By the strictest rules of commentary I shouldn’t say anything about this Joe Rogan business. Why? Because I’ve never listened to a second of his podcast, nor do I have any use for Spotify. But thanks to our amazing world of bubble-specific watchdogs and punditry, Rogan’s shtick gets regular coverage on websites I patronize, and I at least know what Spotify is.
My general impression of Rogan, based on a few YouTube clips and the near constant reporting on his dialogues with various guests is: Another one of those guys.
If you know nothing about him, check out this recent conversation with self-acclaimed revolutionary thinker, Jordan Peterson. It’s an epic in the annals of clap-trap.
Rogan is yet another self-satisfied dude (always a guy) selling the image of the blue-collar provocateur-savant. A guy — stop me when you’ve heard this before — up from the hardscrabble. He’s a “comedian, television host and mixed martial arts commentator” mixing it up with and putting it to the prissy, pedigreed class. It’s a decades-old media shtick that persistently sells the notion to a mass audience of his educational and cultural peers (mostly younger men with masculinity issues, IMHO) that he, and therefore they, are really every bit as savvy as the snobby elites with their titles and actual experience in politics, arts and science.
We’ve seen this act hundreds of times before. It’s just another variation on FM morning drive radio, a forum steeped in reassuring the chronically aggrieved that the “smart asses” aren’t any smarter or moral ethical than you, me and Buddy down there at the end of the bar. (Even though we all make jokes about how f**kin’ dim Buddy is.)
Because this kind of act only succeeds by practicing The First Rule of Show Biz, i.e. “Give the people what they want”, Rogan-like theater means stirring in ripe accents of class and racial resentments, the sort of thing that puts out a stink to … well, precisely the prissy elites that it’s designed to annoy.
So, you know, kind of a “win win.”
For some time the issue with Rogan, in addition to his always “mass audience”-friendly side trips into trans-phobia, Islamophobia, etc., has been his “real American”, blue collar disinformation about COVID vaccines. (His contract with Spotify is worth $100 million, FYI.) I won’t pretend to know who inspired him down this path. But it goes without saying that the “freedom of choice”, “I’ve done my own research” shtick, whipped up into a lighter-than-air frappe with standard issue anti-“big gummint overreach” has a large, ready and receptive audience … of easily confused men. (IMHO, again.)
Rogan’s own recent history with COVID should have been disqualifying as anything but an illiterate. We do remember that after telling “young healthy people” they couldn’t get seriously ill from COVID, the heavily-tattoed 52 year-old Rogan contracted the disease, supposedly treated himself (and pitched to his credulous fans) the value of the horse de-wormer ivermectin as opposed to “vaccine mandates.”
In an enlightened world he’d be written off as a fool. But the baritoned-morning-radio-jock-savant shtick is so powerful, especially with men who don’t know what to believe, acts like his become their gold standard for credibility.
With big name pop stars, beginning with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell now yanking their music from Spotify, the pressure is on for the streaming music to “do something about Rogan.” But, with that $100 million on the line and his low-information audience to avoid displeasing, no corporation is going to get rash. Not even after 270 doctors and scientists issue a publc statement complaining about Rogan giving regular exposure to … well, charlatans pushing bullshit quasi-science.
(Spotify charges roughly $10 a month to stream hundreds of thousands of songs, meaning artists see very, very little in the way of royalties. It’s no big deal if you’re Young or Mitchell or The Rolling Stones, but it snuffs out plenty of CD and Apple Music sales if you’re farther down the ladder of fame.)
As of today Spotify’s response is that it will not be a “content censor.” But it will offer Rogan’s audience an advisory anytime he applies his deep thinking to, you know, COVID science. Because after all, Spotify’s CEO says, ” … it’s become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely-accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time … .”
Uh huh. Right.
But excuse me. Because what I hear him saying is he’s going to provide “balance and access” to accurate information about a global pandemic that has already killed 5.4 million people and staggered hospital staffs across the planet … but in no way is he going to instruct a guy he is paying $100 million to stop spreading outright lies about the very same disease.
Being good capitalists, we understand the CEO’s problem. I mean, what if Rogan gets pissed off at being told he can’t spread disinformation about a fatal disease? What if — horrors — he dumps Spotify and gets a sweeter deal at, I don’t know, Donald Trump’s new media empire?
How would the CEO replace him? I mean other than with any of a thousand guys working the same bogus shtick every day?
I have Spotify, and I have tried listening to Joe Rogan a few times in the past. He does not have good critical thinking skills, which makes him seem not all that bright. A not-so-bright-guy with a huge platform is common now.
When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, people without college degrees seemed to have at least decent — and sometimes very good — thinking skills; they reasoned things out. The ability to do that was taught in the schools and at home more. Sure, we had some people who thought the moon landing was fake, and that the Earth is flat, but they were considered outliers.
Now the merely opinionated have a voice and an organizational tool (the internet). The characteristic of being unwilling/unable to reason combined with boundless curiosity creates a toxic brew which they can spew everywhere. What can be done?
Not all that much. . .If things at Spotify don’t resolve to my satisfaction I will cancel, along with a lot of other people. By the way — it’s a Swedish company; go figure.