Look, I don’t like this anymore than you do. You think I want to talk about Joe Rogan? I could be playing video games right now. But Joe Rogan is inescapable. The internet has forced his every opinion on me, from Joe Biden (“Everybody knows he’s out of his mind”) to police reform (“the idea that you are going to send social workers to handle someone’s domestic violence case, it’s f—ing bananas”) to the goddamn WWE. Googling his name is like opening the Ark of the Covenant.
He matters, unfortunately, because of his influence. Spotify supposedly paid him $100 million to be the exclusive home of his podcast, which has around 11 million listeners. His YouTube channel is huge too; “What Started the Cultural Fixation on Gender?” has 1.2 million views, despite sounding like a trap that sends a warning to the people you’ve messaged on dating apps. So when he uses his massive platform to tell healthy young people they don’t need to get vaccinated, well, we have something of a problem.
But I don’t want to wade through his every opinion and balance them on a ledger. Don’t get me wrong; he has plenty of awful ones. He welcomed a guest who compared trans teenagers to people who get “involved in cutting, demonic possession, witchcraft, anorexia, bulimia.” On another episode he implied that people transition for clout, saying “people who were marginalized for being generally dumb people, if they transfer over and become another gender, then they get praised.” And face greater odds of unemployment, homelessness, and violent abuse, but sure, yeah, it’s all for the universal approval that society lavishes on trans people.
He’s also said trans people “should be allowed to live as they want”… before turning around again and calling them a “social contagion.” He’s been an advocate for gay rights, but when he moved to Austin and declared his intention to create a stand-up comedy utopia he immediately annoyed its already existing stand-up scene by performing a set with more anti-gay slurs than jokes. He slammed Trump, then said he’d begrudgingly vote for him in 2020, then mocked his supporters. He’s a contrarian because contrarianism has become the assumption that pissing off enough people means you’ve discovered a profound and challenging truth.
Rogan walked back those anti-vax comments and joked “I’m not a doctor, I’m a moron,” which is a fair point. But Rogan’s audience was already more vaccine hesitant than people who listen to good podcasts, so the damage was done. Rogan clarified that he’s not an anti-vaxxer, and I believe him. But I think Rogan could be made to believe anything, as long as someone confident told it to him five minutes ago.
One of the easiest ways to trick yourself into thinking you’re smart is to equate “freethinking” with “ignoring experts because that’s what The System wants you to do.” Rogan simultaneously presents himself as open-minded while having the intellectual curiosity of a doorstop; he’s welcomed everyone from conspiracy monger Alex Jones to alt-right chud Gavin McInnes to modern robber baron Elon Musk and let them sound off as though the world outside their weed-filled recording booth was hypothetical. He let Jones claim that China controls the Democratic Party, said the openly white supremacist McInnes was “an interesting guy who’s says funny shit,” and let Musk ramble about cyborgs instead of asking why his employees keep collapsing on the job. Rogan never questions his guests, even though they’re more self-interested than the experts he’s supposedly smart enough to distrust.
Joe Rogan Experience
This is around when “But he’s just a comedian!” rings from the rafters. Sure, but he’s a comedian with one of the largest fanbases on the planet, a fanbase that thinks he’s sticking it to mainstream media by having even lower standards. That’s the same defense that was trotted out when he performed his slur-riddled stand-up routine. But that defense only works if your jokes and opinions aren’t about anything, if someone is inexplicably upset at you for making banal observations about traffic and coffee shops.
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