The status game is their answer to discovery, because ultimately Clubhouse's biggest problem is content quality. I ticked all the interests boxes, perused through the suggested rooms, and never ever waltzed into a room that I found interesting (after about 20 tries).

The exception is a weekly room I was invited to by a friend. That room has been amazing. I've met people, had fun and interesting conversations, and gotten a lot of value out of the app.

So Clubhouse is using one mechanism that's probably Almost Right, the "follows," to help discover rooms that are going to be worth your time. This then creates a status game, and it's very real; our weekly room had a million-follower person get on stage for about 15 seconds, and we suddenly had 1000+ people in the audience. It was a bit like a Twitch raid from a popular streamer.

> Now that high status people can be seen in person again, they are spending less time on Clubhouse. Lower status people are left trying to be seen amongst themselves. Without high status people, Clubhouse is not serving its purpose of helping people be seen. It is a cargo cult: low status people recreating the actions of high status people, after they have left, thinking it will cause them to be high status.

I have to agree. Clubhouse imploded around February and it's been a sad scene since then.