Clubhouse is being hyped to the max as the potential next big social media platform. Online and offline, people are scrambling for invites to the audio-only chat platform that’s currently doing its best to create an atmosphere of exclusivity and a gateway to instant access to A-list celebrities across multiple industries. Indeed, it only takes a cursory glance at the Clubhouse Twitter feed to see that the invite-only growth model is less a way to gently test the platform’s potential and more a carefully honed PR strategy that’s currently paying off.

Virtually every tweet on Clubhouse’s Twitter feed is a retweet from someone, often moderately to extremely famous, praising, promoting, or expressing their enthusiasm for their Clubhouse experience. Early on, Elon Musk and Kevin Hart’s Lakes made headlines for heated intraplatform conversations that, at least ostensibly, should have stayed there.

But of course they didn't, because the Internet was there.

In Hart’s case, there was a bit of a backlash across the continent of conversation, but it was nonetheless illustrated by Clubhouse games to make their primary selling point: near-instant access to big celebrities you love. And that’s indeed a big part of what the platform offers; the chance to hear a big speaker in a field of interest you follow, speaking live, off the cuff—not sanitized and not sanitized for mass distribution. But part of that involves actually hearing the person as they speak.