AUSTIN, TX - Following comments on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where multi-millionaire podcaster Joe Rogan blamed Ukrainian defence for "causing World War III", the podcast phenom clarified that he was not echoing Kremlin propaganda, but is in fact truly this fucking braindead.
Many years ago, I actually enjoyed listening to his podcast but it's hardly reminiscent of the goofy stoner podcast it used to be. Back when artists like Alex Gray would come on and talk about their inspirations or whatever drugs they were on when they created a masterpiece. Or when Maynard James Keenan would get on and talk about TOOL and wine making. Or about how many chimps you could fight before getting your limbs torn off your body. It was stupid, had variety, was largely innocent and Joe wasn't even close to wielding the influence he has now. About 6 years ago it stared shift gears and I just couldnt be bothered to catch-up on any episodes. It was just getting so dull, more mainstream and drawn out. But then came 2020 and covid 19, that was it. It was no longer a show for stoners on long drives or just coming home from work and wanting to hear some mindless brain candy. Shit was getting dangerous with his guests and he gave them a larger platform than even network TV stations could everhope for. At the exact same time, he basically sold his soul to Spotify for $500M. So he had a much wider audience, more money than anyone could ever need in 100 lifetimes and the show was now officially about listeners and ratings thanks to Spotify. I'm now too embarrassed to even mention I was an early fan IRL anymore. I don't understand why people still listen to or engage with him, his show and all the quacks he brings on. There was a reason he rose to popularity but that reason has long since died. All we get is more bullshit and misinformation posed as truth. Nobody took it seriously enough to even care about the dumb shit people said on his show then bc it was comedy centric. Now it political and a major artery by which deliberate misinformation is distributed to the masses.
I hate to link to that place, but I couldn't be bothered to go through a million joe rogan podcasts to find this clip of a guest of joe rogan calling it on how this shit was going to go down.
I see it a bit different; he doesn't realize it, but this is nothing more or less than a full admission to being said asset. I mean, he's confirmed he's too stupid to realize that he is, so logically he's the perfect asset.
he’s confirmed he’s too stupid to realize that he is
He's running the same con as Bush Jr. was: He knows damn well what he's doing, he's playing like he doesn't know so he can deny it. His 'character' is this folksy kinda dumb guy who just 'wants to know the truth.' Then he can put fuckin' Jordan Peterson on and go "hmm yes, I agree with you in every single thing you've said except this one small one, now see, I'm totally not biased."
Young, 16-25 year old boys/men eat this up and he makes bank because they want the easy answers that right-wing con artists pitch to be real. They want it to be reality so they overlook the pretty obvious signs that Rogan is fleecing them.
For just an instant, I really hoped this was a moment clarity for Joe. That he would just retire and that the next time I'd see him would be as a guest star on the News Radio reboot.
Fuck yeah, I think Some More News youtube channel mentions it in their moral panics video, that Rogan said that "he heard from a friend" that some schools are putting litter in classrooms because of furries or some shit ( truth is they do it for mass shootings) then when called out on it being an obvious lie he said he thought it was funny, guy is a piece of shit, just barely above the level of someone like Russel Brand whom I'd like to use to reenact that nice curbside scene from American History X whenever I think of him and the kind of shit he is spreading.
I've never followed Joe Rogan, so I'm a bit ignorant here. Didn't he used to be really popular? What changed, did he become right wing or get really into conspiracies or something?
Let any nut job on his show spew their easily falsifiable claims/conspiracies and then gave those nut jobs legitimacy by just sitting there and nodding at them as if agreeing with them.
He sold out for money/views. Simple as that.
He's not very intelligent overall and he doesn't care who his guests are and what harm the words of those guests do.
At around the beginning of the pandemic he started to switch. At the start of the pandemic - March 2020, he had a virologist on that convinced me covid-19 wasn't just another SARS or MERS that was going to fall flat.
Rogan began his spiral into deplorability after that. Inconvenience outweighed reality for him.
Prior to then, I'd say he had a great mix of all guests from politics to science, hunting and fighting, comedy and entertainment... He was a good interviewer then because he'd ask good questions, shut up, and let them talk. Moreover, he'd ask questions common people might ask a preeminent physicist or politician, getting from them answers accessible to most people.
I stopped listening to his shit back then. Now, he's a big toe. He has a self serving agenda. He's a MAGA Republican asset, which makes him a Russian one by proxy if not directly.
He promoted voting for trump, he's an actual right winger.
Rogan declared his support for Trump in the 2024 presidential election against Vice President Kamala Harris the night before polls opened. He credited Tesla CEO Elon Musk with his decision to endorse Trump.
He was a good interviewer then because he’d ask good questions, shut up, and let them talk.
And there was no time pressure on his podcast. The episodes took as long as they took, so no need for people who aren't good at sound bites to figure out how to explain something complicated in a fast and simple way.
But, even back pre-COVID, pre-Spotify, he was a dangerous idiot. Like, he'd have Alex Jones on, and the guy would spew vast quantities of dangerous misinformation, and Rogan would fact check him on one little thing and that moment would go viral. Meanwhile, Alex Jones gets platformed and most of his BS goes unchallenged.
He had maybe 3-4 good years when his podcast changed from having the same MMA fighters / comedians on again and again every year, to having new people every week, to when it went full-on right wing. In 2012/13 it was still an MMA / comedy podcast featuring mostly the same people every week. Then he had Neil Degrasse Tyson, Dana White, Dan Carlin, David Lee Roth, Douglas Rushkoff. In 2017 he had Alex Jones for the first time. But, by then he was already platforming woowoo people pushing "supplements", and right-wing assholes like Stephen Crowder and Gavin McInnes.
He's always been popular, his show is the biggest around. But he's a dumbass who routinely platforms assholes like Jordan Peterson and does zero due diligence.
He has in the past had some good conversations with interesting individuals, but he is probably the most credulous person on the face of the earth since Joseph bought the line about the virgin birth.
He doesn't just give no pushback, he believes whatever he is told as received wisdom. He's the kind of guy that Ancient Aliens was targeted at. Unfortunately that has got him into the secret truths/fascist death spiral.
Conversation implies two people participating equally, I don't think he ever had good conversations. He had some interesting guests on, but he was in no way an equal or even significant contributor to said appearances.
Also I questioned the believe everything he's told thing. I've seen clips of people explaining why he's wrong on things and his Meathead not been able to grasp it and sticking with it. Even clips of his producer explaining why one of the things he says is completely wrong and made up, and he still believes it. My favorite clip of him is him screaming at a scientist who spinner entire career studying chimpanzees I think it was. He didn't believe what she said. So I'm not so sure about the believes whatever he is told thing.
His comedy has always been edgy, and I think many comedians that are in this niche tend to be opposed to anything that tells them where the line is. When you go against "woke" you naturally gravitate towards being right-wing.
Alongside this, many of his friends are the same, particularly his boss Dana White. Surround yourself with assholes and eventually you become one, I guess.
Even pre-COVID, he was really into conspiracies, and his thoughts on TRT against most medical advice was pretty weird. He got away with it because he's a fifty-something dude that runs a podcast. It's fine when he's broing out, but a danger when he's spouting conspiracies that harm the average person.
The thing that made him popular was "he's open to all ideas". The issue with that stance is you end up leaning one way over another when the ideas come from people with absolute certainty vs ones that are self scrutinized. So, he ends up being a mouthpiece for the right as a result. He genuinely might be surprised to be accused of being a propagandist. His folly is that he is an idiot.
How i'm stupid? If you handpick USA politicians and people with ties to the USA government for your program interviews you sound like an USA propaganda asset to me.
How pointing this out label me as a russian troll? You honestly sound a much bigger bad actor for labeling as troll people pointing out the obvious.
That's a weird take, that podcasts are the issue and not monopolies, big tech, lack of privacy regulation, etc.
Podcasts are one of the few interoperable, democratic things left out there. Anybody can put one up, they use an open technology, RSS, for distribution, they're not monetized by default, etc.
The real issue is that the Internet has an advertising duopoly made from two companies that harvest vast amounts of personal data. They promote controversial stuff like Joe Rogan because it keeps people engaged (read "angry") and engaged people spend more time on their various sites which means more ad dollars flow in.
Spotify, which has a cozy relationship with the music industry cartel, signed Rogan to an enormous deal. So, again, not really podcasting that's the issue here, it's the music/entertainment cartel using him as a means of driving engagement with their platform.
Joe Rogan was actually a big Bernie Sanders supporter. It was only after Sanders betrayed the working class by first endorsing Hilary and then Biden that he and a lot of other people on the left turned to Trump. Sanders endorsing Hilary is what won Trump the election. If you actually listen to some of his podcasts he is very left wing economically, constantly talking about corporations screwing working class people and the world for the sake of profit. Contrary to poplar narratives Trump supporters are not actually all racist morons, they are just pissed at the system. It's funny how things have turned into their opposite. In the 00s the Republicans were the pro-war and pro-censorship party. Now it's the Democrats. As for the war in Ukraine, that's not Joe Rogan's own opinion, it's actually the thesis of one of the smartest scholars in geopolitics, John Mearsheimer.
This is a whole lot of nonesense. Bernie wasn't ever the nominee. how does him endorsing the Democratic nominee push people on the left to vote for Trump when they support Bernie? By that logic if Bernie would have endorsed Trump then those voters would have voted for Hillary.
And if you've been paying attention and vote for an openly racist and sexist moron you are yourself a racist and sexist moron. There's not a way around that. I can't say I respect women and minorities and then turn around and vote for a guy that's going to make womens' and minorities lives' so much worse. Best case I could make is that I wasn't at all paying attention and I didn't really know what I was voting for. Which isn't exactly a good look either.
And just because dems are moving further right insofar as supporting the war in Ukraine and the Genocide in Palestine that doesn't mean that Republicans have somehow flipped to being the progressive, anti-war, anti-cencorship party. Dems have moved further right sure, but Republicans have driven right off the end of the right side of the scale.
I agree with most that you said, except supporting Ukraine does not mean moving rightwing. Most western far right parties actually support Russia and are in turn supported by Russia, which actually makes it so that supporting Ukraine against Russian agression is explicitly not a rightwing thing to do.
Bernie wasn’t ever the nominee. how does him endorsing the Democratic nominee push people on the left to vote for Trump when they support Bernie?
He wasn't the nominee because the DNC screwed him over in 2016 in favor of Hilary. At that point Sanders had a choice, he could either break with the right wing democratic party or support the official democratic nominee. This was a historic opportunity to break apart the two-party system of the US and Sanders squandered it. The decision to endorse Hilary was seen by a large part of his support base as betrayal. Contradictory as it may seem both Sanders and Trump had tapped in the same mood of discontent among the masses. They were both seen as anti-establishment candidates and there was a big overlap among the people who supported them. But unlike Trump Sanders embraced the failed strategy of "lesser-evilism" and that directly led to Trump's victory. If Sanders had stood firm history may have been different.
As for the Republicans going left wing. Neither of the two US parties is left wing but it's a fact that the Republicans have taken the role from the Democrats of pretending to support the working class. They even use the phrase "working class" now, even on Fox News. That was unheard of only 10 years ago. When is the last time you heard a Democrat refer to the working class? It's all "middle class" for them. The Democrats are the party of Hollywood now, not the workers. So yea, the republicans are using left-wing rhetoric now, the dems are moving more and more to the right. Identity politics is not "left wing". It's just what passes for left wing in the US liberal circles, and people are tired of it.
Not as stupid as the people gobbling down all the propaganda about this war coming from the US and western Europe mainstream media. The war is lost, Russia won. Get over it. And yes, he is right, Ukraine is desperate and tries to escalate.
There is plenty of right wing disinformation. That the US/Ukraine provoked the war, and wants it perpetuated is not disinformation. Sad to see the main attack on "right populism" is the desperate need to get nuked, even as cabinet is pre-announcing cooperation with Biden escalation, and stronger threats to Russia.
If we get WWIII, it'll be because of people like you provoking Biden. He's a madman loose cannon lame duck and your irresponsible language is a threat to the survival of all humanity. Putin would win the Nobel prize if he simply capitulated to Biden before we're all ashes.
The gap in our realities will definitely be the cause of WW3. Russia's reality is not affected by me or you. Biden and colonies know full well their lies and subjugation meant to diminish Russia. You cheering for those lies is what enables them, and what gets us nuked. To suggest that challenging the lies and evil, to no effect judging by the downvote group think, provokes Biden's "sacrifice he is willing to make" in the sea of Lemmings already asking how fast to jump off the cliff, can't possibly make sense to anyone.