What was everyone talking about? Sometime last spring, in the early weeks of the pandemic, people in and around the tech industry began to chatter about a new mobile app called Clubhouse—a "drop-in audio" social network that enabled the creation of voice-only chat rooms. The conversation about Clubhouse was incessant and vaguely annoying, yet somehow alluring. The app had an air of exclusivity. It was still in beta and available solely on iOS; only a few thousand people had accounts, and there was a waiting list. Some Silicon Valley figures with significant Twitter followings—venture capitalists, startup founders—signed up, and "went live," then tweeted about the experience with an air of mystery and intrigue. The app's name evoked semi-exclusive gathering places, such as airport lounges and golf-course restaurants, but also brought childhood to mind. The community guidelines prohibited recording and transcription, and so conversations were available in real time only, and ephemeral. Those with accounts could invite friends, but the number of invitations allowed per person was limited. Invitation codes began to appear on eBay.
By February of this year, Clubhouse had raised more than a hundred million dollars in venture capital. Despite its invitation-only membership model, it had acquired nearly ten million users. This was a small audience compared with Twitter or TikTok—they have about three hundred million and a billion users, respectively—but it was still significant. (The invitation codes on eBay were now up to four hundred dollars apiece.) Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg had made surprise appearances on the app. The Chinese government blocked it, after citizens of mainland China joined the service and spoke openly about their personal lives, censorship, and the Xinjiang internment camps. Like most social-media platforms, Clubhouse was demonstrating its dual potential: it could lend a voice to those who are rarely given the opportunity to speak freely, while also elevating some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people.
Upon opening Clubhouse, one is presented with a menu of "rooms," or live conversations. Each room has a topic: "Women in Payments Power Hour," or "If you were an(other) animal, what would you think of humans?," or "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit: Rise of the Network State." Tap one, and audio starts streaming. The screen fills with the avatars of those in attendance, each in its own small orb; speaking privileges are limited to moderators and selected participants, shown at the top of the screen. Attendees who wish to speak can tap a button to raise their virtual hands.
The app requests that people use their real names, and many do. Users who link the app to their Twitter accounts or address books are given lists of friends to follow; do this when you sign up, and the app notifies your contacts right then, encouraging them to welcome you to a private Clubhouse room. (For the new participant, this can be a bit like arriving at a surprise party where the only other attendees are an ex, a co-worker, and a distant friend.) On Clubhouse, anyone can create public or private rooms, and highly active users can start "clubs"—interest groups, essentially—of their own. Clubs are like ongoing conversation series, and the offerings vary: "Van Life and Tiny Homes" (eight thousand participants), "Therapy for Black Girls" (seventy thousand participants), "Quran Recitations" (twenty-three thousand members), "Olympic Weightlifting" (two hundred participants), "The Dacha" (a hundred thousand participants), and "Parent Confessions" (thirteen thousand participants). Wellness-oriented clubs abound: "Divine Feminine Awakening," with a hundred and ten thousand participants, is a "safe space for us to reflect on, re-imagine, and redefine the awakening of feminine energy"; "Meditation Room," with a hundred and five thousand participants, hosts a daily, scheduled meditation session. There are clubs dedicated to veganism, sustainability, finding love, Nigeria, U.K. club music, investing, basketball, psychedelics, outer space, neuroplasticity, dog-lovers, astrology, and Tesla. One category of club in particular—what Clubhouse labels "Hustle"—has proved particularly generative.
On a recent afternoon, I sat down on the couch, placed my iPhone on the coffee table, opened Clubhouse, and let strangers' voices fill my apartment. A room titled "Boss Babes Secrets to Make 7 Figures from Marketing Online" was moderated by twenty-six women and one man, who, when I dropped in, was holding the floor and speaking reverently about his mother. Women ruled the world, he reminded the audience of more than nine hundred people, and women needed to reclaim it. Several rooms were dedicated to the topic of non-fungible tokens, or N.F.T.s—digital assets that can be bought, sold, and tracked on the blockchain—and whether they were the future or a bust. Sixty-two people were in a room with the topic "How would you rob a bank?"; sixty-seven were in a room hosted by the "Rock Your Gift" club—"This club is a collection of Game-Changing Business Owners and Multi-Passionate Coaches, Speakers and Course Creators who are committed to building a unique STAND OUT business around their core gifts"—role-playing client calls; and thirty-two were listening to a talk titled "How to Spot a Liar ADVANCED (1 Hour Only)." Elsewhere, people discussed Cuba and U.S. relations under the Biden Administration, how diverse founders could drive change, mental health for influencers, marketing, the future of creators as entrepreneurs, the experience of being an Asian-American woman, and how to "use COVID as a WIN!" There was something pleasant about meandering from conversation to conversation, as if I had walked into my own home to find a conference in full swing. But I also wondered, Why did I let all of these people into my house?
Much like podcasts and radio, Clubhouse is synchronous media, best consumed while otherwise engaged. Unlike message boards, text-based social-media feeds, and video- and photo-heavy apps, it suits the multitasker life style. Over the next few weeks, whenever I tried to listen to conversations as an exclusive activity, I inevitably found myself in a horizontal position—lying prone on the couch, or the bed, or the floor, my phone resting a few inches away from my head. I preferred dropping into Clubhouse rooms while folding laundry, cleaning, and running errands; the conversations were more diffuse than radio, less focussed than a podcast, and practically served as white noise—a way to crowd my own voice out of my head. In one room, Representative Sara Jacobs, of California, answered questions about being a millennial congresswoman; in another, Katie Couric and Guy Raz chatted about current events and the paleo diet. In a room titled "What do MODELS want? Advice from Celebrity Matchmakers," models discussed their desire for romantic partners who could connect on a deeper level; the conversation vibrated on a similar frequency in a room titled "Are YOU worthy of a SIX+figure man!?Let's talk." In a comedy workshop, people offered feedback on how to punch up a routine about living with a life-threatening chronic condition, and, in what felt like another universe entirely, the young son of a prominent and controversial art collector, using his father's account, took questions from adults about N.F.T.s.
On any given evening, journalists could be found talking about journalism, angel investors could be found talking about angel investing, and an untold number of self-identified millionaires and coaches offered tips and guidance that evoked multilevel marketing schemes. A panel of prominent people fretted about campus politics. A Zen Buddhist monk performed meditative sound loops. One morning, over coffee, I tuned in to a conversation hosted by the "Entrepreneur Millionaire Secrets" club, in which people discussed whether it was preferable to have a million dollars or a million followers, and how long it would take to make a million dollars off a million followers.
There is a heavy tech presence on Clubhouse: Bitcoin enthusiasts, Elon Musk enthusiasts, startup founders interviewing investors, investors interviewing startup founders, venture capitalists talking about their books. When I signed up for an account, I declined to share my contacts with Clubhouse, for privacy reasons. Instead of telling me which of my friends were also on the app, the service offered a default list of people to follow: these included Jared Leto, Shaka Senghor, and Tiffany Haddish; Rohan Seth and Paul Davison, the co-founders of Clubhouse; and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, venture capitalists whose firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is Clubhouse's primary investor. Some Clubhouse users now have regularly scheduled talk shows, and popular ones among the Silicon Valley set include "One On One with A & Z," hosted by Andreessen and Horowitz; and "The Good Time Show," hosted by a director at Facebook and her husband, also a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
One night, while brushing my teeth, I listened to a different venture capitalist speak earnestly about the need for a more vulnerable conversation about tech. The venture capitalist suggested that the industry needed to normalize founders who cry; another speaker responded, vulnerably, that this sentiment was very powerful. Another day, I opened the app and saw that twelve hundred people were in a room co-hosted by Lindsay Lohan and Perez Hilton. Lohan, in her new identity as an investor, and with her unmistakable rasp, was talking about N.F.T.s. Later, I dropped into a Clubhouse on "FBI Negotiation Tactics"; somehow, even there, people were talking about how to invest in startups. It reminded me of the time, in my final semester of college, when I was invited to a dance party hosted by a secret society. For four years, I had walked past the society's "tomb," wondering about the activities of people who I assumed were more élite and enlightened than I was—who knew something about socializing that I never would. But it was just an undergraduate party: people I already knew, packed into a windowless room. What had I expected?
I dropped in, I dropped out; I dropped in again. Earlier this month, on CBS, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. On Clubhouse, several hundred people listened to the interview, which was being ported off an ad-hoc stream on Facebook, in a "watch party" room, hosted by a group of women with English accents—a sort of twenty-first-century, platform-mediated version of pirate radio. During commercial breaks, the hosts offered bland commentary and interpretation, then shushed one another as soon as the program resumed. There was something subversive and intimate about the listening party—it was like sneaking into the back row of a movie theatre, or listening to a band play from outside the venue. Most striking, though, was the quality of the interview. The two-hour special, conducted by one of the great contemporary television personalities, was the most engaging, well-paced, and structured conversation I had heard on Clubhouse.
Here would be the place to speak of the history of mass communication; to produce historical analogues for Clubhouse, such as call-in radio shows, the teen party lines of the nineteen-eighties, and the Agora; to cite Habermas or Gramsci and nod to Marshall McLuhan. I kept thinking of a minor section in Don DeLillo's "White Noise," from 1985, in which the narrator completes an A.T.M. transaction and experiences a sparkling moment of integration with the global financial apparatus: "The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies."
This was basically how it felt to be on Clubhouse. With each new experience—a lullaby room, in which most avatars wore the same cartoon, baby-blue nightcap; a beatboxing and freestyle session between musical-theatre performers; a "dopamine reset" silent meditation, which was actually silent—I felt increasingly as if the app, whose creators have not articulated any particular theory of technology or media, belonged to a great, surging lineage.
In 1999, John Durham Peters, who is now a professor of English and film and media studies at Yale, published "Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication." "In richer societies, much of our interaction is enabled by interpersonal media such as email and telephone," he wrote—forums "in which the broadcast and the interactive are hard to tell apart."