My Twitter friend Benjamin Boyce highlighted this amazing example of cancel culture which I don’t think I’d ever heard about before. The really short version of this is that a person named David Markovich hosted a meeting on Clubhouse to invite new users of the app (which had just launched in Asia) to try it out. Some woke goons decided it was wrong for a white guy to be hosting a forum of Asian people and targeted Markovich for destruction with an assist from NY Times tech journalist Taylor Lorenz.

The author of this very detailed piece on Substack calls it a “social murder on social media” but what he’s describing is clearly cancel culture. It started on February 2, 2021:

DAVID MARKOVICH, a 32-year-old marketing entrepreneur in LA, is moderating yet another discussion on Clubhouse – the first audio-only social network. At the time, it’s the next big thing in consumer tech, with myriad celebrity users and funding from top-tier Silicon Valley VCs.

Clubhouse “rooms” are akin to audio-only Zoom calls with speakers (between one and dozens) and listeners (between none and thousands). The “mod” serves as traffic cop, ensemble conductor, and radio call-in show host in each “room”, or discussion…

Clubhouse is newly available in Asia. Chinese and Japanese users show up in a Markovich room for the very first time:

That first meeting goes so well that people decide to convene again the next day specifically to welcome users from China and Japan. I wrote about this at the time. What was amazing about the launch of Clubhouse in China was that it was a rare opportunity for users to speak freely and have conversations with people with different viewpoints outside the bubble created by state media and Chinese control and monitoring of the internet. Naturally, the Chinese government banned Clubhouse a few days later.

In any case, a Chinese American Clubhouse user entered Markovich’s gathering and spoke to people (not all of whom were from China) in Mandarin:

“GRYFFINDOR”, a Chinese-American in California, leaves his ANTIMA brethren for Markovich’s discussion. He interrupts abruptly in Mandarin, welcoming the Chinese listeners and promoting an upcoming Mandarin-language welcome room that he’s hosting.

This is considered rude behavior on Clubhouse and Markovich asked Gryffindor to stop interrupting his room. Another user starts a room asking why Markovich is hosting a room full of Asians and the room grows. Here’s I’m switching to the Twitter version of the story.

It's pretextual bunk.

As the mob metastasizes, one of Markovich's interlocutors in China sends him a supportive DM (see below). "We have our own thoughts," she says.

Markovich knows this. The Wokist "rescuers" never bother to check. pic.twitter.com/I4Q7jEvx3H

— The Inquisition (@The_Inq_) December 14, 2021

Markovich becomes the designated figure of hate.

The bizarreness and irony of this situation is hard to grasp.

Markovich behaves benignly; the Wokists fabricate a racialized victim narrative that causes PANDEMONIUM on Clubhouse; then they blame it all on Markovich, making him the enemy of Asians and non-Asians alike. pic.twitter.com/VZk6n4IRBC

— The Inquisition (@The_Inq_) December 14, 2021

And at this point, Taylor Lorenz jumps in. And pretty soon Markovich has been mass reported and suspended from the site. He has been canceled.

The Clubhouse mob mass reports Markovich for his fictional crimes, triggering his automatic suspension.

"Goodbye David Markovich" is a particularly toxic celebration of his deplatforming. (Look which Clubhouse investor is listening in!) pic.twitter.com/abxRQ0qVor

— The Inquisition (@The_Inq_) December 14, 2021

One member of the mob wants to take it to the next level and received another assist from Taylor Lorenz:

Taylor Lorenz, forever doing the Gray Lady proud, hops back into the fray and tweets out a link to this wretched farce of a document: pic.twitter.com/uUKA6rLJAf

— The Inquisition (@The_Inq_) December 14, 2021

A very biased account of what happened spreads to Yahoo News:

The next day, Yahoo Finance reporter Melody Hahm joins in the fun, publishing her own error-ridden ode to journalistic malpractice just *NINE MINUTES* after asking Markovich for comment.https://t.co/C8ZUJvu6A8 pic.twitter.com/YvOAyUwGbD

— The Inquisition (@The_Inq_) December 14, 2021

Weeks later, Markovich was cleared by Clubhouse because he didn’t violate any terms of service. But his reputation is destroyed. If you Google him you learn he’s xenophobic, which is pretty ironic given that he was trying to welcome new Asian users to Clubhouse.

Every aspect of Markovich's life, online and off, is upended by the Wokists' nuclear strike. He's still dealing with the fallout.

Don't think it could happen to you? Don't be so sure.

— The Inquisition (@The_Inq_) December 14, 2021

This isn’t the only woke takeover of a room on Clubhouse that I’ve written about but this one seems pretty egregious. The author of the Substack piece is calling on Yahoo to update its stories about David Markovich. Hopefully that will happen but I wouldn’t count on an assist from Taylor Lorenz this time.