I’ve been using the (for now) Apple-device only application called Clubhouse recently, mainly for photography-related talks, but also sessions on other topics as well. It’s part podcast, part radio show, part voice chat, and the moderation system allows it to flow relatively seamlessly without most of the usual trolling that occurs in places like Facebook and Twitter. Though such talks I’ve been able to listen to some fascinating views and discover some very interesting work from people whom I’ve never heard of before. Celebrities from several fields have been involved in conversations, allowing access to verbal interactions with them that has hitherto been unthinkable.

So I’ve found it both useful, educational and entertaining. But is it the game-changer people are making it out to be? Some have claimed that direct voice communication creates greater empathy and is more able to actually change people’s minds. Earlier this morning I was listening to a Clubhouse session headed by podcasting luminaries Chenjerai Kumanyika and Ira Glass; the topic was stories about people changing their minds based on a specific CH conversation, and I could actually hear them wincing as person after person was brought up on stage specifically to share such stories, when nearly none of them actually had such a story, or indeed any story at all. As we know, Ira’s podcast work centers around stories, and he seemed particularly exasperated at the apparent and continued lack of stories despite constant and clear instruction that this was meant to be a conversation about such stories. This isn’t to say that the people themselves were not interesting or didn’t have anything to say, of course. But in general they were more interested in what they had to say than addressing the topic.

It was an interesting experiment, but though I had been quite interested to hear such stories as well, they clearly were not coming, so Ira fairly quickly suggested that they were done. Perhaps if they had waited longer, or if they had promoted it even more strongly things would have been different, but it’s disappointing that, even when two of the most renowned and brilliant podcasters in the world put out a call for stories about people having their minds changed by CH sessions, virtually nobody could bring up concrete examples.

What does this say about the nature of Clubhouse conversations? The difference is supposed to be that personal voices elicit closer connections than such conversations can have on text-based social media such as Facebook and Twitter, et al.

But people insist on being people, no matter the medium. I’ve attended several conversations that were supposed to be about street photography, but where the conversations were nearly always centered around non-SP matters such as portraiture, wedding photography, models, clients, etc. I’ve tried to take part in conversations that couldn’t proceed because the moderators of the room didn’t respect ideas different from their own. To be fair, I’ve also been surprised at how welcoming other rooms centered on things like photojournalism have been towards the practice and theories of SP. But if I’m being shouted down in a conversation or if I feel nothing interesting is being said, I will simply hit the Leave quietly button and probably not be inclined to join that particular club’s rooms going forward.

So there is a limit to how effective these conversations can be in terms of influence, especially when rooms are not welcoming of reasonable views that might differ from those moderating the space. Personally, I’ve found that even with VR apps such as Altspace, which has been the most effective media in that respect, only so much can be conveyed. And the cynic in me can’t help but note that Clubhouse has made monetization a greater priority than making it cross-platform, which shows me where their priorities lie. My hope is that it turns out to be more than just be another path to hell, just with witty banter along the way.

Clubhouse and its inevitable ilk definitely have a future, especially once they bring Android users into the fold. What kind of future I can‘t say, but the risk is that once user numbers reach critical mass, the conversations will Balkanize even further into mere echo chambers, and at best we‘ll be right back where we started. No matter what form our communication takes, it seems that with sufficient numbers the specter of tribalism that has governed human interaction for so many millennia inevitably works to direct our conversation, sometimes for the better, but too often, if we let it, for the worse.

Is Facebook old-fashioned? Duh! Of course it is, because now all the cool kids are parents, and having your parents checking up on you on Facebook is, like, the uncoolist thing EVAR.

Ok, sorry, that’s the chocolate-filled coffee I just drank talking. It speaks in a sticky-sweet voice and I can’t stop listening.

But seriously, Facebook has actually never been cool, though it can be a useful tool at times. Recently I was turned on to Vine by the work of Thomas Sanders, who makes (mostly) funny six-second videos with an amazing amount of creativity. I’d heard of Vine before, but at that point I just scoffed in the fashion of an elderly white gentleman sipping tea in a puffy armchair while grumbling about “the masses.” Now, years later, I can see the error of my presumption, because Vines can be pretty damn neat. The work of Sanders was a gateway to many other users of the service, and I am now a fan, basically because I like the idea of making a video almost instantly after I come up with the idea to make a video. I suspect this might be a consequence of having spent ten years making a single feature film; I want these things DONE. NOW. And they are. I still suck at making Vines of my own, but it doesn’t matter; I’ll never be one of the A-list there, which is fine because I don’t need that kind of pressure (he said nonchalantly while secretly entertaining fantasies of attending huge Vine Meetups in NYC and LA and hanging out with Egyptian DJs who raise rabbits and wear their hats backwards).

Another social media service I was turned on to via Vine is Snapchat (For some reason I keep typing Snapshat, which I assume is a completely different service). I’d also heard of Snapchat before, which I’d also dismissed in a similarly raised-pinkie fashion, but again, I think there’s something to it. The photos/chats/videos disappear after a certain number of viewings/amount of time. What’s the good of that? You ask. To me, it’s an attempt to regain the feeling of real-world interaction, a backlash against endlessly permanent interactions whose nature is changed because considerations of their permanence. With Snapchat, whatever you say is over and unrecorded (but possibly screenshot, alas) once it’s out you pretty little mouth. People feel less inhibited, say more of whatever nonsense they really think, and it’s over and out; you’re free to move on afterwards because there are fewer consequences. In my case, there are literally no consequences because exactly zero people have ever seen anything I’ve posted on Snapchat. I assume this is because you really need to become well-known on another service like Instagram (which I have reluctantly rejoined, though I’m not terribly active) or Vine before you can entice people over to Snapchat to revel in your fabulous everyday life, real-time, instead of talking with the person sitting next to them on the subway. The nice thing about this is that I can spout any damn nonsense that comes into my fatuous head, something I do anyway, but now I can record myself doing it! There’s no possible use for it that I can imagine.

And now, of course, we have Periscope, launched today by Twitter, which lets everyone broadcast everything all the time. AKA Chaos, mass hysteria, pet co-habitation, etc.

Cool.

Anyway, these things come and go, as those of us who have reached our 40s more or less intact can attest, and I’m sure something new and more interesting will replace the New Things. It keeps things fresh, or at least a welcome distraction from…uh…China’s political hegemony? Tupperware? Eerily anthropomorphic depictions of Elmer the Bull? Voles in general? I can’t remember.