Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
In clubhouse (a voice-only app), I've had the chance to listen to lots of rooms of entirely black people talk, which I rarely get to hear in my daily life. It turns out black people on clubhouse talk about being black a *lot*. They reference blackness in relation to everything.
8
92
Aella
@Aella_Girl
It's really fascinating; blackness permeates as an identity in a way I've never heard another ethnicity or nation referenced (but similar to how I've heard Christians talk). It's very tribal, and touches on many aspects of conversation you wouldn't expect to be black-related.
2
41
Aella
@Aella_Girl
I felt very intensely 'white' when listening to these groups, when usually I don't notice my skin color if I'm in an e.g., asian-dominant group. It felt very clear that I was *not* in their in-group at all; there was a huge cultural divide that feels explicitly upheld.
2
46
Aella
@Aella_Girl
This was all kind of surprising to me; I don't know if this is specific to Clubhouse or if this is the way black people view the world in general? And also why haven't I really understood this or heard people talk about it if it is more common outside of Clubhouse?
23
39
Charlie Sanders
@CharlieSand3rs
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Sampling bias? The average Clubhouse user is a very particular subset, and is not representative of the population at large. You're extrapolating your own context without realizing the atypicality of your experience.
2
1
Charlie Sanders
@CharlieSand3rs
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
An app whose selling point is exclusivity and social cachet is obviously going to only represent the criteria of the filter it uses to approve users. From what I can see, that filter is decided on by SV techbros. So I would expect a userbase palatable to SV techbros.
2
1
Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@CharlieSand3rs
Right now users can invite whoever they want. I listened to a conversation in a black room about how they need to invite more black people to make Clubhouse a greater black space. It's definitely migrating away from SV techbro pretty hugely.