On cue, the room fell noiseless. The man sitting to my left at the long wooden table began scratching a piece of paper with a pencil. To my right, another guy picked up a book. Someone got buried along the way. We have gathered to participate in an unknown ritual: being extreme inactive.
I arrived at 6:45 p.m. that Monday evening at a nondescript office building in Dalston, a recently gentrified area of east London. I was greeted at the door by the host of the event, who was wearing a T-shirt that said “The Offline Club.” I handed them my phone, which they placed in a specially built locker – a sort of scaled-down capsule hotel.
The entrance led to a narrow room with high concrete walls painted white, where about 40 people could sit. A wooden table ran through the center of the room, bordering both a couch and a kitchenette stocked with herbal teas and other drinks. Two plywood stairs led to mezzanines decorated with patterned fabric cushions and gentle lighting. On the opposite wall, the floor-to-ceiling windows were lined with ficuses and other wide-leafed plants.
Attendees began to trickle in, leaving their phones at the door. They ranged in age from about 25 to 40, and the gender split was fairly even. The collective wardrobe bore the hallmarks of a British winter – wool knits, corduroys, corduroys and so on – but with the fashionable style typical of this part of the city: a tattoo here, a turtleneck there. Many people came alone and easily struck up a conversation; I met a video producer, an insurance claims adjuster, and, ironically, a software engineer at a enormous social media company. Others were more reserved, perhaps more attuned to the strangeness of this social occasion.
The group was united by a common ambition: to disconnect from their devices, at least for a moment. Offline Club hosts similar phone-free events across Europe, charging about $17 for admission. Since last year, venues in London have been regularly selling out.
“We talk about it as a gentle rebellion,” says Laura Wilson, co-host of the London branch of Offline Club. “Every time you’re not on the phone, you’re claiming a refund for yourself.”
Soon there was almost no empty chair, stool or pillow in the room. The host signaled that it was time to stop talking. Following the example of others, I took a crayon and started scribbling with an indelicate and unskilled hand.
“I feel like I’m addicted to my phone”
The Offline Club kicked off in 2021 with an impromptu offline weekend in the Dutch countryside organized by Ilya Kneppelhout, Jordy van Bennekon and Valentijn Klol. Finding the experiment enlightening, the trio began organizing scarce offline forays into the Netherlands to spark informal interactions between strangers that they believe are now scarce in a world ruled by devices.
The three Dutchmen formally founded the Offline Club in February 2024 and started organizing meetings in an Amsterdam café. They have since exported the concept to 19 other cities, mostly in Europe, with each branch run on a franchise basis by part-time organizers. Events usually follow a set format: an hour of silence during which people can do whatever they want – reading, puzzles, coloring, crafts, etc. – followed by an hour of phone-free conversation with other participants.
The format was born in London last summer after the local chapter attempted to set an unofficial world record by gathering 2,000 people at the top of Primrose Hill in central London. The goal was to watch the sunset without the swaying of a sea of phones obstructing the view. Then people started buying tickets to the meetings.