Clubbing with Paris Hilton
Sometimes the afterparty is a let down…
This is the story of my first official day on the New Clubhouse App.
If Elon Musk reckons it’s the next big thing, everyone stops and listens and maybe it is.
“But hold up Benny!”
“WTF is Clubhouse?”
Well, it’s pretty much an invite only (for now) Apple app (for now) where you logon and join chat rooms on any topic. You can also host them yourself.
“Well….. isn’t that just a Zoom room without the video turned on?” You say
Yes. Except like the old chat rooms we used to cruise when we first got the internet in Straya about 20 years ago. You can do the same.
Zoom, for the most part, is for private rooms.
I logged onto Clubhouse App a few weeks ago and there was nothing on there that got me excited.
Mainly marketers with big swinging dick signs about their 8 figure businesses. Don’t get me wrong, I hope to have one one day that could knock out an Eagle , but I don’t need that kind of chat in my life right now.
Lately I’ve seen some good stuff around permaculture and regenerative living, which is cool. Plus a mentor of mine and other folks I admire are dropping in to add radness and wisdom to the mix.
And Yesterday I popped my clubhouse cherry with my kindred group of performance coaches ‘Kokoro’. We catch up twice a month to jam about anything and everything.
We spent an hour yesterday on Clubhouse doing what we normally do — yarning about our adventures and sharing our fuck-ups and learnings. It’s a wholesome regenerative chat.
Although, while the novelty of the experience was great and we had additional frothers in the room, (some we know and love, some freshies) it still lacked the intimacy of a closed zoom call.
Note: I’m just comparing digital mediums here, we’d obviously prefer to be giving each other real hugs IRL. But we’re in 8 different cities around the world so it’s a bit tough these days ;)
You also can’t assume people know your context like they can on a zoom call with loved ones.
In fact, a lot of the time they might have just met you, which is cool too, pending what you’re after.
We reflected on signal after a great experience
HOLD UP: that’s interesting in itself, we’ve jumped ships from Whatsapp and Zoom to Signal and Clubhouse.
But it was unanimous that we’re going to do both private chats and open to the public chats. Clubhouse does offer both:)
Private’s important, because Fuck the noise of being on stage all the time.
However, I do love love love that some of my friends I haven’t seen in years are on there and we can jump in a room together. That’s the real advantage. Like MSN messenger was back in the 90's, except with sound!
I also enjoyed that I could put my sunscreen on and wax my board over the last 5 minutes of the call while still tuning in.
Out into the water at 11:01 and fitting a surf in before my Midday appointment. Flow Based Living innit.
I returned home that afternoon to do:
the same thing we do with every app after we’ve had a rad experience…
That little Cuntee voice in your head that sounds like a little posh kid says,
“Ohhh, go on Benny. Just see whats going on in there. You deserve it, you’ve done a bunch of work today. Just a minute won’t hurt, go on.”
And I said ‘Cheers Cuntee, I do deserve it and logged on.’
And there before me was a room with a bunch of familiar DJ’s.
Dopamine pinngggg!
Some of my favourites from back in the day like Diplo and Deadmau5.
To which I’ve previously literally pingggggd to.
Novelty factor through the roof and I genuinely thought, ‘well this is cool, good job Benny.’
Cunttee pops back in and says “When would you ever get to to do this IRL. Great choice Benny!”
And I STOPPED MAKING LUNCH and tuned in for a bit. Warning Sign One.
I had no idea what they were all doing there, the chat wasn’t very coherent to me. But that’s OK on Clubhouse, you’re stumbling into conversations so you just go with the flow.
Then Warning Sign Two hit when Paris Hilton entered the room.
All the celebs started taking turns welcoming her and mentioning how much they loved her. Which is nice, that’s what we should do when someone enters a room. And I’ve not met her, I’m sure she’s lovely and by the sounds of it threw rad parties back in the day.
But here’s the thing,
as I reflect now on Cunttee (who’s actually me right — maybe Bunnty is a little less harsh).
When I was in London, I used to go to clubs most weekends and meet DJs backstage because my mate worked at Ministry of Sound. Like the ones in that room. So my Bunnty justification was plain wrong.
But to take it back further and disregard my desperate grasps of cool signalling to being backstage at parties. ;)
Warning Sign Three was that MY LUNCH WAS GETTING COLD.
and Warning Sign FOUR I’m breaking a guiding principles for Vice Optimisation
‘INTENTION’
Which consists of two simple questions:
‘What’s my intention for being there?’
I’d not yet answered this.
‘Am I realising that intention?’
So I have to rewind.
My intention is to use Clubhouse to:
‘have frothy conversations with legends about how we can inspire regenerative thinking and doing for healthier, happy (frothier) humans.’
Was I realising this intention:
‘Fuck Yes with Kokoro’,
‘Fuck No for the DJ hang’.
That to me spelled out a huge part of what’s wrong with many of the popular social media platforms. We’re going in to get a hit. Often to try and feel close to other people we don’t know and probably will never know. Most of the time they don’t have the right advice for us because it’s not contextually appropriate to our needs.
We have too many Senseis in our Dojo and we’re confused.
My mantra is that all Vices are neutral, we give them the power to be whatever they are. Albeit, evil algorithms n’ that, we can still reclaim sovereignty over these things.
So while Clubhouse is a cracking idea and cool space to learn. It may also be a dangerous distractive death-trap for unassuming folks who’ve never even thought about how they can wrangle their vices and turn them into a positive.
Anywho, I’m running a Performance Netflix mini-talk / workshop etc this morning. I’ll be talking more about this stuff and will probably run them weekly.
7AM AEST just look me up on Clubhouse @bennywallington
Also! I will be tracking my Clubhouse usage using my Vice Optimisation methods. Yesterday was a massive Yay (it was worth it) until the arvo when it switched to a Nay.
So stoked for that learning, so I don’t fuck it next time. Or am less likely too ;)
It’s a jungle out there with a Clubhouse in it.
