Dude is a former always-high Fear Factor manlet host that became a pseudo-intellectual when he found his niche market after his abysmal attempt at stand-up and UFC announcer. This is the guy that encouraged everyone to take medicine meant for horses because he was high when he was reading this incredibly dangerous and stupid idea for a treatment. There are like minded people that also find appeal in a platform where you talk like a pothead all day. Don’t get me wrong, potheads contemplating the universe and talking about food can be entertaining; until the pothead becomes a zealot about their bullshit.
The vast majority of his podcast episodes, especially the ones with scientists and experts are quite interesting and entertaining. Not so much the ones with fighters or comedians. As someone who has listened probably a thousand episodes from him it’s quite hilarious what picture of him people who don’t know better are trying to paint. Yeah, he has his flaws and as with everyone, I don’t agree with him on every issue but for the most part I think he’s a pretty good guy.
It goes on for too long for me to be into it, but it’s not a bad thing, in my unpopular opinion. He just has people on his show from all kinds of different places. He has Bernie Sanders, Neil Degrass Tyson, Nazis, Anti-vaxxers, Elon Musk, comedians, crooks, liars, just a huge variety of people, and then he gives them an extended length of time to talk about what they’re into. He’s sort of a moron, but he mostly knows he’s a moron, so he doesn’t try to bring anything but an unqualified point of view to it, and lets the person make their argument and lets people hear it.
I watched one of his episodes interviewing an anti-vaxxer, and to me he struck a pretty good balance of letting the guy speak, but also asking important questions and repeatedly pointing out that the guy hadn’t answered the question he had asked, and asking it again. Would it be better to have a science-qualified host to poke holes in the guy’s claims? Yeah, maybe. But it’s also not like Rogan was saying he agreed with anything the guy was saying, or trying to engineer his show to make it sound particularly plausible.
I think the impulse to ban Rogan maybe stems from the same type of thinking that says we have to ban “misinformation” from Lemmy. Thinking people just absorb whatever’s in front of them, and so it’s “our” job to filter out the wrong stuff lest people get exposed to it and absorb it like amoebas. I won’t say that’s completely wrong, but I think the solution is to teach people to be skeptical of what’s in front of you, not to nominate someone to do a perfect job of filtering all the wrong stuff out so that everyone can go on uncritically absorbing everything they can still have access to.
Plus, the podcaster landscape is full of so many people maliciously trying to craft propaganda to sway public opinion and doing an absolutely excellent job at it. Rogan’s just a guy who lets people talk. He’s not really the villain in the podcasting propaganda conversation, to me.
Yeah but what’s more likely/doable, changing the entire US education system (with this incoming government???) or deplatforming Nazis and people who platform Nazis?
Also Nazis don’t deserve that type of treatment. They aren’t acting in good faith and don’t deserve to be treated like they are.
I watched the Alex Jones one because I didn’t know anything first hand about Alex Jones. My takeaway was how could anyone believe what this obviously crazy, unhinged buffoon was saying. If anyone does, well… the problem is far deeper than hosting.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person on Earth to have never watched Joe Rogan.
Why are you people doing this?
Nope. There’s two of us.
Three. I thought Josh Rogan had something to do with curry.
Dude is a former always-high Fear Factor manlet host that became a pseudo-intellectual when he found his niche market after his abysmal attempt at stand-up and UFC announcer. This is the guy that encouraged everyone to take medicine meant for horses because he was high when he was reading this incredibly dangerous and stupid idea for a treatment. There are like minded people that also find appeal in a platform where you talk like a pothead all day. Don’t get me wrong, potheads contemplating the universe and talking about food can be entertaining; until the pothead becomes a zealot about their bullshit.
I don’t watch him either, but you can’t deny that he is already very popular and had more viewers than show on TV.
https://www.newsweek.com/most-popular-podcasts-america-right-now-joe-rogan-daily-crime-1650687
The vast majority of his podcast episodes, especially the ones with scientists and experts are quite interesting and entertaining. Not so much the ones with fighters or comedians. As someone who has listened probably a thousand episodes from him it’s quite hilarious what picture of him people who don’t know better are trying to paint. Yeah, he has his flaws and as with everyone, I don’t agree with him on every issue but for the most part I think he’s a pretty good guy.
It goes on for too long for me to be into it, but it’s not a bad thing, in my unpopular opinion. He just has people on his show from all kinds of different places. He has Bernie Sanders, Neil Degrass Tyson, Nazis, Anti-vaxxers, Elon Musk, comedians, crooks, liars, just a huge variety of people, and then he gives them an extended length of time to talk about what they’re into. He’s sort of a moron, but he mostly knows he’s a moron, so he doesn’t try to bring anything but an unqualified point of view to it, and lets the person make their argument and lets people hear it.
I watched one of his episodes interviewing an anti-vaxxer, and to me he struck a pretty good balance of letting the guy speak, but also asking important questions and repeatedly pointing out that the guy hadn’t answered the question he had asked, and asking it again. Would it be better to have a science-qualified host to poke holes in the guy’s claims? Yeah, maybe. But it’s also not like Rogan was saying he agreed with anything the guy was saying, or trying to engineer his show to make it sound particularly plausible.
I think the impulse to ban Rogan maybe stems from the same type of thinking that says we have to ban “misinformation” from Lemmy. Thinking people just absorb whatever’s in front of them, and so it’s “our” job to filter out the wrong stuff lest people get exposed to it and absorb it like amoebas. I won’t say that’s completely wrong, but I think the solution is to teach people to be skeptical of what’s in front of you, not to nominate someone to do a perfect job of filtering all the wrong stuff out so that everyone can go on uncritically absorbing everything they can still have access to.
Plus, the podcaster landscape is full of so many people maliciously trying to craft propaganda to sway public opinion and doing an absolutely excellent job at it. Rogan’s just a guy who lets people talk. He’s not really the villain in the podcasting propaganda conversation, to me.
Yeah but what’s more likely/doable, changing the entire US education system (with this incoming government???) or deplatforming Nazis and people who platform Nazis?
Also Nazis don’t deserve that type of treatment. They aren’t acting in good faith and don’t deserve to be treated like they are.
I watched the Alex Jones one because I didn’t know anything first hand about Alex Jones. My takeaway was how could anyone believe what this obviously crazy, unhinged buffoon was saying. If anyone does, well… the problem is far deeper than hosting.