice pontificating randomly on topics that don't affect or address their lives in any way Yes, those conversations are dreadful. And there are a lot of them. But you’re doing just another version of “Reddit is a website filled with silly cat pictures” here.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. Which is a highly desirable niche for many people.
- solveit 6y ago
  > A16Z is willing to give them a $4B given zero revenue, declining traction, and no clear business shows that all you need to do to gain ever-increasing valuations in the tech world is to serve up the exact kind of frou-frou, nebulous bullshit that you wrote and that VCs eat up. This sounds like a self-correcting problem if true.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    It's not self-correcting at all. VC are incentivized to keep throwing money at these dumb ideas because if even one of them takes off, there are disproportionate returns to be had come IPO time.
    - solveit 5y ago
      > VC are incentivized to keep throwing money at these dumb ideas because if even one of them takes off, there are disproportionate returns to be had come IPO time. Rich people funding low probability but high expected value moonshots is the system working as intended.
dancemethis 6y ago
There's no intimacy, thoughtfulness or kindness in a proprietary software where a corporation can get the conversation and use it for its own means. On the opposite, by being predators of user privacy they are hostile.
opheliate 6y ago
> Someone I know said that talking on ClubHouse felt like being back at Stanford. I think this quote reveals a lot more than the person you know necessarily intended. > Recently, I decided that I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. I would have loved to listen to this conversation, but unfortunately, I come from a working-class background in the UK, and as such, I don't know anyone who would have a Clubhouse invite to give me. I'm not trying to make any assumptions about your background here, and I'm sure there are many people on Clubhouse who come from un-privileged backfrounds, but perhaps the intimacy of the environment comes from being surrounded by people who come from a similar place (i.e: Ivy League colleges, Silicon Valley companies) due to the exclusivity Clubhouse has imposed.
- areoform 6y ago
  I am a high school dropout. I'm happy to send you an invite. Message me on twitter.
  - LordAtlas 6y ago
    I cannot afford an iPhone, sadly.
xwdv 6y ago
Clubhouse basically brings Silicon Valley style serendipity to the world. With work and social interactions increasingly being moved online and reaching remote people, the value prop of living in Silicon Valley is rapidly diminishing.
TedShiller 6y ago
Not my experience. Clubhouse is more like C-tier people listening to B-tier people talking about A-tier people. The thing about Clubhouse is that it doesn’t matter who is listening, it only matters who is talking. Unless you're an A-tier person, nobody will care if you're not there. In that way Clubhouse is the same as podcasts. None of this makes Clubhouse bad. It just means it’s not that different from recorded interviews for example.
jbigelow76 6y ago
I would say that ClubHouse produces intimacy as a service. Intimacy as a sevice, the world's oldest profession... now backed by venture capital.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
I'm sorry but the things you describe as selling points of the platform are merely byproducts of the argument you are replying to. Every gated and hyped community that gets a touch of the right people talking about it will feel very friendly and "high quality" for a while. The circumstance basically postpones the need for moderation. It's something that was never going to last, and as far as I can see it is already over. Yes I gave Clubhouse an honest try after it was all hyped up at my workplace, what I encountered was overwhelmingly 1) Get rich quick scammers talking about how to get success like "Rich Person XYZ" or 2) Celebrities (of varying degrees) talking to/with their fans (or rather: bathing in their narcissism). Hardly what I would describe as magical. And from what I can see even this artificial hype is already starting to die. It is something everyone who ever played the closed beta or alpha versions of an online game before knows, those are cool, friendly and brimming with interesting encounters too while it lasts. Do you honestly believe the feeling and special community you describe is something that is still around on there or will be still around in a month or two?
- bavell 6y ago
  Great analogy to a closed alpha or beta for an online game. I played the WoW beta way back in the day - interactions with other players and the sense of community was completely different before vs after public launch. Perhaps related to the early adopter vs mainstream adoption in the innovation S-curve.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
So basically, you are saying that the value of Clubhouse is the marketing they have done to make people use it in a certain way and attract some profiles? All that could be done on discord, but discord is far gaming, so it won't happen. But clubhouse seems to be perceived has "the place to hear quality conversation from important people". I can see value in that if the team manage to live it up to it. Not as a user though, but I'm not the target.
vagrantJin 6y ago
Or you can listen to a podcast?
rchaud 6y ago
> I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. To tell his story before a broader audience. And I started a ClubHouse room to do it, The broad audience being a bunch of Westerners on an iOS-only, invite-only app?

exogeny 6y ago

It's hard for me to think of anything less niche than "like being at Stanford" given the extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. The average person doesn't want to spend hours listening to thought leaders who are in love with their own voice pontificating randomly on topics that don't affect or address their lives in any way. To believe that they will to such an extent that A16Z is willing to give them a $4B given zero revenue, declining traction, and no clear business shows that all you need to do to gain ever-increasing valuations in the tech world is to serve up the exact kind of frou-frou, nebulous bullshit that you wrote and that VCs eat up.

areoform 6y ago
> given the extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies While I understand where you're coming from, this is the kind of conversation that has turned me off from most of the internet. On the months I've been on ClubHouse, I've never had an exchange like this. But elsewhere on the web? It's fairly common. Text is a hard medium to discuss complicated ideas in. It's too easy to be snarky. You get kudos for it. But that's harder to do in voice. Because you'd have to hear my reaction, and the reactions of others. You'd have to hear how off-putting it is. I prefer ClubHouse now, because the rest of the web is so snarky. And do you blame me? Given how you've reacted to me?
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  You're telling me right now Clubhouse has no trolls, and you believe the reason for this is because it's hard to troll with voice? I'm pretty sure it's because trolls have simply never discovered it. Honestly, I would vastly prefer to be snarky to people in real-time with my voice and hear their immediate, unedited reactions. For the first time I actually want to try Clubhouse.
  - areoform 6y ago
    > Honestly, I would vastly prefer to be snarky to people in real-time with my voice and hear their immediate, unedited reactions. That's very sad. You'll get booted the second you try and the conversation will continue on. You'll then get banned from the room/community. And if you do it often enough, from the platform. The person who invited you will also get banned if enough of their invitees do such things. That's one of the benefits of making it invite only. There's an inherent social graph to who is inviting whom; it's like a giant house party. You don't want to be the person who brought the asshole who harshed the vibe. Even if you don't care, the house rules are simple - bring bad guests often enough, and you won't get invited to the party. It's that simple. So yeah, use your shot to chill with interesting scientists, engineers, artists, and assorted people from across the world to troll them. It's yours to waste.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      I mean I already talk to scientists, engineers, artists and assorted people from across the world without Clubhouse. This has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with the platform. It sounds like fun to me. Personally, your description of how you use Clubhouse sounds sad to me. Different strokes for different folks, my man.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Sounds like a gated internet community. Given the current state of online discourse, that’s understandable. But a little trolling, with the appropriate level of cutting wit, goes a long way towards skewering the bloviations of the thought leader class. It’s most unhackerlike to side with the mods.
guscost 6y ago
> thought leaders who are in love with their own voice pontificating randomly on topics that don't affect or address their lives in any way Yes, those conversations are dreadful. And there are a lot of them. But you’re doing just another version of “Reddit is a website filled with silly cat pictures” here.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. Which is a highly desirable niche for many people.
solveit 6y ago
> A16Z is willing to give them a $4B given zero revenue, declining traction, and no clear business shows that all you need to do to gain ever-increasing valuations in the tech world is to serve up the exact kind of frou-frou, nebulous bullshit that you wrote and that VCs eat up. This sounds like a self-correcting problem if true.
- rchaud 6y ago
  It's not self-correcting at all. VC are incentivized to keep throwing money at these dumb ideas because if even one of them takes off, there are disproportionate returns to be had come IPO time.
  - solveit 5y ago
    > VC are incentivized to keep throwing money at these dumb ideas because if even one of them takes off, there are disproportionate returns to be had come IPO time. Rich people funding low probability but high expected value moonshots is the system working as intended.

dancemethis 6y ago

There's no intimacy, thoughtfulness or kindness in a proprietary software where a corporation can get the conversation and use it for its own means. On the opposite, by being predators of user privacy they are hostile.

opheliate 6y ago

> Someone I know said that talking on ClubHouse felt like being back at Stanford. I think this quote reveals a lot more than the person you know necessarily intended. > Recently, I decided that I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. I would have loved to listen to this conversation, but unfortunately, I come from a working-class background in the UK, and as such, I don't know anyone who would have a Clubhouse invite to give me. I'm not trying to make any assumptions about your background here, and I'm sure there are many people on Clubhouse who come from un-privileged backfrounds, but perhaps the intimacy of the environment comes from being surrounded by people who come from a similar place (i.e: Ivy League colleges, Silicon Valley companies) due to the exclusivity Clubhouse has imposed.

areoform 6y ago
I am a high school dropout. I'm happy to send you an invite. Message me on twitter.
- LordAtlas 6y ago
  I cannot afford an iPhone, sadly.

xwdv 6y ago

Clubhouse basically brings Silicon Valley style serendipity to the world. With work and social interactions increasingly being moved online and reaching remote people, the value prop of living in Silicon Valley is rapidly diminishing.

TedShiller 6y ago

Not my experience. Clubhouse is more like C-tier people listening to B-tier people talking about A-tier people. The thing about Clubhouse is that it doesn’t matter who is listening, it only matters who is talking. Unless you're an A-tier person, nobody will care if you're not there. In that way Clubhouse is the same as podcasts. None of this makes Clubhouse bad. It just means it’s not that different from recorded interviews for example.

jbigelow76 6y ago

I would say that ClubHouse produces intimacy as a service. Intimacy as a sevice, the world's oldest profession... now backed by venture capital.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago

I'm sorry but the things you describe as selling points of the platform are merely byproducts of the argument you are replying to. Every gated and hyped community that gets a touch of the right people talking about it will feel very friendly and "high quality" for a while. The circumstance basically postpones the need for moderation. It's something that was never going to last, and as far as I can see it is already over. Yes I gave Clubhouse an honest try after it was all hyped up at my workplace, what I encountered was overwhelmingly 1) Get rich quick scammers talking about how to get success like "Rich Person XYZ" or 2) Celebrities (of varying degrees) talking to/with their fans (or rather: bathing in their narcissism). Hardly what I would describe as magical. And from what I can see even this artificial hype is already starting to die. It is something everyone who ever played the closed beta or alpha versions of an online game before knows, those are cool, friendly and brimming with interesting encounters too while it lasts. Do you honestly believe the feeling and special community you describe is something that is still around on there or will be still around in a month or two?

bavell 6y ago
Great analogy to a closed alpha or beta for an online game. I played the WoW beta way back in the day - interactions with other players and the sense of community was completely different before vs after public launch. Perhaps related to the early adopter vs mainstream adoption in the innovation S-curve.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

So basically, you are saying that the value of Clubhouse is the marketing they have done to make people use it in a certain way and attract some profiles? All that could be done on discord, but discord is far gaming, so it won't happen. But clubhouse seems to be perceived has "the place to hear quality conversation from important people". I can see value in that if the team manage to live it up to it. Not as a user though, but I'm not the target.

vagrantJin 6y ago

Or you can listen to a podcast?

rchaud 6y ago

> I'd like to interview a cosmonaut who has never been interviewed by the west before. To tell his story before a broader audience. And I started a ClubHouse room to do it, The broad audience being a bunch of Westerners on an iOS-only, invite-only app?