# Clubhouse

New on the scene, Clubhouse is kind of like streaming, but without the video. It's a public zoom call where you get suggestions to join rooms that people you follow join in, or people who have the same stated interests have joined. At time of writing it's invite only, but those invites are coming along fast and furiously. The population is pretty heavily skewed towards influencers, entrepreneurs, tech nerds, and self-marketing people. It's been an interesting week joining in rooms and mostly listening to what people are talking about. Sometimes it's been hard to keep quiet and not lay in to people a bit.

# The "Content"

It gets pretty dull pretty quickly. Any room with a reasonable audience that isn't strongly moderated and is open so anyone can speak ends up being an endless string of introductions about career, aspirations, and whatever shallow beliefs that they have.

Overall, it's a bastion of privilege and liberalism. Just tonight, I was in a room that had people bragging about their marketing strategies, illegal use of PPI and collection of personal information for their databases, promoting their seminars for how to build your instagram following, and their success as serial entreprenuers. Another room ended up in a liberal jerk off session about China and talking about China's government, their policies, the Ughyr, etc. It basically became a bash session without anything beyond the typical liberal understanding of it. It was focused around someone who is part of the Chinese diaspora, but left the country as a toddler, and has returned only sporadically. That person's opinions were only slightly more nuanced than typical, but they still focused on the stories of "exiles". I can't say whether or not the stories of exiles are accurate retellings of what happens, or if they're representative of the whole. What I can say is that if you listened to the Cuban exiles, you'd think that they were done wrong instead of getting what they deserved. This same person lamented about how they're trying to drag Japan, the 3rd largest economy in the world, in to the future. It's a continuation of the American colonial empire

There was another story that was played off as touching, while it was really just a shitty capitalist hell. The speaker was talking about how he used to do a 2 1/2 hour paper route as a young kid, but on one Christmas morning he woke up and the papers weren't there to be delivered as expected. The parents said "Maybe Santa delivered the papers for you", and he talked about how he knew it was them. He went on to laud the actions of the parents because they gave him the "gift of time", and how that is what really matters. This was retold to the rapturous appreciation of the people who were in the room.

# Reactions

It's a liberal hell hole. It's constant affirmations, relentless positivity, and an occasional discussion of life in a place as a identity. Some people are selling the reactions to gain a following as well. Titles are popping up with click-bait style referecing to racism, sexism, etc.

My own reactions are probably pretty clear. It's a lot of eye rolling, but I feel like I'm eerily similar to these people in a lot of ways that make me feel pretty uncomfortable. I'm still there using it because the lack of connections that you end up with in adult life, especially in times like these, pulling you in and holding you there. We want to talk and connect with others. I think that a lol of people there just want to be heard. People love to talk. I love to talk too much. It's easy to see that being totally ignored is one of the most terrible feelings that can happen to people. You're not alone, you're participation is just not wanted.