I was invited to Clubhouse last July* and it was an immediate love affair.
I was shocked that I could join 20 person rooms with investors, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals who I admire like Eric Weinstein and Marc Andreessen. I could actually go “on stage” to speak with them and the coolest part is how casual it felt - it was real conversation.
Prior to Clubhouse this would never have been possible - even with a warm intro to one of these two, they probably would never have had the time to meet me.
At that time, the power of Clubhouse was clearly the access it offered, and the speed with which one could grow one’s network. The impact was like a conference on steroids. Clubhouse accelerated the connections because I could easily bounce from room to room without physical boundaries, and something about audio-only made connecting feel safer (I didn’t have to ‘wear a face’). If I approached Andreessen or Weinstein at a conference, their guard would be up, or they’d be surrounded by dozens of others trying to win their attention. On Clubhouse, I could approach them virtually, while they were in the comfort of their own homes. They had the ability to hop off at any time if they felt threatened or overwhelmed.
Real connection can be made on Clubhouse. I’ve already made some new friends and reconnected with old. I remember when I first heard Elizabeth.AI speak - I was blown away by her breadth and depth of knowledge and started to join every room she entered.
However, I did fall out of love with the platform after a month or so, why? For starters, it can be a massive time suck. In some ways, it is just another social media platform that grabs our attention with aggressive notifications. It can rip me away from my life to listen live to a conversation between thought leaders on “The impact of Pop Tarts on the 2020 election” (or something similarly absurd). Factions formed, gaslighting ensued, and ad hominem attacks too. There was racism, antisemitism, segregation all recreated virtually. Although, trolling is less prevalent than on Twitter, rooms began to form literally to talk shit about other rooms (and still do).
Once private rooms were introduced, the ability to “connect up” dwindled. Now, if one of the aforementioned gentleman enters a public room, thousands of people follow and you’d have to wait in line to get on stage with them. Concentric circles formed (as they do in real life), like a Russian doll of private chat rooms and miniature clubs.
Clubhouse will one day offer a great case study in how humans naturally organize into groups and subgroups.
So, like all things we humans create, Clubhouse has its issues. For a brief moment, I felt the cons outweighed the pros and I dropped off the platform.
That is until about one month ago when the crypto community joined en masse. It was only then, that I finally realized the real power of Clubhouse (and social audio more broadly). It is not access, but it is bridge building.
Clubhouse greatly empowers human superconnectors - or nodes of the global superconscious who help crosspolinate seemingly disparate groups and ideas. In the “real world” bridge builders like these have a hard time scaling their connections. Often, they have to resort to one-off intros - “oh! You should speak to so and so about xyz.” If we’re lucky, these connectors have the acumen to build a company that bridges concepts (ie: Headspace). But Clubhouse empowers superconnectors to seamlessly bridge ideas both organically and at scale.
For example, I believe that Clubhouse is (at least in part) responsible for the mass media explosion of NFTs or non-fungible tokens (see NYTimes article below) thanks to superconnectors like 3LAU.
3LAU is unique in that he is both a famous DJ/producer and he has a deep interest in cryptocurrencies. When he joins a room on Clubhouse - hundreds of individuals from both the music industry AND the crypto industry will join. 3LAU will then discuss the power of NFTs and the impact they had on his life. Crypto entrepreneurs will chime in with the technical details and explain how other artists can execute on creating their own digital merchandise. Music folks will hop in and share the legal challenges they face or the drop off in their touring revenue.
In one room, over the course of hours, new neural connections are made between once disparate groups of the global human superconscious.
In that way, Clubhouse is almost like psilocybin for the human neural network.
a. Is the human neural network before Clubhouse
b. Is the human neural network after Clubhouse
Yes, this is also enabled on other social media platforms, like Twitter. However, on Twitter you may follow a superconnector like 3LAU, but the algorithms will only feed you the content he shares that already appeals to your sentiments. This is how echo chambers form. On Clubhouse when a superconnector enters a room, their entire following (from all of their interest groups) hop in.
I believe that Clubhouse has created a new global bazaar of ideas and it empowers superconnectors to do what they do best. It’s a platform where ideas go to marry, mate, and replicate. Hopefully only the best ones will rise to the top.
*Thanks for the invite Andrea Funstein! Yes, this may seem like a not so subtle flex (sorry), but I do think the timing of my entry onto the platform actually serves a purpose for this post
This Week’s Podcast: Listening to Ecstasy with Charles Wininger, LP, LMHC
“I was tripping balls when you weren’t even a twinkle in your father’s eye”
On this episode of Look Up!, I speak with 71 year old MDMA advocate, Charles Wininger about his new book Listening to Ecstasy. I really enjoyed this book and its observations about human connection, the heart, the failure of the 1960s counter culture, and more. Charles shares his personal relationship to MDMA and the transformational power it had over him and the relationship between he and his wife Shelley. It was an honor to speak to the “Love Doctor,” as he passed wisdom of the heart down to me and our listeners.
What I’m Reading
Ideas
Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following
Markets
The Gamestop Incident is Only the Beginning, Nataraj
Metaverse, NFTs, and Digital Collectibles
Why an Animated Flying Cat With a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600,000, NYTimes
Appraisal Games and the NFT Liquidity Problem
Why I Spent $50,000 on an NFT, Mariano Conti
Crypto
China’s Digital Currency is a Gamechanger
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