Why Is Joe Rogan So Popular?

By David Harsanyi

Thursday, February 10, 2022

 

When New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg suggested that the media might benefit from reflecting on why so many Americans trust podcaster Joe Rogan more than traditional news outlets, it triggered an overwhelming negative response.

 

If someone had taken up Rosenberg’s inquiry, he might have noted that too many in legacy media have gone from merely presenting news with left-wing bias or framing to becoming unaccountable advocates for a single political party. He could have observed that journalists too often work to obscure truth rather than provide it, and that modern incentives, which reward outspoken partisanship with millions of social-media followers and cable-news accolades, have corroded journalistic ethics. The vigilant reporter poring over reams of documents and challenging liberal pieties is taking the long and difficult road, and it might end up being a dead end.

 

Major media, in favoring hyper-partisan hits over reporting and fair-minded depictions of American life, have also become insufferably boring. They’ve left a void in credibility that people look to fill.

 

Yet even that is only one reason for Rogan’s appeal. Another is that many Americans enjoy listening to long-form discussions between guests who often have heterodox views. Rogan is an open-minded, easy-going autodidact, uninhibited by stultified norms of modern political discourse, untethered from the agenda-driven news that frame every issue as partisan. Autodidacts learn as they go, and Rogan’s curiosity sometimes leads him to unexpected, weird, and crazy places — which can make those conversations a lot more relatable to people. Rogan’s most transgressive act is being normal.

 

Yesterday, CNN — where grousing about “false narratives” never hindered them from running uncorroborated gang-rape allegations or from helping the governor of New York hide the deaths of thousands of elderly — produced a video in which academic researcher Gabriel Wisnewski-Parks explained “why Joe Rogan is so popular.” In the introduction, we learn that the comedian has “taken to his platform to make false and inaccurate statements about Covid and vaccines” with statements like — and please, steel yourself for this — “if you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time, and you’re young, and you’re eating well, I don’t think you have to worry” about Covid.

 

Seems relatively innocuous to me. But I’m not a Rogan archivist, so I certainly couldn’t give you a detailed list of all the alleged “misinformation” he has supposedly spread. One suspects, however, as Rogan noted, that the biggest problem with the term is that

 

many of the things we thought of as “misinformation” just a short while ago are now accepted as fact. Like for instance, eight months ago if you said if you get vaccinated you can still catch Covid and spread Covid, you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now that’s accepted as fact.

 

CNN got a lot flak for turning to an academic to explain Rogan’s popularity, but Wisnewski-Parks got a lot right, including the observation that Rogan derives his popularity from his “vocal resistance to tribalism” and his “deep, interesting, meaningful conversations” with people on both the left and the right. This is the kind of interaction that rarely exists on cable television anymore. Why have meaningful interaction when you can simply cancel or smear as racist anyone with whom you disagree?

 

So perhaps the better question is: Why do people hate Joe Rogan so much? Toure Neblett, a recent guest on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show — rife with fact-deficient hysterics, racial essentialism, and frothing animosities — mocked Joe Rogan as “a really dumb person who thinks he’s smart.” Rogan, in actuality, is quite modest about gaps in his knowledge. He’s inquisitive. This is another appealing aspect to his persona. Unlike most cable-news personalities, he readily concedes mistakes.

 

Of course, the notion that Reid or Brian Stelter or Neblett — or others who show contempt for the credulous proles who stray from media-approved “narratives” — are deep-thinking journalists who possess coveted expertise is highly debatable. What Rogan exhibits, and what many lack, is genuine intellectual curiosity.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not naïve enough to believe that popularity is contingent on the quality of programming. Plenty of immensely successful shows are brainless garbage. Nor is every idea or conspiracy theory worth exploring. The reason so many in corporate media detest Rogan and are making a concerted effort to destroy his career is that he engages in wrongthink. Worse, he offers a big audience an experience that they can’t find in the national media, an institution they have good reason to distrust in any case. It’s not any more complicated than that.