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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 imp

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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > I prefer ClubHouse now The problem is not that you prefer clubhouse. Instead, it is that you have ascribed some magical property to it, and are treating it like it is some revolution. That is great that you have found something that you prefer. But there is no need to talk in such grandious terms, when talking about a voice chat app.
  - monoideism 5y ago
    > talking about a simple voice chat app Says someone who has never tried running a voice chat app at scale. It's not a flying car or a spaceship, but it's technically difficult.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > but it's technically difficult I never said it wasn't technically difficult to do something like that at scale. Although, from what I have heard, they actually have outsourced most of the technical parts of the app, to some other company also. The point though, is that you should not pretend like this is some revolutionary new thing, that is going to change all of society. Thats all. Its a voice chat app. No need to ascribe anything magic to it. > It's not a flying car or a spaceship Ok great, so you agree with me that the person I was responding too was being kinda silly, by describing a voice chat app, in magic, grandiose terms.
      - zepto 5y ago
        That’s like saying Twitter and Facebook are just text messaging apps. They have changed society. Something can be both simple and revolutionary.
        monoideism 5y ago
        > They have changed society. I think most of us would agree that they've changed society for the worse. It pains me as a starry-eyed techie kid from the 90s that this is what we've done. Life was so much better before social media. But yes, they've dramatically changed society.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Sounds like audio-only TED talks as a service, with all that entails.
  - kayyay 5y ago
    Based on the comment above, it's closer to TED-X, or maybe TED-Y at this point
guscost 5y 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 5y ago
> extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. Which is a highly desirable niche for many people.
solveit 5y 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 5y 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.

areoform 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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 5y 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.
stale2002 5y ago
> I prefer ClubHouse now The problem is not that you prefer clubhouse. Instead, it is that you have ascribed some magical property to it, and are treating it like it is some revolution. That is great that you have found something that you prefer. But there is no need to talk in such grandious terms, when talking about a voice chat app.
- monoideism 5y ago
  > talking about a simple voice chat app Says someone who has never tried running a voice chat app at scale. It's not a flying car or a spaceship, but it's technically difficult.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > but it's technically difficult I never said it wasn't technically difficult to do something like that at scale. Although, from what I have heard, they actually have outsourced most of the technical parts of the app, to some other company also. The point though, is that you should not pretend like this is some revolutionary new thing, that is going to change all of society. Thats all. Its a voice chat app. No need to ascribe anything magic to it. > It's not a flying car or a spaceship Ok great, so you agree with me that the person I was responding too was being kinda silly, by describing a voice chat app, in magic, grandiose terms.
    - zepto 5y ago
      That’s like saying Twitter and Facebook are just text messaging apps. They have changed society. Something can be both simple and revolutionary.
      - monoideism 5y ago
        > They have changed society. I think most of us would agree that they've changed society for the worse. It pains me as a starry-eyed techie kid from the 90s that this is what we've done. Life was so much better before social media. But yes, they've dramatically changed society.
Apocryphon 5y ago
Sounds like audio-only TED talks as a service, with all that entails.
- kayyay 5y ago
  Based on the comment above, it's closer to TED-X, or maybe TED-Y at this point

guscost 5y 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 5y ago

> extreme, tech-focused, affluent, bourgeois-as-fuck description that implies. Which is a highly desirable niche for many people.

solveit 5y 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 5y 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.