KOCHI: You know how every circle has that annoying friend who hates anything mainstream or popular? Well, I am that friend. I smirked at Game Of Thrones when it got popular, stopped watching Money Heist when the whole became crazy about it, and I hated on dalgona coffee when everyone was making it last year. Naturally, when I heard that Clubhouse is on Android and everybody is losing their mind, I proclaimed “as if we weren’t distracted enough” and ignored it.
But social media is a huge spider web. It didn’t matter if I was on Facebook or Instagram, everybody was talking about Clubhouse. A feminist I follow on Facebook put up multiple posts about a Clubhouse hallway she was part of, on ‘Islam and women’. It seemed to have touched a nerve, and the comments were personal. I almost started to feel left out. And so I gave in, downloaded Clubhouse.
Audio party
Clubhouse, though launched in March 2020, was unavailable for Android users till May of 2021. As of June 2, the app has over one million Android downloads in India, the largest by far in any country. Internationally, it has seen 2.6 million Android downloads. Malayalis especially, seems to have found their very own tea shop banter there.
Clubhouse used to be an invite-only platform, but not anymore. Now, anyone with a phone number can sign in with an OTP. It will sync the contacts on your phone first, then you can select topics that interest you, pick a profile picture and username and in under three minutes, you are good to go. The home screen will show you all the ongoing ‘clubs’. You have an option to start one too (invite your friends and start talking).
Naturally, I decided to sneak around instead of starting a room. A friend mentioned it was like Twitter for people who can’t type, but to me, the first five minutes were like being at a party where I know people, but they are all talking to their friends and I am just there, eavesdropping on them and gradually fading (the ‘leave quietly’ option comes in handy).
After spending a couple of hours on it, I came up with a controversial observation. While the international chatrooms are almost always discussing life, politics, cryptocurrency, art and music, Malayalis have invented opportunities there. I entered a hallway where you could get your profile picture rated, and it had over 1,400 members and 20+ speakers. Another one was called “find your crush” — strangers picking who they have a crush on based on their profile pictures (mine was Elon Musk, so I had to get out of there).
Another hallway reminded me of one of those home shopping channels. It was called “hit 1k here”. You will be picked up by the speakers, and the 1,000+ members in the group will follow you. I almost had a brain freeze from the amount of chatter there, and then I hear a testimony from a woman “guys! I came here with just 16 followers, and now I have 200!”. I was confused. Before someone asked for my credit card information, I knew I had to get out.
Networking potential
However, few interesting perspectives from people who have been using it for a while changed my approach. “The discussions are a great way to gain followers, you can find like-minded people to share anything with. For me, it would mean getting my music through to more people,” says Mundtz TDT, vocalist of Downtroddence.
I also ‘ran into’ Kochi-bred, Bengaluru-based guitarist Ajay George Joseph at a hallway that was discussing music and travel. A speaker, another musician, was talking about how he manages to tag his instruments along when he is on road. “I love it. There is immense possibility for networking if you avoid all the trolls,” Ajay quips.
Wanting to give it another go, I returned to Clubhouse. This time, I searched for better topics, global chat rooms and really looked for relevance. Interestingly, I found a discussion on casteism in Malayalam cinema and another one on contemporary writing featuring author Benyamin. I spent almost half an hour listening to a group of African American men talk about why they decided to get married (you have to admit, what woman doesn’t want to know that?).
Finally, I ended up in a hallway with artists part of an NFT sale by Christy’s London. One of the speakers was interdisciplinary crypto artist Lans King, who surgically implanted an NFC microchip into his hand. Lans walks around with a blockchain code as well as the algorithm that he uses to produce his digital and physical artworks. When I watched the BBC documentary on him, The Cultural Frontline, I never imagined being able to listen to him. And I thought, thank you Clubhouse.
VERDICT
I could conclude with the cliche ‘is good when it is used right’, but then we said the same thing about cell phones in 2000s. Clubhouse, like most other places, has a lot of information and networking to offer. It is also a friend to those feeling down during the lockdown. However, Vishnu Muraleedharan, a friend and content analyst rightly pointed out the dangers of it acting as a platform for news debates. “Unlike news channels, Clubhouse has no censorship. It is not guided by any rules. So odds of people saying what they want and misinformation going unchecked is high,” he says.
The ‘wrong’ discussions also seem to be stressing out a few, at a time when mental health is already depleting due to the pandemic. The number of people ranting on other social media about an unfair Clubhouse discussion, slandering the speakers, is proof of this. Clubhouse also has no age limit. With children using phones more than parents now owing to online classes, it might be also wise to check if your kid isn’t going clubbing in the wrong places.