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Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
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28 Feb, 11 tweets, 4 min read
Phew, I'm not the only one! (ht @madmanweb)

Thank you @TimMarcin cos I've been feeling like I'm in one of those twilight zone episodes

My main simple and continuing source of Clubhouse skepticism as a social media researcher and professor and active user is simple.

I've had at least 25 different people offer me clubhouse invites. Not a single one has asked me for one. I'm usually the networked guy with invites
If I extend it to people I follow on Twitter, over a hundred "anyone need a clubhouse invite?" tweets. Not a single "could someone please send me a clubhouse invite" that I've seen. Previous invite-only successes had more people asking than offering. Here who is even asking? 🤔
Let's do an informal poll. Re Clubhouse, what do you see or hear more of re invites
Anyone else reminded me of this epic video meme from 90s MTV?
"Please explain it to me, where is this the club?
There is no building!!!
There is no secretary!!!
There is no bearer!!!
There is no soft drink even!!!"

I hope Clubhouse at least gives soft drink. 🙄
Oooh I'm glad Ashok responded. Excellent case study. Half the desi people I know talking clubhouse are talking Ashok. It's Ashok they like not Clubhouse. Tomorrow he moves to twitter or moderated zoom or even just google hangouts, they go with him.

I totally see the appeal of "AN" app like this. It's the valley bro bombay bhau hype and valuation that's throwing me off. And I could be totally completely wrong a year later. And @TimMarcin and I can buy each other socially distanced drinks. But imma Cassandra it till then.
Nope. Those people will still use zoom or twitter or skype even if Ashok or Elon are not on it. I'm quite simply not seeing a daily use of clubhouse without personal commitment from a celeb/expert/influencer. Without an Ashok, it's just Yahoo Chat.

Eeeks URL error in the first tweet

mashable.com/article/clubho…
A lot of the pushback is of the "I enjoy clubhouse even without celebs" variety. Absolutely. I'm not saying Clubhouse is useless. I'm just not seeing its potential and future to be proportional to the hype or valuation. It's not a ding on the curated audio chat concept.

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Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
1 Mar
Even when you show them Say You Love Me in that throaty voice of Demis Roussos that Pancham made up an urban legend about how he sang Mehbooba even with a sore throat or some such nonsense. They are like "no no but mehbooba is still BETTER". 🙄🙄
This is the real "genius" of Pancham. Getting his dad's friends who traveled abroad to bring him the latest hits from other countries. That he then plagiarized almost exactly and identically. And got called a genius.

Initially, he plagiarized artists who would not be known in India like Demis Roussos, Herb Albert, Paul Anka etc. But no one noticed or cared. They anointed him a genius. So in the 80s, Pancham is like, I could rip off Paul Fucking McCartney note by note and still be a genius.
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Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
1 Mar
Something big is being shot here in the east village. Just tweeting about it so when it's eventually released, I can QT this tweet. 🤣🤣 #NYC Image
I feel like this huddle of young actors is key to the scene. Apparently it's a movie shoot not a TV shoot. Image
Now they're saying it's a TV show called, I think, Pose. It's cold and windy in a pandemic so not like I can just start chatting with strangers at close quarters like it's 2019. But "Pose" is the keyword to remember. Image
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Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
1 Mar
Some reflexive responses to this are of the "Nooo, respect Caravan IP" variety. I get where they're coming from, but they miss the point.

Of course you should subscribe to Caravan if you can afford it!

But if you can't, this is a perfectly ethical "Fair Use Doctrine" mechanism
I went to grad school with the dude who started Caravan and also met him again last year. Caravan is not something he started to make money and retire in switzerland. It has a bigger purpose. Of course, quality journalism needs ₹₹₹ so that awesome content is paywalled. But...
...But if you can't afford to buy the subscription but would still like to read their spectacular investigative and other such pieces about India's cascading crises?

I really doubt Anant will lose sleep over someone offering to send PDFs of articles from Caravan.
Read 7 tweets
Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
1 Mar
Dad came across this letter from his granddad to his dad. Damn, I knew my great granddad was like some posh E.M. Foster character but that handwriting and those turns of phrase! I feel like an awkward teenager in comparison! Image
"The silence should not be construed as displeasure" will our family motto from now on.
Btw, "Rai Ratan" great grandpa died soon after that letter. Almost 62 years ago. Very very few people have any direct memories of him. He lives on through occasional pieces of the past like these that we find.
Read 6 tweets
Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
28 Feb
I remember there was a very good south indian coffee online startup here sourcing stuff from kumbakonam or some place very legit. I loved the chicory blast. Took me back to indian childhood coffee.
But murrcan wife @k_rupal & friends were like why does your coffee taste woodish?
I was not as much into food science then. So did not think of chicory being the difference then. But after a few more such rabbit hole dives spurred by "how can @k_rupal and i have the same thoughts on the bizarrest of random things but not coffee?", the answer was chicory!
And this then became a story to use forever in my marketing classes about preference models.

Like that tweet above says, chicory in coffee was not an exotic hipster innovation. It was basically targeted and intelligent contamination. It was fraud. Like milkmen watering milk. 🤣
Read 12 tweets
Gaurav Sabnis 🇮🇳🇺🇸 Profile picture
28 Feb
Desis who eat Mexican food made of Mexican things like corn, chillies, tomato, rajma, aloo, and are like "omg this is copied from desi food" always remind me of these sketches
My two twitter stories to show how Modi's india online has somehow managed to be even more insular and self-obsessed than US.

A gorgeous maiz callejero video went viral. In the mentions, dozens of desis going "wtf mexico is appropriating our bhutta! 😠😠" with profanity!!
Then there was this video of a very fancy high end Japanese shaved ice. So gorgeous and appealing. In the mentions,

Rest of the world: That looks good/bad/neutral/etc

Indians: Damn Japanese have stolen our baraf ka gola!! 😠😠

We really believe we in the tropics invented it!
Read 8 tweets

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