The Desire Chamber

Clubhouse and the Rise of Sophomoric Solutions to Adult Problems

It happened, as it so often does, that I found myself in a Clubhouse room full of people talking about how great Clubhouse is. 

I don’t know how I got there. I suppose that’s the automagical allure of the place. But there I was on a digital “stage” with the infamous Internet entrepreneur Kimdotcom, the AI scientist Lex Fridman, and the voices of other Important People, discussing the future of social media. 

Each of the seven other speakers on stage qualified their comments about Clubhouse by saying they were optimists before effusively praising the app. It would lead to a more human kind of social media experience, they all said, where people could enter into productive dialogues through the medium of voice.

For a moment, I almost believed them.

Each time I tried to loosen my tongue to break the spiral of silence (I planned to qualify my statement as not “anti-optimist,” in the hope of not offending) a disembodied voice would jump in front of me. 

“I—oh—I—no, go ahead,” I responded, cedin…