this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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That's a headline that needs sorting
So did Rogan ask Zuck to be on the show, or did Zuck ask Rogan?
Almost certainly the latter. Rogan has forged a remarkable career in legitimizing authoritarianism, and he’s never been more valuable to oligarchs than now.
I’ve been thinking on this a lot. It’s genuinely amazing and deeply disturbing how innocuous he seems to people who aren’t aware of what he actually is.
I think he’s been able to market himself to his most ideologically aligned audience as a smaller deal than he really is, despite having the highest-possible profile guests on his show.
For better or for worse this man and his show will be studied for years to come. As someone who was an occasional listener back before the mask-off phase I have so many thoughts on the guy.
I think one thing to understand is that most of his casual audience very likely engages through watching clips, not sitting through whole interviews. The reasonable, mainstreamable stuff gets clipped out and perhaps you run across it sarching for something else, or it's algorithmically fed to you because of your interest in an adjacent topic. Clips of the weirder, creepier manosphere/Alex Jones/Art Bell guests don't get surfaced as readily, at least until you're down the rabbit hole, so Rogan himself ends up having a veneer of reasonability and respectability that he doesn't really deserve.
Same goes for Trump rallies, or probably almost any major political speech now. There's a front line of people who will watch the whole thing, but then they recirculate specific clips based on how they want to portray the subject.
nah his MOST ideologically aligned audience is made up of actual zealots. my dad was literally screaming at me, “he’s got the most popular show in the world! he’s a big deal!” because i said i didn’t think joe was a smart guy the other night.
the context was, of course, vaccine skepticism. he’s really just diet alex jones, but since he’s popular i guess there’s no issue there?
i’m so tired y’all.
Yeah I don’t even know why I wrote that. I think I mean something more like general audiences that are likely to find more points in common with the opinions on the show than points they’d object to.
People who don’t view themselves as political? Not sure.
A large swath of people will think you’re overreacting if you say something like “Joe Rogan is putting a friendly face on disastrous misinformation for millions of trusting listeners all over the world.” or its much milder cousin “This guy has uncritically nodded along to a lot of bullshit his friends have said on air, I can’t listen to this anymore, I think it’s weird that you still do.”
Nothing says free thinker like having very particular opinions on irrelevant US current events from across the planet that just so happen to line up with one of the most famous corporate mouthpieces since Oprah.
i’m so consistently bummed out that duncan trussell loves him so much, but i’m pretty sure they were friends a while before he really started down this road.
like fuck, i’ve got some shitty friends. and i would probably also call em out a lot less if they were giving me an enormous fucking platform to just dick around with for funsies.
he’s lowkey on my shitlist until he makes midnight gospel season 2 happen tho. i refuse to believe there isn’t a SINGLE streamer interested. pitch it to chick-fil-a or something, c’mon!
really? the impact to your media consumption patterns and preferences is the biggest problem you have here?
seriously?
oof.