I know of someone who says they listen to Joe Rogan podcasts (political I assume) but I don’t know what this means or what the connotations are. Both this person and I live in east asia.
I’ll try to give an unbiased answer. Joe Rogan podcasts aren’t just political, but they do discuss political topics frequently in conversation. The connotation for a regular listener is that they are very likely to be misinformed, plain and simple as that. As many have already said, it’s likely that they are libertarian at best or into conspiracy theories and alt-right at worst. I’ll explain why:
He brings in a lot of different guests to his podcasts. These guests could be celebrities, athletes, book authors, researchers, actors, etc. Sometimes he would have politicians, from left and right. He would also bring in people who spread conspiracy theories, aka “qanon” types.
He never confronts any of his guests. Some people hate him for it, others listen to him precisely because of that.
Rogan gives a platform equally to all of his guests and presents and treats them all as if on the same level of legitimacy. This means, today he interviews a scientist who is an eminence in their field, with 30 years experience in research… and next week he brings in some influencer on the same topic, who doesn’t understand the science behind what they say. Both guests sound equally knowledgeable to the average listener.
The problem with this is that this spreads misinformation, and if you as a listener are not already well informed on the topic then you are likely to fall for it. Most people don’t question everything they hear, let alone understand in depth anything discussed superficially over a podcast. This is evident with science, but it gets really hairy when you add politics and personal values/morals to the mix.
This is false as of the past year or two (post-Covid). Now whenever he has a scientist on, he'll argue and disagree with them, especially if the topic is Covid, vaccines, or climate change. He really likes the gish-gallop argument method where he spews a bunch of long since discredited claims on the topic.
I mean before COVID there was also that time he furiously berated a primatologist for telling him he was mistaken for thinking Bondo Apes were a unique species.
He’s always been an angry meathead when facts make him feel stupid. He’s just doing it in more mainstream ways now so he gets more exposure.
I used to like joe Rogan as a comedian. His entire set was basically the first thing my brain thinks of - an easy crack joke with some wit. But one cannot live one’s life according to the fastest, easiest joke you can conceive of. Deeper thought reveals most of these impulse thoughts as stupid, over simplified and with surface interpretation only. But he seems to just run with it, and has made that his public and political personality. My smart ass should not be making any meaningful decisions.
In a nutshell, Joe was a UFC commentator who also avidly practices various martial arts. He’s also a successful stand-up comedian. Being personable and well connected, he started his podcast interviewing friends, comedians, and celebrities.
It should be fairly obvious how he appeals to people interested in masculine personalities. In particular teenagers, young men, and people who aren’t very secure in their masculinity tend to like him.
He had/has a rule of letting nearly anyone on the show so long as he felt he could have an interesting conversation with them. To massively simplify, this ultimately led to him having some questionable political provocateurs on the show, many right wingers. Combine this with Joe’s non-combative interview style, and his show ended up being a platform for some pretty out-there political theory. The way he talked about COVID struck many people as pretty irresponsible, for example.
Eventually, many who are left-of-center were scared of even associating with him. That’s a problem for your public image if you claim to be a centrist, as Joe does. Or at least he did, I haven’t kept up with him in a while.
TL;DR: if you listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast people might think you’re overly concerned with your masculinity or that you’re being indoctrinated into extreme right-wing politics.
The dude is a bit of a meathead who will listen to anyone he has interest in for better or worse. I enjoyed his show for a while because I generally enjoy hearing people share their thoughts on things, even if sometimes they end up seeming a little off. As it so happens, I was just as willing to hear out criticisms against his show as well when I started noticing those. Then I just kind of lost interest. It can be a fun show to listen to, but it’s kind of like a dude-bro celebrity magazine-turned-podcast for people who fantasize about being rich and smarter than everyone else. I like to call him “Joe Brogan” now because I think it fits.
The basic issue with Joe is that he can’t or won’t really challenge his guests to justify what they’re saying. Sometimes he gets great guests , and sometimes gets nutjobs. In either case he just lets them talk unchallenged regardless of how crazy or obvious wrong the the person is. And people will argue that by putting nutjobs on the same platform as his better guests he’s elevating them and granting a degree of legitimacy. I sort of agree to some extent.
I feel like this is the type of question that needs to be asked on different platforms to get a proper feel for what people think about the guy. You won’t get an objective answer from any one place.
The trouble with that plan is that he’s pretty good at layering in the crazy. He has been doing this a while, and knows when to press the “it’s just a joke” button, so a first time listener might not catch the subtext or the dogwhistles.
Joe Rogan is a sociopath and a danger to the community at large. He normalizes ignorance and gives a platform to bigots. He might have been a reasonable guy at some point, and he’s probably not wrong about everything. But that doesn’t make up for the negatives.
This. Alex Jones has been a not-infrequent guest. Jones, and others that Rogan has platformed in the guise of “just asking questions” are akin in my eyes to the ol’ “What do you call four nazis drinking with a fifth person? Five nazis.”
Aside from that, he’s got a massive amount of absolutely horrifically bad scientific and medical opinions. I’ve heard him described and Gwyneth Paltrow but for tech bros, and even that’s a little generous. Shove a lemon up your hooha or whatever Gwyneth is up to is probably not quite as problematic as “take this horse tranq to cure your covid” esp. during the alpha wave.
Ask them their stance on apes. If they stay an ape could mess a dude up theyre probably just into martial arts. If they say something racial they are probably racist. And maybe you shouldn’t be friends with them.
To my knowledge the Rogan community is strong advocates of the idea that most other great apes can beat us up.
And where would one go for a "normal or accurate response" then? Because it's common public knowledge that Rogan is a right wing misinformation and pseudoscience pusher. Especially since the beginning of the pandemic.
What this response signals to me is that if you’re critical or point out the negatives of what Rogan does, your opinion doesn’t matter. I’ve seen plenty of accurate responses here.
My friend, you’ve asked this question in a very left-leaning forum. As you can see, most or all of these answers are gonna be from people who generally disagree with Rogan. If you want to get an idea of what his podcast is about there’s lots of short clips from his podcast on YouTube. I think we need more context as to why your acquaintance is saying this to answer questions you might have about connotations or meaning.
Doesn’t matter which side of politics you’re on, Joe Rogan is batshit insane these days. Well maybe that is the side you’re on, in which case I retract the former statement.
Long way to avoid saying all of the important things
He’s pushed pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, discouraged young people from getting the vaccine, given a blank check of a platform with no opposition or fact checking to climate skepticism, transgender hate in sports, made LOTS of racist comments that just keep popping up, liberal use of the n word, fearmongering some slippery slopes about “the wokes”
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