Speaker 1: It's Oregon. You don't get to consent, and that's how
Speaker 1: you open up the podcast. That's right, baby, look up
Speaker 1: one party consent laws for recording recording. Um, this is
Speaker 1: it could happen here a podcast about when you can
Speaker 1: legally record people without their consent. Hint always in the
Speaker 1: state of Oregon. Um. I'm Robert Evans. We're talking about
Speaker 1: bad things, good things, things that are good and bad,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Who what do we you know what?
Speaker 1: You know what we should talk about? You know what
Speaker 1: no one has talked about ever on the internet lately.
Speaker 1: Josephine Robinette Rogan. Oh, I've never heard of him. What
Speaker 1: does he do? Well? He has a podcast. If you
Speaker 1: heard a podcast, Garrison, I'm unfamiliar, but just I'll just
Speaker 1: go with it. Yeah. Well, it's like the radio, but
Speaker 1: easier to spread disinformation. Um and also sexier for reasons
Speaker 1: that are hard to explain. Uh. And Joe Rogan gets
Speaker 1: on his podcast and he says a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that people think is bad, and then everybody gets angry
Speaker 1: at him, and then he makes more money. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how maybe we could handle
Speaker 1: this problem differently. Maybe we could not do the same
Speaker 1: thing over and over. There'spech a different results. Yeah, and upfront,
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking about him, We're trying to talk less
Speaker 1: about specifically what he's said and more about kind of
Speaker 1: the problem he represents in the ways in which the
Speaker 1: responses people have aren't having the results they desire. We're
Speaker 1: gonna avoid using his name in the title of the
Speaker 1: episode or the description because that doesn't feed into the
Speaker 1: algorithm kind of in the same way. But yeah, Garrison,
Speaker 1: you want to kick us off here. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: watching the Rogan thing online be getting kind of frustrated
Speaker 1: because of the way the discourse is going, and it's
Speaker 1: just repeating the same loops we see every few months
Speaker 1: and nothing really changes and Realgan just gets more popular.
Speaker 1: So earlier this month or like a middle of I
Speaker 1: guess it was closer to like January. UM, there was
Speaker 1: like a group of like two d seventy doctors, healthcare workers, UM,
Speaker 1: and scientists who are campaigning for Spotify to adopt a
Speaker 1: miss information policy. UM. This was prompted by a few
Speaker 1: episodes of the Joe Rogan podcast that we've already actually
Speaker 1: talked about. UM about Dr Robert Malone and someone else
Speaker 1: who said some stupid things about the pandemic. Um, So
Speaker 1: I write what when when I when we talked about
Speaker 1: these episodes this last time, I tried to actually talk
Speaker 1: about what these doctors were doing, and let not focus
Speaker 1: on Rogan himself, but specifically what these doctors were doing
Speaker 1: and their ideology, because I didn't want to add to
Speaker 1: the whole Rogan side of the discourse. Um and you know,
Speaker 1: for for this, for this, like a letter that that
Speaker 1: these doctors sent to Spotify if they were not really
Speaker 1: advocating Rogan to be removed from the platform, um or
Speaker 1: even for episodes to be removed, just to have Spotify
Speaker 1: clarify their guidelines regarding medical misinformation, because you know, and
Speaker 1: it's important to note that Joe Rogan has a exclusivity
Speaker 1: contract with Spotify. He does not work for them, but
Speaker 1: Rogan gets paid a lot of money to get his
Speaker 1: podcast only published on Spotify's feed. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's like a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: weird kind of set up, and it can give a
Speaker 1: lot of like gray area for like does Spotify count
Speaker 1: that's as publisher or not? You're like, well, not really
Speaker 1: because they could. He could also just end that contract
Speaker 1: and post his podcast everywhere. Um, I mean I think
Speaker 1: it would take there. There's probably some sort of exclusive
Speaker 1: time limit on the exclusivity agreement, etcetera. Um, because it
Speaker 1: it is, it is mixed, because they did recently when
Speaker 1: it came out that he said the N word a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of times, Spotify removed those episodes. So there's
Speaker 1: a degree to which they have acted as a publisher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole of stuff to kind of talk about
Speaker 1: this on the So the letter gwent kind of viral
Speaker 1: and it prompted this whole kind of thing in the
Speaker 1: middle of January, but like deleting your Spotify subscription, and
Speaker 1: then we had musicians, most uh, most popularly Neil Young
Speaker 1: decided to remove all their music from the Spotify platform,
Speaker 1: um as like a performative thing, being like, Okay, if
Speaker 1: Spotify is gonna host all this medical misinformation, we're going
Speaker 1: to remove this as protest. Now. Of course, Neil Young
Speaker 1: then just signed an exclusivity deal with Amazon, so oh great, cool.
Speaker 1: We yes, Amazon, the bastion of moral purity. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're not I mean I think they are probably pay
Speaker 1: a better rate because Spotify is pretty much at the
Speaker 1: bottom to musicians. But I don't think it's good. Um,
Speaker 1: I think Napster actually has the best rate, doesn't the
Speaker 1: best rate, which I mean also like if you want
Speaker 1: to be actually moral, just just just use band camp.
Speaker 1: But I mean I use Spotify because it's really easy.
Speaker 1: And that's why Spotify works. It's because it's super it
Speaker 1: is it is a well made product. That does not
Speaker 1: mean it's an ethical product, but it does. It does
Speaker 1: the thing that it's supposed to do quite well. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, it basically we've had endless discourse since then
Speaker 1: about Joe Rogan about Spotify is the platform, talking about
Speaker 1: how bad Spotify is, which yes, it is bad, talking
Speaker 1: about how you know how bad Joe Rogan is, and
Speaker 1: you know, the thing is, Joe Rogan already had the
Speaker 1: most popular podcast in the world his exclusivity deal with Spotify,
Speaker 1: and he's currently estimated to bring in eleven million listeners
Speaker 1: per episode of his podcast. Yeah. For for some reference, um,
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is one of the largest podcasts out there. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's on average something like ten times our traffic. Uh,
Speaker 1: like it's and it's not He's not He's not just
Speaker 1: the most popular podcast. He helped invent what podcasting is.
Speaker 1: Podcast He was one of the first, and like he
Speaker 1: had a foundational role in how the entire industry works.
Speaker 1: Since this letter and since the's episodes, there's been a
Speaker 1: whole lot of discourse around if Spotify should remove Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan from the platform, um, if they should cancel his deal.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people calling on Spotify to
Speaker 1: do that, a lot of people calling on Spotify to
Speaker 1: remove certain episodes, and Spotify has not been keen to so. Like,
Speaker 1: but let's and I know, Joe Rogan himself did actually
Speaker 1: authorize the removal of a certain amount of episodes, which
Speaker 1: for reasons we'll talk about later. Um, but what's all
Speaker 1: this discourse and outrage and articles and tweets actually doing
Speaker 1: to Spotify into Rogan? Okay? In my opinion, kind of
Speaker 1: the end result is actually very similar to all of
Speaker 1: the free advertising that companies get whenever they make awoke
Speaker 1: statement that infuriate, that infuriates the actionary right, you know,
Speaker 1: resulting in throwing your kel out your window, flushing your
Speaker 1: Gillette blade down the toilet, and burning your nikes. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's even widely speculated and kind of like a
Speaker 1: known fact that companies will use progressive statements and policies
Speaker 1: to drum up this outrage um to give their company
Speaker 1: and product tons of free advertising and just to get
Speaker 1: a brand name itself inside consumers heads. And this is
Speaker 1: definitely happening. Was was Roken and Spotify in terms of
Speaker 1: outrage being used as advertising. It may not be intentional,
Speaker 1: but that is what the result is. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very uh, it's it's both sides like
Speaker 1: to make fun of the other for doing this, like
Speaker 1: folks on the left like to make funt of their
Speaker 1: right when they're when they're breaking their carriggs or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, it happens. It's equally profitable for both sides.
Speaker 1: You just do the opposite. You know, you have someone
Speaker 1: come on and talk about how they're a truth teller
Speaker 1: being canceled, and they get a bunch of attention money,
Speaker 1: and and it works equally well both ways. Pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So with Spotify and Rogan in the news every day
Speaker 1: for the past like three weeks, the the the end
Speaker 1: is that like the fact that it's just that people
Speaker 1: are hearing these names in their head more often, and
Speaker 1: they're probably subconsciously going to use Spotify more often because
Speaker 1: you know, despite a few people that might canceled their subscriptions,
Speaker 1: the net effect will be more listeners who seemed to
Speaker 1: Spotify because there because the name is in my subconscious
Speaker 1: it's it's it's in there. And all the effect that's
Speaker 1: going to have on Rogan is giving him away more
Speaker 1: publicity to attract new listeners, and and it's listeners who
Speaker 1: themselves are like attracted to unconventional ideas outside the mainstream,
Speaker 1: and his more passive listeners are gonna like double down
Speaker 1: on him because there's gonna be like the backfire effect,
Speaker 1: so they will like feel defensive and then become more
Speaker 1: of a fan of his because he's seen as a
Speaker 1: cultural outsider, even though he's not an outsider. He is
Speaker 1: the mainstream, he's the biggest podcaster in the world, but
Speaker 1: he's seen as a cultural outsider. So you know, he
Speaker 1: like brings on guests who say things that they're not
Speaker 1: supposed to say. You know, so who's actually going to
Speaker 1: be convinced by all this outrage to not listen to
Speaker 1: Rogan via pointing out all the wrong things he's said
Speaker 1: and all the slurs he's used, Like, is that really
Speaker 1: going to stop fans from listening to Joe Rogan's time?
Speaker 1: Really pointing out that Donald Trump illegally took classified documents,
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I mean that's fucked up and ship,
Speaker 1: but like he's never gonna get charged with crimes and
Speaker 1: none of his supporters care. You're the only people who
Speaker 1: are angry about this, and it doesn't matter because the
Speaker 1: people you vote for aren't going to punish him. So
Speaker 1: like just yeah, you know, chill out a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's like all of the outrage is simply inflating the
Speaker 1: importance of Jarrogan on like an entire cultural level. It's
Speaker 1: that he's becoming He's becoming more important to his fans,
Speaker 1: more important to his haters, and more important to himself
Speaker 1: and Spotify as an asset because he generates a lot
Speaker 1: of exclusive listeners and news coverage and buzz around the
Speaker 1: Spotify brand. And it's important to talk about. Like, so
Speaker 1: you have, broadly speaking within the field of entertainment, like
Speaker 1: digital entertainment in particular, you have like two ways that
Speaker 1: you can grow your audience. One of them is organic growth,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I listened to Garrison's podcast. I
Speaker 1: like it. I tell a friend about Garrison's podcast. They
Speaker 1: like it. They tell a friend about Garrett that that's
Speaker 1: like organic, you know, it's very natural. That's purely the
Speaker 1: kind of quality of the content UM reaching people. And
Speaker 1: then there is in organic growth, which is can be
Speaker 1: the result of like ad campaigns can be the result
Speaker 1: of UM an algorithm. Often in today we're talking about
Speaker 1: like oh, Twitter or Facebook prioritizes this kind of content.
Speaker 1: So like something article on bright Barred about black on
Speaker 1: white crime that would have been read ten thousand times
Speaker 1: ten years ago gets read a million times because it
Speaker 1: spreads well on this platform for reasons that aren't organic.
Speaker 1: UM And with Joe Rogan, one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: because we can talk about like d platforming. If you
Speaker 1: want to talk about like Alex Jones for example, or Meloianopolis,
Speaker 1: good case that D platforming really reduced both of their reaches. Now,
Speaker 1: Milo uh pretty much wiped out as a person who
Speaker 1: mattered in terms of the discourse, thank christ. Alex Jones
Speaker 1: less so. UM it definitely hurt his business and it
Speaker 1: reduced his reach. But by the time Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: and whatnot started throttling him, he'd he had already inorganically
Speaker 1: increased his reach enough that like he's able to he
Speaker 1: had he had a large a large enough audios to
Speaker 1: stay somewhat relevant and keep going. The thing about Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan is he did not get famous and popular and organically.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was some degree of that on like
Speaker 1: social media, but most of his growth before that, Like
Speaker 1: people like him, Like whatever you think of him, he's
Speaker 1: a good broadcaster. That's that's the thing. Even though, like
Speaker 1: you know, for all this research, I don't like him.
Speaker 1: He says horrible things, but you know, I was watching
Speaker 1: I watched all of like Rogan's like, um, like Instagram
Speaker 1: videos he made like a few ten minute things talking
Speaker 1: about the outrage, and it's it sucks because when you
Speaker 1: listen to him, he's like a really good talker. He's
Speaker 1: very good at what he does. He's very good at
Speaker 1: like generating sympathy and generating like good Like it's it
Speaker 1: sucks because yeah, I wanted to like hate this person,
Speaker 1: but I'm like listening to him talking about this issue
Speaker 1: like oh wow, yeah, like you actually have a decent
Speaker 1: grasp on what's going on here. Um, And that's that's horrible.
Speaker 1: He is not part of He gets some of his
Speaker 1: money from playing like a dumb, chill, stoner dude, but
Speaker 1: he's not dumb. He's definitely a stoner. He's not a
Speaker 1: dumb man. He's very intell. He's very good at what
Speaker 1: he does. UM. One of the things we don't kind
Speaker 1: of talk about enough when we talk about media that
Speaker 1: I think is important to note is that UM being
Speaker 1: likable in a professional sense is a skill. And it's
Speaker 1: a skill like any technical skill. It's like knowing how
Speaker 1: to how to how to farm or weld. UM. It
Speaker 1: is a thing that you build on over time. It
Speaker 1: is a thing that UM takes a lot of trial
Speaker 1: and error and a lot of education to get right. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is a thing that Joe Rogan has been doing
Speaker 1: for longer than a significant chunk of the people on
Speaker 1: this show, including Garrison, have been alive. Uh. It's like
Speaker 1: like I've been like this is this is more or
Speaker 1: less been my job for like thirteen or fourteen years.
Speaker 1: And it is like a skill that you build. And
Speaker 1: the thing that he is really good at is making
Speaker 1: people want to listen to him. And so if you
Speaker 1: were to say kick him out of Spotify, tomorrow. It's
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that his that that would increase the
Speaker 1: number of people who who listen to the podcast. There's
Speaker 1: there's a case to be made that Spotify has limited
Speaker 1: his maximum adi and limiting him to Spotify as opposed
Speaker 1: to if he was just any app he wanted to
Speaker 1: be on, maybe it'd be twenty million you know, listening
Speaker 1: to every exactly. Yes, Like even if did even a
Speaker 1: Spotify did drop him because of all these you know,
Speaker 1: outrage you know, and all the tweets and they're all
Speaker 1: of the petitions, even if they did drop him, he
Speaker 1: would probably not only gain more listeners due to the
Speaker 1: outrage porn and and free speech advocates, but also with
Speaker 1: his exclusivity ending help his podcast will just be available
Speaker 1: in more platforms and more people who will to listen
Speaker 1: to him, like really easily. So yeah, he's only going
Speaker 1: to grow if people get what they want. And like
Speaker 1: that makes you think, like this, this outrage isn't actually
Speaker 1: meant to get the Joe Rogan Joe Rogan problem taking
Speaker 1: care of it, Like it's this, this actually isn't about
Speaker 1: stopping misinformation. It's this this isn't actually about having they're
Speaker 1: being less fans of Joe Rogan. All of his outrage
Speaker 1: is about making you feel better because you feel like
Speaker 1: you're doing something right, Like bad thing is happening in
Speaker 1: the world, and it's easier to pretend like your actions
Speaker 1: are hurting it than it is to accept that, like
Speaker 1: maybe there's nothing I can do about this right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a really nice world if the Tarrogan
Speaker 1: problem could be solved so easily by Spotify dropping his
Speaker 1: exclusivity deal, right that would that would be great, But
Speaker 1: that's not the world we live in. And tricking yourself
Speaker 1: into thinking that is just kind of delusional. Um, and
Speaker 1: like yeah, it makes you feel better, but like that's
Speaker 1: not actually helping because like, yeah, we can obviously compare
Speaker 1: this to other like D platform and campaigns with people
Speaker 1: for like Alex Jones, but you know, Jones was way
Speaker 1: more niche and way more extreme around the time of
Speaker 1: his like D platforming campaign, and his campaign wasn't about
Speaker 1: ending exclusivity deals. It was about getting him off of
Speaker 1: popular platforms altogether. And that's not happening with Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: because Joe Rogan isn't saying the things that are going
Speaker 1: to get him booted from platforms. He's smart, he knows
Speaker 1: what he can and cannot say. He's not He's not
Speaker 1: dumb enough to get banned from these platforms, right, and also,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a giant financial asset, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: ben him anyway. But like he's he's What he's doing
Speaker 1: is it's bringing on people who say horrible things to
Speaker 1: continue a cultural conversation, which gives him in the headlines
Speaker 1: and gives a platform like Spotify a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: room to cry free speech and get away with it.
Speaker 1: Removing Alex Jones could be seen as like a monetary
Speaker 1: decision in and of itself, because it is actually removing liability.
Speaker 1: But this is this isn't really the case for Rogan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's um, yeah, it's just not. One of the
Speaker 1: problems is that this kind of does fly in the
Speaker 1: face of a lot of what people want to think.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be making the case that
Speaker 1: it's as black and white as it is, because, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it was bad for someone to
Speaker 1: go through the effort of finding and pointing out, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's like seventy episodes where Joe Rogan drops the N
Speaker 1: word um and getting those pulls. I don't think that
Speaker 1: I think that that was broadly speaking, a productive thing.
Speaker 1: But keeping Joe Rogan at the forefront of the outrage
Speaker 1: cycle is doing nothing but printing money for the guy.
Speaker 1: And that's that's not an easy thing to deal with
Speaker 1: because it's like, do you want me to just like
Speaker 1: stay quiet in the face of injustice? And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I want you to do. But I
Speaker 1: do want you to recognize that there are times in
Speaker 1: ways of speaking up that are just yes, putting putting
Speaker 1: gasoline on an injustice fire. It's it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that d platform ng is just a tactic and and
Speaker 1: single tactics aren't always effective in every situation. That's what
Speaker 1: makes them a tactic, right, Like, in order for a
Speaker 1: tactic to work, you need to understand the scenario that's
Speaker 1: are applying the tactic to and seeing if that tactic
Speaker 1: achieves the goal. And if it doesn't, great, but if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, you need to choose other tactic and stop
Speaker 1: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
Speaker 1: a new result. And this is one of those situations
Speaker 1: where like when you bring up, hey, maybe nothing might
Speaker 1: be the best thing, at least for for most people
Speaker 1: specifically to do. Like, the thing that gets brought up
Speaker 1: is like, well do you not want me to uh?
Speaker 1: Or like, well, what do you suggest I do? Like
Speaker 1: you know, you're saying I shouldn't do this, but you're
Speaker 1: not telling me what to do. It's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: like if somebody gets shot in the leg and one
Speaker 1: person has a tourniquet and the other person has a
Speaker 1: bunch of razor blades that they want to throw in
Speaker 1: their eyes, and it's like, well, what do you want
Speaker 1: me to do? All I have is these razor blades.
Speaker 1: This is the only other thing I can do? Then
Speaker 1: just stand by and do nothing. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: in this case, doing nothing is the best thing to do,
Speaker 1: because it's it's not that's not going to help the problem.
Speaker 1: Boycotts of this scale kind of only tend to benefit
Speaker 1: brands and businesses right like, because if if if the
Speaker 1: brand of business is a person is smaller in more
Speaker 1: niche like and say like Alex Jones or Richard Spencer,
Speaker 1: right then yes, these tactics about boycotts can really work
Speaker 1: to push things out of the cultural like market and
Speaker 1: also in some cases in terms of businesses like the
Speaker 1: literal market, but when you're dealing with things like Target, Nike,
Speaker 1: and Joe Rogan, that's not the case because those brands
Speaker 1: are way too big. Any any you know, any conservative
Speaker 1: boycott against Target isn't going to have that effect. It
Speaker 1: will probably make weird liberals be like, Oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to Target now because the conservative still want me to.
Speaker 1: It's so like it's I don't it's not it's it's like,
Speaker 1: it's the problem is. It's like Joe Rogan himself isn't
Speaker 1: really the problem either. You know. A lot of the
Speaker 1: problem can be seen more as like content algorithms that
Speaker 1: boost and reward misinformation and disinformation and conspiracism. And that's
Speaker 1: more of like an actual issue at hand here. Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan is just a business. That's how he hears about
Speaker 1: a lot of these people. Yeah, I go viral somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of cases, it's an inorganic thing
Speaker 1: that brings them in front of them. It's some fucking
Speaker 1: algorithm that and and that is a case where you
Speaker 1: can target and work on deep exacting and it can
Speaker 1: be more productive that that. That was That was what
Speaker 1: that was what I was getting at. It's like Joe
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan himself was just a visible outgrowth of the
Speaker 1: core problem. And the core problem is these things getting
Speaker 1: onto his show in the first place. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: can't stop his show, but maybe we should do more
Speaker 1: work to prevent to like figure out ways to do
Speaker 1: you know, start using these tactics to prevent algorithms from
Speaker 1: boosting these things so that Joe Roken sees them and
Speaker 1: then and then invites them on. And yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: lot more work than just being angry at Spotify. And
Speaker 1: yet maybe it will actually do something. And one thing
Speaker 1: that can do something is with spot and it won't
Speaker 1: work if it's just Spotify. But I am one of
Speaker 1: those people who thinks that maybe it's not the worst
Speaker 1: thing if things like Spotify are seen as publishers and
Speaker 1: thus when they spread misinformation that leads to disaster as
Speaker 1: health consequences, um, they can be held liable. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's not the worst possible change, although it is a
Speaker 1: problematic one. I don't want to like boil that down
Speaker 1: to a simple question, but I think that's an avenue
Speaker 1: that should be explored because I don't see that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of difference in Spotify choosing to let something
Speaker 1: go to air or the New York Times printing misinformation. UM.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Spotify is going to reach more people
Speaker 1: because nobody cares what the New York Times says anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Spotify. The Spotify CEO did kind of address the
Speaker 1: ongoing controversy around the you know, internal publishing stuff and
Speaker 1: how they view medical misinformation. UM. They do adopt a
Speaker 1: clarified policy that prohibits content that promotes dangerous, false, or
Speaker 1: dangerous deceptive medical information which may cause offline harm or
Speaker 1: pose a direct threat to public health. UM. And then
Speaker 1: the Post also announced that the Spotify would add content
Speaker 1: advisories to any content related to COVID on the platform,
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram have no, it's not, it's not, it's
Speaker 1: not actually it's but but if you have the operation,
Speaker 1: if you can again, if there is like an actual
Speaker 1: dollar consequence to companies that aired massive disinformation, UM, then
Speaker 1: you're not without sort of making Joe Rogan the focus.
Speaker 1: You can make it so that the people that he
Speaker 1: actually is accountable to, which is the people who make
Speaker 1: him give him the money that he gets. UH, have
Speaker 1: a vested interest in tamping down on the worst excesses
Speaker 1: that he's responsible for, Like that might have an impact.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like part of the problem is that
Speaker 1: and one thing we should acknowledge here when we're talking
Speaker 1: about like what would work better than what's being done.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty new problem. Versions of it have
Speaker 1: existed before, but without the Internet and without podcasts being
Speaker 1: what they are, this is a pretty new thing to
Speaker 1: be dealing with. And I'm not I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: saying like this is here's the obvious solution to this,
Speaker 1: but I think we are trying to point out, like
Speaker 1: what folks are doing doesn't work. The tactics being applied
Speaker 1: are not effective, and we should be exploring other opportunities
Speaker 1: to mitigate this harm that are not well. I guess
Speaker 1: it's time to delete another app and post about it
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Yeah. I think I think this is especially
Speaker 1: a thing with like it's like one of the other
Speaker 1: things that that's been popping up as broken's like weapons
Speaker 1: grade transphobia. Yes, oh yeah, jeez, yeah, and that's that
Speaker 1: stuff us is horrifying. Like the racism is also like
Speaker 1: really bad. He's extremely sexist. But it's like I think misogynist, racist,
Speaker 1: all there's a lot of money and being that dude. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I think this is sort of you know, this,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is an inherent problem for
Speaker 1: the left because fighting like this, this kind of sort
Speaker 1: of like shock jockey information stuff works better like that
Speaker 1: that rage economy works better for the right thing does
Speaker 1: for the left. And I think in some ways that
Speaker 1: means like you have to fight them in other spaces,
Speaker 1: you like, you know, you you you can't just like
Speaker 1: keep throwing yourself. It's the same thing with like so
Speaker 1: why why why you don't have just like one line
Speaker 1: where you just run into a bunch of cops over
Speaker 1: and over again in one spot, right, like, but we try. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like some folks gave that one the old College,
Speaker 1: the old College. Yeah, it's like you know, like in
Speaker 1: some in some sense, yeah, like it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to be too hard on these on people
Speaker 1: who doing this. And it's like if I think they're
Speaker 1: doing the right thing, but it's like you have to
Speaker 1: you have to pick your battles. And you know, if
Speaker 1: if you're taking a fight that's fair, like that's a
Speaker 1: that's a bad fight that is a bad fight for you.
Speaker 1: You you need you need to be finding them in
Speaker 1: different spheres. You need to be you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: working for example, on stuff like tech regulation, like you
Speaker 1: like working on you know, unionizing these places, right like
Speaker 1: fighting purely finding them in information space, we will lose
Speaker 1: every time. The advantage that we have is that we
Speaker 1: also do other things, and it's it's you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're going to keep losing hearing if you know, if
Speaker 1: we keep fighting them in exactly the same way here,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep losing. So we have to you know,
Speaker 1: like we we we we we have to fight in
Speaker 1: other places. And that's hard and it sucks because you know,
Speaker 1: this is such a mispart of just what reality is
Speaker 1: now is you know, yelling at people online. But like
Speaker 1: you have to stop doing that because the problem is
Speaker 1: that we've all gotten fucking caught for quite some time
Speaker 1: in this escalating culture war. And it's not it's not
Speaker 1: a battle ground that can be entirely ignored because when
Speaker 1: you kind of seed ground them, they create conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: about trans people attacking kids that lead to them murdering
Speaker 1: people in the streets, or they spread conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: masks that lead to them occupying Ottawa. Um. So it can't.
Speaker 1: The culture war battleground cannot be ignored. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, what we should rather than just
Speaker 1: like seeking new ways to engage with it, because the
Speaker 1: more you engage with it, and it is sometimes necessary
Speaker 1: to engage with but the more you engage with it,
Speaker 1: the stronger you make this whole thing and the heavier
Speaker 1: it lies on all of us like a cloud. And
Speaker 1: in the only real way to actually win in the
Speaker 1: long run is to find a way to get off
Speaker 1: of that, to get out of this, like this fucking
Speaker 1: treadmill of bullshit that has become everything all consuming, and
Speaker 1: it's it's in a lot of people's best interest for
Speaker 1: it to stay all consuming. Um And I there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot that's going on here because it's not
Speaker 1: I think sometimes when you criticize people for the actions
Speaker 1: they take in situation is like this, they kind of
Speaker 1: interpreted as you saying, well, like you're stupid and you
Speaker 1: fucked up and you never should have liked done this,
Speaker 1: And and the way I think of it is more
Speaker 1: like this is a we have found ourselves trapped in
Speaker 1: a really messy situation and no one has figured out
Speaker 1: how to get out. So it's not a situation of like,
Speaker 1: people are are dumb for having done something that's not effective.
Speaker 1: It's a situation of we are all trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what works in this new world we have kind
Speaker 1: of somewhat accidentally somewhat purposefully built for ourselves, and it
Speaker 1: is important to have humility and be willing to accept it, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's not working and we have to
Speaker 1: stop doing the thing that's not working, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: treat it as if it's sort of a moral failing
Speaker 1: that something we we we tried was not effective. The
Speaker 1: last thing is it's like, really, it's not just the
Speaker 1: non effectiveness, but also so the idea that the fact
Speaker 1: that this outrage is said just a constant is just
Speaker 1: a constant free bannerad for Spotify every everywhere online is
Speaker 1: like also not great. So it's not it's not even
Speaker 1: not not even just not effective, but you're just giving
Speaker 1: a corporation tons of free press. And maybe we can
Speaker 1: reframe the way we approach these things so that we
Speaker 1: don't do that, because in the end, that's just kind
Speaker 1: of adding to promoting the misinformation that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: all that's kind of really doing. And it's not that's
Speaker 1: not nearly as you know, impactful, as you know, just
Speaker 1: Rogan doing it himself, but it's still is it still
Speaker 1: is a contributing factor and and and it it does
Speaker 1: contribute to the backfire effect of people who listen to
Speaker 1: his podcast. Maybe people who like don't even but they're
Speaker 1: still gonna get defensive over him because they're seeing this
Speaker 1: attack on him. And even though he's even though he
Speaker 1: is a huge figure, he's seen as an outsider. So
Speaker 1: that that really does contribute to that back backfire effect
Speaker 1: thing of getting people more and more vested in him
Speaker 1: as a content creator. But yeah, it's really dumb. But
Speaker 1: the thing we need to deal with it, it's it's
Speaker 1: a version of the lesson people still didn't learn with Trump,
Speaker 1: which is that like, you can't you can't beat these
Speaker 1: people by dunking on them. It doesn't matter that Joe
Speaker 1: rogan said something dumb. It doesn't matter that Joe Rogan's inconsistent,
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that like Joe Rogan has tell tells
Speaker 1: lies or whatever. That's not going to change anybody's mind
Speaker 1: about the dude, because it's not about Joe Rogan. They
Speaker 1: don't support him because they love They support him as
Speaker 1: much as any of the people who are at least
Speaker 1: engaging primarily online about it. Most of his fans are
Speaker 1: just don't think about any of this because they're not
Speaker 1: as online as the rest of us. But the people
Speaker 1: who are kind of engaging with this and helping to
Speaker 1: fuel the culture war side of this thing, they don't care.
Speaker 1: There this This isn't about his inherent characteristics. This is
Speaker 1: about it's a chance to dunk on the enemy. Um so,
Speaker 1: like you, you're not going to convince them of anything. Ever.
Speaker 1: That's all I had to say on this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, because I again, I really I really
Speaker 1: resisted writing this episode for a long time because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to add to the Rogan discourse. But after
Speaker 1: a while, the Rogan discourse itself became worth talking about.
Speaker 1: How we talk so because it is more of a
Speaker 1: meta angle, like okay, that is actually worth talking about.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I am so tired of hearing, watching, and
Speaker 1: seeing the words still Rogan. Yeah, I'm exhausted by it.
Speaker 1: I hate that, Like it's a bigger story in the
Speaker 1: United States than the gigantic war that might break out
Speaker 1: in Eastern Europe. Um, it's it's just just a very
Speaker 1: frustrating time and the only way to win this particular
Speaker 1: game is not to play um. So that's that's why
Speaker 1: we're doing this. We're not going to stick his name
Speaker 1: in the description or the episode title. Um yeah it is.
Speaker 1: You know, the title we were working with this under
Speaker 1: that we're not going to use so as to not
Speaker 1: feed into the algorithm was Joe Rogan the Egregor. And
Speaker 1: that is really how I think about it. If you
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to our episode on the book
Speaker 1: about the Flat Earth, book on Behind the Bastards that
Speaker 1: talks about as Um and eggs, it's basically a god
Speaker 1: that is made up by the kind of directed thoughts
Speaker 1: of a population of people. Yeah, it's like a distalt
Speaker 1: deity that exists like this thought form that if people
Speaker 1: put energy into it, it almost gains its own it's
Speaker 1: it's own like um um independence from the people that
Speaker 1: that like burst it, even though it is just like
Speaker 1: a thought form and it because it was just an
Speaker 1: idea or presence, and now it basically is its own
Speaker 1: god that's self sustaining and it can impact the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: global capital is an egregor And and the more that
Speaker 1: people kind of feed into the discourse around Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: the more he turns into one kind of outside of
Speaker 1: his own actions, he this idea of him has an
Speaker 1: influence on everything around us. And boy, we don't need that,
Speaker 1: do we certainly did not just said we just put
Speaker 1: that one down, right, try something else. Yeah, let's throw
Speaker 1: a brick at your sheriff instead. This will go better
Speaker 1: for you. I mean sure, sure, Chris, Yeah, Chris, Chris
Speaker 1: said it, not me. Yeah, I mean obviously in Minecraft
Speaker 1: he said bricks. It's fine. Robert Robert, Robert Robert. It's
Speaker 1: not Minecraft anymore. It's a roadblocks the feds cracked in Minecraft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. It's going to take peks for them, for
Speaker 1: them to their computers to realize what roadblocks is them.
Speaker 1: Was a story I think I saw on Twitter about
Speaker 1: like like some yeah, so some some kids who actually
Speaker 1: legitimately got arrested in Brushford, like blowing up a building
Speaker 1: in Minecraft, so like like literally so we uh yeah,
Speaker 1: and instead again again it's roadblocks where nothing bad happens,
Speaker 1: nothing bad happens, all right, Everybody get on Roadblocks, um
Speaker 1: and don't talk about Joe Rogan and don't talk about
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan. It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.