Clubhouse is a lot like Scientology.

Besides the rumors of Scientologists hiding among the platform’s life-coach network, there’s a whole other language you need to learn if you want to assimilate. It’s one of many ways we pass Clubhouse culture among ourselves and invite our friends into the fold.

Unfortunately, that’s not always easy. Trying to explain what’s happening to your friends is difficult when you start using terms they don’t understand. And instead of using the language to control our friends, this guide is meant to bridge the language gap.

If you choose to forward this newsletter to your friends to indoctrinate them into Clubhouse culture, that’s on you. Either way, here are some terms you need to know to navigate those hallways.

Mods

Whenever you enter a room, you’ll see a white asterisk in a green circle next to some people’s names. This is lovingly called the green bean in more polite circles and the green butthole in others.

This symbol identifies the room’s moderators, or mods.

Mods are the gods of their respective rooms. They control who gets to speak with full control of the room dynamics. You’ll notice this occurs on both a technical and social level, and some mods are more benevolent than others.

And the mods aren’t the same as the people scheduled for the room.

In scheduled events, the speakers are listed to give you an idea of who will be on stage. If you’re scheduled for a room, you will immediately appear on stage when you join. However, only the room’s creator is initially modded.

The mod can make other people mods, invite speakers to the stage, approve audience members with their hand raised, mute speakers, move people to the audience, kick people from the room, and close the room.

Paul and Rohan consistently warn to mod people sparingly. I’ve seen many rooms go berzerk because of overmodding, including a room ironically about the overuse of modding.

PTR

People are constantly coming and going from rooms and stages. And they often change their profile pics (known as AVIs). In order to keep up with who’s speaking, you’ll need to pull down on your screen to refresh it.

That’s a mouthful, so we instead say PTR (pull-to-refresh). The term is used in different ways based on the context of the room. Speaker order, for example, is determined in one of two ways: PTR order and popcorn style.

With PTR order, everyone tracks who’s speaking in order on stage. Because people come and go from the stage, that order can change over time (especially on larger stages). Whenever a speaker is finished, it’s important to PTR to ensure you know who’s speaking next.

Many performance rooms also have a PTR element.

In Burnt Chicken’s weekly Living Room, for example, everyone on stage and in the audience is encouraged to change their AVI to an image that shows how the music makes them feel. By the time they’re done performing and PTR, the musicians are presented with a beautiful visual representation of how they made everyone feel.

A Nerd Tribe debate I took part in at one point used PTR as a voting mechanism. Each of us took turns battling Pixar vs Disney movies one on one. At the end, everyone PTRs to see who voted for which studio by changing their pic to the respective logo.

PTR is also used in controlled, high-profile rooms to vet people’s questions before giving them a chance to speak. It’s a gate to keep trolls out, so update your profile with a social link and your question before asking to speak.

Reset the Room

If you’re in a Clubhouse room long enough, you’ll hear somebody discuss refreshing the room. When you watch a professionally produced TV show or hear a professional radio show, things are constantly reset.

Usually, it’s a very subtle process to keep things in the right direction, and you’re so used to it that you rarely notice it if you’re not in the business. Clubhouse has zero chill though, and the room reset is very outward.

Anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour into a room, someone will inevitably announce the need to reset the room. Sometimes they’ll reset the room themselves, starting with “Just to reset the room.”

What they’re doing is refreshing everyone’s mind about what the room is about. The context for the conversation is given so listeners jumping in right now can keep up with where the discussion is and how it got there.

You can almost quantify how good or bad a moderator is by counting how many times you hear the term “reset the room” while in it. A constant need to reset can be a red flag of a mod picking bad guests, or it could be a sign of a great mod who won’t let the conversation get out of hand.

Some parts of Clubhouse use “reset the room’ in a comical way. It’s because you eventually hear it so much that it’s funny. They’re just pulling the conversation back to where it needs to be to stick within the title and keep things on track. But there are ways to reset a room without literally saying it on repeat.

Shadow Ban

Another term you’ll hear sooner or later on Clubhouse is the shadow ban.

Shadow banning is the term used to refer to rooms that aren’t being highlighted by the platform’s algorithm. No matter which social media platform you use (even Google, Apple, and Amazon do it), some content is served directly to you on a platter.

Rooms that aren’t showing up on your front page are said to be shadow banned. It’s meant to keep things in your attention that are interesting to you, but it also narrows your content experience.

Although it sounds like a rumor, the founders are up front about the usage of shadow bans by the Clubhouse algorithm. In fact, things got even crazier when clubs were opened to everyone and language filters were added to room sorting.

The combination of these things (along with slowing community growth and creator burnout) are credited with lowering room attendance across the board. When Android users are allowed to join, rooms numbers will grow, but shadow bans will remain in place.

It’s important to properly label your content, pay attention to title syntax, and stick to less controversial subjects to avoid shadow banning. There are also ways to be shadow banned over bot followers, having blocked people on stage, and more.

Above all, remember that low room attendance doesn’t mean you’re shadowbanned. There are plenty of other market factors at play, and sometimes you’re just not that interesting.

Shoot Your Shot

The most important term to know if you want to succeed at Clubhouse is “shoot your shot.” It’s a term used to describe the dating-style rooms the NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys club appropriated from black Clubhouse to popularize.

Of course, they’re not the only ones – just the most popular.

Shoot-your-shot rooms are like a dating game where you own up to your feelings and state them to the person you feel them for. Even if it’s just an attraction to their profile, you can shoot your shot.

It’s a sign that you can slide into each other’s DMs and build an off-platform, IRL relationship. And it’s not just for dating.

Shooting your shot is one of the magical parts of Clubhouse. Because everyone’s starting (mostly) from scratch, you may have enough on-platform clout to talk to any of your idols. Whether you’re looking for love, friends, or business, you can shoot your shot almost anywhere if you’re good about it.

Just be sure to read the room first. You may find yourself being kicked by a mod for violating the vibe with a pitch. Not everyone’s looking to hookup, and you have to accept that you’ll miss a lot of shots you take.

But you miss every single shot you don’t take. That’s why Clubhouse is the place to shoot your shot and develop better aim.

Continue the Conversation…

As always, the best part of Clubhouse is the conversation never stops. You can use these terms in your own rooms or join the discussion others already created.

Either way, you should understand enough about Clubhouse culture by now to fully immerse yourself.

Feel free to continue this conversation on Clubhouse and let me know if you have any terms I missed. And if you have a friend who can’t understand what you’re talking about, maybe this guide can help.

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If you have something to say, follow me on Clubhouse to let me know.