I have been thinking about the psychology of Clubhouse and how it took advantage of aspects of social identity theory, social dominance theory and the newer phenomenon of FOMO, it capitalised on an enhanced version of in group/out group behaviour at several levels

The apps overt concept is a live interactive podcast app which is a good idea but the covert concept is about bringing people together then giving them the tools to divide themselves into groups/clubs and a social hierarchy

It started with making people feel like the were being excluded from the app, 1st I thought it was a way to manage bandwidth/server capacity, but then I discovered that the invitation only branding was a disguise to utilise in-group behaviour and FOMO to make the app more popular

entry to the app wasn’t limited to getting an invitation anyone could download the app and if one of your friends had the app they will get a notification and could “let you in” without giving up an invitation.

That essentially means in a social world of about 3 degrees of separation, the app is available to anyone with an iPhone

So why would they brand it as an invitation only social app? Well they knew that people in the app would act like the people out of the app were missing something, which was slyly true because it was fascinating seeing a hood guy from London arguing with an American feminist etc

The in-group did what people do, making the out-group feel more and more isolated by tweeting about it and exaggerating their experiences on the app enhancing the feeling of FOMO for the out group.

The fake exclusivity to the app played on social dominance theory, people felt they were more special than the people who had not been “invited” in yet. This dynamic was played out so much that people were able to sell invitations to something that was really free for all

Same strategy is used within the app as well, 1) Through the 5k people cap on rooms, another facade as the cap is not really 5km People feel a sense of FOMO when they can’t get into certain rooms or just seeing bare people in a room makes you think what is going on in there

2) Within rooms they really apply social dominance theory, clubhouse create a metaphoric, visual and literal heirachy through having moderators, speakers, followed by speakers and then audience category.

Even visually you see this heirachical structure play out and the creators know most people will have the need to be higher up. Social networks have always used this way of separating people for ages through verified badges etc. but ...

clubhouse take this further by giving people at the top of the hierarchy actual power and control through bringing people up on stage, taking them off stage and more.

I know they use all the techniques all the other popular SNs use like the hyper visibility of objective measures that define clout like followers, audiences numbers etc.

You can see who let who into the app and there has got to be some psychology behind this that I don’t have a theory on yet (would love to hear suggestions).

Once they got enough people on the app they knew it would become the clout games and to build the most clout you would have to spend excessive amounts of time on the app

I know this happening psychologically still not sure if this was a conscience decision by the creators but after watching the social dilemma I would be naive to think they didn’t have behaviour psychologists on board playing us like an Oboe