A large metal box is placed at the entrance to the Griffon café-bar, in the Marais, Paris. Inside, sixty locked boxes were lined up. When they arrive, customers eagerly insert their phones. That is precisely why they paid 9.50 euros: to spend two hours in good company, without a smartphone or screen. On November 5, tickets were sold out for the first Offline Club evening in France.
The idea for phone-free events was born from a simple observation, explains Ilya Kneppelhout, 26, one of the three Dutch founders of the Offline Club. : “We all want more exchanges between people, but we no longer know how to do it, applications capture our attention, they are designed to make us dependent. »
It’s six in the afternoon, the afternoon begins. “You are pioneers, be proud of yourselves,” encourage IIya by asking for a “cultural change”, to reduce the place of smartphones in our lives and limit them to their function of” tool “. Invite the twenty-six participants, most of whom are in their thirties, to begin with “a forty-five minute session, without talking, to reconnect with yourself.”
Everyone immerses themselves in a book, starts writing in a notebook or takes out their watercolors. A young woman with long black hair is knitting a sky blue chunky knit sweater. Laura, 33, underlines in pencil passages from a book dedicated to the architect and urban planner Fernand Pouillon. If you had your phone within your reach, you would have spent your time “go look for the references” ; Inevitably, notifications and messages would have caught her. There she feels good ” GOOD “ in your “reading bubble”. Some glances are lost in the darkness of the night or in the leafy leaves painted on the walls.
Popular thanks to Instagram
The slightly strange Zen atmosphere is both a university library and a nap on a deck chair. For some, letting go takes a little time. Coline, 29, social media manager, leaves her workday and struggles to concentrate on a mandala: “I find it difficult to release stress, I use my phone to channel it, I am completely addicted. »
Launched in February in Amsterdam, the Offline Club says it has been successful. Unplugged evenings took place in Barcelona, London, Milan, Dubai, Aarhus, Denmark. “We have received 500 requests from all over the world, including Madagascar and the Philippines, from people who want to organize them.” says Jordy van Bennekom, co-founder of the Offline Club, who hopes that the development of the concept in companies will be profitable. The height of history? The concept owes its popularity to… Instagram, where the account had 414,000 subscribers as of early November.
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