Campfires in a Dark Forest: The Secret of Clubhouse

When you’re lost in a forest at night, it’s best not to call for help. You have no idea what might be lurking in the shadows. Similarly, saying the wrong thing online can get you shamed, blamed and burned. Yancey Strickler called this the Dark Forest theory of the internet in 2019, and suggested that people are increasingly retreating to private spaces to have genuine conversations.

Now, pockets of light are appearing in the darkness. These are the Digital Campfires: communities where people gather to have face to face interactions in real time, usually on platforms like Zoom, and often with the explicit intention of practicing new kinds of dialogue.

The newest Digital Campfire is Clubhouse — an audio-only app exploding in popularity. But does it mark a new era in how we communicate online, or is it just a passing fad?

To begin answering this, we need to draw on insights from cognitive science, psychology and the wisdom traditions to examine what’s happening when we engage in audio-only dialogue. In doing so, we may surface a more knotty question: as we start to leave the major social networks in search of something better, what is it we’re really looking for?

Better Conversations

The growing popularity of Clubhouse can partly be explained by comparing it to the established social networks, particularly those that rely on text-based communication like Twitter and Facebook. This way of communicating is asynchronous; there’s a time lag between when I read your message and reply to you. And if it isn’t entirely anonymous, it often has a quality of anonymity. What’s lost in that is the embodied human connection you get in a realtime, synchronous conversation through video and voice.

This isn’t to say conversation can’t break down on Clubhouse — it can and does, quite spectacularly — but the app also offers the potential for more authentic, meaningful communication. Conversations I’ve had on Clubhouse are certainly more enjoyable than any I’ve had on Facebook. As Tristan Harris has pointed out, major social networks funded by advertising are taking…