Clubhouse has a gaping hole in its goal of becoming a reliable news network. A lot of marketers present themselves as reporters on the platform, and we freelancers walk the lines of both.
Creator First pilot season finalists Michael Rozenzweig and Alissa Miky understand the fine line, creating a talk show that tackles the topics with humor and refreshing honesty. They also do it in both English and Japanese to reach a global audience left completely untouched by most Asian American creators.
This makes it feel like a global remix of NBC’s Today that’s accessible to multiple cultures. In doing so, they cross geographic borders and make it easier for people looking to experience other cultures.
And they’re spreading commentary and news on topics like artificial intelligence, sustainability, politics, and more. In the pilot episode, they recruit Professor Yoichi Ochiaiand RTFKT Studios Chief Operating Officer Nikhil Gopalani.
This means we’re diving into all things blockchain, computer graphics, virtual reality, holograms, gaming, NFT, augmented reality, and fashion. RTFKT is a revolutionary digital sneaker marketplace that makes it newsworthy,
Let’s run the diagnostics to see if The Global Lowdown executes its programming or leaves listeners lost in translation.
Ready NFT 123820193890128490129849098
If an NFT drops in the forest and no one’s around to record it to the blockchain, does it break a record?
Clubhouse has now been talking about NFTsfor over 100 straight days, so let’s stop for a moment of celebratory silence at how far humanity progressed over the centuries…
…
Now let’s talk about how large of a Japanese audience showed up to support these two bilingual and multicultural creators. The show reached over 1200 concurrent listeners at the start and quickly became one of the largest rooms of the night, overtaking Felicia’s Virtual Dinner Party’s competing room.
And unlike the a16z Queen of Saturday Night, this duo held its audience the entire way through. In fact, it continued to slowly grow as the night went on, and I never noticed them pulling the typical stage dives and other hacks used by mods to pump room visibility and attendance numbers.
They followed the familiar Clubhouse news format used by Beauty Headlines, so they can be measured with each other. On the content end, they’re easily equal.
However, it’s worth noting that this globally accessible news show got well over double the all-time high ever reached by the platform’s morning News News News show. If only Clubhouse founder Paul Davison shouted The Global Lowdown out as much as he does his favorite show.
Besides Steph Simon, I didn’t notice anyone from the Clubhouse staff in the room. It’s always fascinating to me how many shows go under the radar, and this one is a simple programming problem.
Clubhouse doesn’t account for bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual individuals, much like it ignores the needs of vision- and hearing-impaired users. So, this room had to be labeled as Japanese language, making it invisible in my hallways and ClubHub, the third-party monitoring site that only sees English and Russian rooms.
This room has been happening weekly for a long time, and the only reason it wasn’t invisible for me this week is because it was hosted by Clubhouse HQ. As the show continued, the audience grew to 1700 concurrent users.
Imagine how large it would’ve been if it wasn’t hidden from the English-language hallways. This was the best NFT or crypto room I sat in since Kim Dotcom got bombarded by the Bitcoin cult for his insistence that his fork is better.
The headlines reviewed focused on NFT art, Pokemon, and other topics, and although the beginning was mostly in Japanese, English-speaking listeners were given the proper background and links to reading material to keep up with the topics being discussed.
By interweaving tales of pop culture, like Ready Player One and Paprika, they walked a fine line like tightrope artists. They were able to cast as broad a net as possible to make very complicated metaverse topics accessible to mass audiences.
People sometimes think you have to dumb material down, and it’s true to a point. Listeners are much more intelligent than most media outlets give them credit for. Although the topics they’re discussing can be highly technical and niche, they up the difficulty level by doing it for two completely different global audiences.
Still, they managed it beautifully, and it was like watching a master juggler at a high-end Cirque de Soleil show dodge some gymnasts and whatever other 15 things are happening.
When they introduce the RTFKT team, they ask the right question up front – how do you pronounce your name?
Rosenzweig presents their team’s best guesses (I also landed somewhere in the range of “rot fuk it” and just pronouncing the letters). It turns out, the company’s name is “Artifact,” which is a nod to Ready Player One. Artifacts are the most powerful Legendary-level gear within OASIS, the virtual world within the fictional world.
These are the boss item drops that everyone’s grinding for, and that perfectly describes the recent NFT craze. Digitizing art, fashion, and other items is the lifeblood of the blockchain-based metaverse. It’s the latest in gamification, and this crew loves what it does.
You can hear all sorts of fascinating things about Crypto Punk shoes, sake, manga, anime, and all things Japanese culture, tech, business, and lifestyle.
Within the first half hour, there was an even 50/50 mix of English and Japanese, and it’s easy to see how this can be enjoyable for both audiences. I don’t speak Japanese, and I could easily follow along.
Of course, I’m a fan of the metaverse, even if I don’t know how to make one of those fancy laser eye photos. If anyone knows how to do it, please reach out to me on Clubhouse or Twitter.
Final Thoughts on The Global Lowdown
The Global Lowdown is the second perfect score I’ve given on Clubhouse. Laugh Factory Comedy Workshop got the first because it transcended the platform to provide a proving ground and career support group for comedians who got hit hard by the pandemic performance venue closures.
What Global Lowdown did to match that was seamlessly make Clubhouse content that transcends geographic borders. It’s the same format Beauty Headlines used this morning, blending headline news breakdowns with industry expert interviews.
But by discussing NFTs and blockchain in two different languages, The Global Lowdown takes a big risk that pays off in a big way. So many Clubhouse rooms devolve into a series of stale monologues, but this was an inclusive conversation that was easily accessible to this white American male who never lived in Japan.
It’s the best and most immersive cultural experience I’ve had since Persian New Year, and I hope more people use this platform to bridge gaps into those things they don’t understand.
Clubhouse algorithms hid this gem from me, and I’m glad this pilot season gave me an opportunity to follow these two and their club. I never would’ve had the chance otherwise.