Bernie Sanders Is the Democratic Front-Runner<\/a> ]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the more progressive corners of culture, it\u2019s become a familiar rallying cry to wonder out loud, \u201cWhat are men even for<\/em> now?\u201d That\u2019s an excellent question, but you can maybe understand why it rings a bit more ambivalently in the ears of men trying to find their footing in this new world. A brighter and more virtuous future? Wonderful! If you need anything from us, we\u2019ll just be over here peering into the void. Meanwhile, the irony is that so many of the men who demonstrate a level of intelligence and empathy worth aspiring to\u2014they\u2019ve pretty much all been on Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s a tendency right now to make every single thing about Donald Trump, but if you don\u2019t see the dotted line connecting the president to a wave of men who feel thwarted and besieged and sentenced to an endless apology tour, then you\u2019re not paying attention. Lots of these panicked men, as it happens, despise Trump every bit as much as they love Joe Rogan. But that\u2019s just a healthier response to the same core stimulus: a plunging sense of self-worth caused by a rapidly changing society. In 2019, men feeling thwarted and besieged is a bipartisan experience. This is the era of the Angry White Man, and it\u2019s not just the MAGA army. It\u2019s a description that also matches your garden-variety \u201cBernie bro,\u201d the Biden guy who just wants to change the subject, and that walking man bun who charged the stage at a Kamala Harris campaign event and showed his \u201cprofound respect\u201d for all the women present\u2014for a conversation about equal pay\u2014by grabbing the microphone to lecture her about animal rights. All kinds of men out there are pissed off and looking for someone to blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If all you know about Joe Rogan is his Wikipedia entry\u2014Fear Factor<\/em>, UFC, stand-up, podcasts with Elon Musk and Alex Jones\u2014and if you make no effort to learn more, he might seem like this gang\u2019s pied piper. And he does give them a platform with a massive audience, which is not just a programming choice but a moral one. So you can see why some might view Joe Rogan as Tyler Durden from Fight Club<\/em>, a movie you just know Joe Rogan loves, based on a novel by a writer you just know Joe Rogan has had on his podcast (Chuck Palahniuk, episode No. 1158).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut that\u2019s not why people are obsessed with him. In reality, it\u2019s because Joe Rogan is a tireless optimist, a grab-life-by-the-throat-and-bite-out-its-esophagus kind of guy, and many, many men respond to that. I respond to that. The competitive energy, the drive to succeed, the search for purpose, for self-respect. Get better every day. Master your domain. Total human optimization. A goal so hazy and unreachable that you never stop trying, until you realize with a kind of enviable Zen clarity that the trying is the whole point. If the world isn\u2019t giving you much in the way of positive feedback, create your own. It\u2019s a tough message for a very rich guy like Joe Rogan to sell, but he pulls it off because he has never stopped coming across as stubbornly normal. He\u2019s from a middle-class Boston suburb, he\u2019s bald, and for God\u2019s sake, his name is Joe<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRogan\u2019s father was a cop in Newark, New Jersey, and Joe was born on August 11, 1967, less than a month after the city burned for five days of riots that killed 26 people, including one police officer, and injured more than 700. \u201cAll I remember of my dad,\u201d Joe told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2015, \u201care these brief, violent flashes of domestic violence.\u201d According to the Rolling Stone <\/em>article, Rogan\u2019s father didn\u2019t comment on the allegations when reached, but said, \u201cI don\u2019t talk about people the way they talk about me. That\u2019s not in my DNA. What\u2019s gone is gone.\u201d (My attempts to locate and contact Rogan\u2019s father were unsuccessful.) The family moved around a lot, from Newark to San Francisco, then Gainesville, Florida, before finally settling down in suburban Boston. He was a pissed-off kid. Also, he was short. Eventually he found two outlets: fighting and telling jokes, which just so happen to be two things that can thrill some people at the same time as they\u2019re really hurting others.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRogan seems like a regular Joe, but he\u2019s not. He is driven, inexhaustible, and an honest-to-goodness autodidact. I used to think of myself as pretty pan-curious\u2014it comes with the job\u2014but my Joe Rogan experience was humbling. His brain is wicked absorbent, like Neo in The Matrix<\/em>, uploading knowledge through a hot spear jammed into the back of his skull. He\u2019s a freak of nature, and most of his fans cannot, in fact, be just like him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne of the downsides of total human optimization is that you\u2019re always coming up short, and in the wrong stew of testosterone and serotonin, it can turn into a poison of self-loathing and trigger-cocked rage. And a key thing Joe and his fans tend to have in common is a deficit of empathy. He seems unable to process how his tolerance for monsters like Alex Jones plays a role in the wounding of people who don\u2019t deserve it. Jones\u2019s recent appearance on the podcast came after he was sued by families of children and educators murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre\u2014a mass shooting that Jones falsely claimed was a hoax, which families of the victims say prompted his gang of fans to harass them. (Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook massacre occurred.) So is Joe really nurturing a generation of smarter, healthier, more worldly men, or an army of conspiracy theorists and alt-right super soldiers? At the very least, he shows too much compassion for bad actors, and not enough for people on the receiving end of their attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to get at the truth of Joe\u2019s beliefs, you have to ignore what he says and watch what he does. Rogan likes to say that he\u2019s voted for a Democrat in every presidential election\u2014aside from a brief ill-advised fling with Gary Johnson\u2014and that he despises Trump. During a podcast episode in March, he described himself as \u201cfucking left wing\u201d and \u201calmost a socialist,\u201d then ticked off a list of progressive issues he backs, including universal basic income and free college. In early August, Bernie Sanders came on for a pithy hour-long episode. He tends to assert his progressive credentials, though, only when he gets accused of being a far-right mouthpiece, and it always has a ring of \u201cSome of my best friends voted for Hillary.\u201d More revealing is who he invites onto his podcast, and what subjects he chooses to feast on in his stand-up specials. And if you cast a wide enough net, clear patterns emerge. If there\u2019s a woman or a person of color (or both) on Joe\u2019s podcast, the odds are high that person is a fighter or an entertainer, and not a public intellectual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rogan\u2019s most recent Netflix special is often funny because Joe Rogan is a professional stand-up comedian, but if you look past the jokes themselves and focus on the targets he\u2019s choosing, the same patterns emerge. Hillary, the #MeToo movement, why it sucks that he can\u2019t call things \u201cgay,\u201d vegan bullies, sexism. Of all the things in the world for a comedian to joke about right now, why these<\/em>? \u201cI say shit I don\u2019t mean because it\u2019s funny,\u201d he says during the special, which is something all comedians say, and is sort of true but also sort of not. People reveal their deepest selves in the subjects they keep revisiting, and the hills they choose to die on. With Rogan, you can often see and hear the tension between what he knows he\u2019s supposed to believe and what he really thinks. Joe Rogan may be all about love, but beneath the surface he\u2019s seething.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnstage, Rogan tends to wear the familiar uniform of chiseled men everywhere enjoying a night on the town: jeans, shiny button-down shirt, untucked, with a spread collar and unbuttoned cuffs, like his torso is a wine that needs to breathe. He stomps around as he performs, and his voice often rises to a shout, like Sam Kinison. In Strange Times<\/em>, he complained that his critics believe he \u201chates gays and cats,\u201d but he also seems ambivalent about women, especially Clinton, whom he described as \u201ca lying old lady who faints a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd speaking of a lot: He uses the word lady<\/em> a lot. \u201cLadies,\u201d he went on, \u201cyou make people. You make all the people. And you want to be president, too, you fucking greedy bitches? What else do you want? You want bigger dicks than us?\u201d \u201cLadies,\u201d he went on some more, \u201cI love you \u2026 but let\u2019s be honest, you don\u2019t invent a lot of shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoe\u2019s choice of profession is a key to understanding why The Joe Rogan Experience<\/em> can seem like a safe space for retrograde assholes: Among comics, radical free speech is a first principle. Every comedian believes that all people should be able to say pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want. This is partly because their careers depend on it, and not in some theoretical way. Just ask comics how nervous they get trying out new material in front of a live audience now versus a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll the same, because of their core DNA and their comfort with getting booed, comedians still tend to be at the forefront of so many of these debates over language and identity, touching those electrical wires in ways other people wouldn\u2019t dare. Joe touches them all the time. You just don\u2019t hear about it because it\u2019s buried under 300,000 hours of conversation with Anthony Jeselnik. Many of these episodes are a mixed bag. If you don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to be insightful and obtuse at the same time, just listen to an hour of his podcast with the author and neuroscientist Sam Harris, who raised some fraught but worthwhile questions about how forgiveness works in the age of the #MeToo movement and MAGA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe need to think through the whole process of redemption for people in our society,\u201d Harris argued. \u201cWhat are the criteria for successful apologies and for forgiveness?\u201d Rogan agreed, hard, and they discussed the case of Liam Neeson, who may have done lasting damage to his career by confessing to racist thoughts in his youth that he is ashamed of now. \u201cThey just wanna see him burned alive,\u201d Harris said with real alarm. \u201cAnd yet \u2026 these same people on the left are people who have as a genuine ethical norm the rehabilitation of murderers \u2026 There\u2019s no way to square those two things.\u201d These are both good, if imperfect, points to raise, but neither of them seems to grasp that a good point coming out of the wrong mouth doesn\u2019t count for squat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Free speech and its consequences, particularly the deplatforming of right-wing political provocateurs, is a push-button subject for Rogan, and it\u2019s where he gets himself into the most trouble. Especially when he talks about Twitter, a company that brings together Joe\u2019s two biggest blind spots: his basic misunderstanding of the concept of censorship and his tendency to see the world through a thick cloud of Axe Body Spray. (No, Joe, Twitter banning white nationalists from its privately held publishing platform is not censorship\u2014it might be a risky corporate policy, but it is not censorship.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last winter, Rogan had the Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on his show and the episode was a bust, resulting in a kind of blowback from fans that he\u2019d never experienced before. It wasn\u2019t that Joe was insufficiently hard-assed; it was simply that he failed at the most basic task of a host: forcing his guest to say something, anything, meaningful. A few of Joe\u2019s more conspiracy-minded fans, meanwhile\u2014the Joe Rogan experience is a deeply paranoid one\u2014accused him of letting Dorsey off easy because Dorsey\u2019s Cash app sponsors the podcast. But I don\u2019t think that was the issue. I think that\u2019s just how Dorsey talks, and Rogan couldn\u2019t crack it. He\u2019s not the first person Dorsey has bullshitted to death, and he won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happened next, though, was a demonstration of one of Joe\u2019s strengths, and something folks in traditional journalism could learn from: He fessed up. He began an episode the following week by apologizing for how lousy the Dorsey interview had gone, and though he insisted he wasn\u2019t covering for a buddy, he acknowledged the bad optics. He sounded beat up about it. He vowed to make it right. During my entire Joe Rogan experience, I never liked him more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then he immediately went out and bungled the \u201cmaking it right\u201d part, inviting on a journalist named Tim Pool, a frequent commentator on social-media issues, who seemed to know less about Twitter, and in particular the details of notable not-censorship incidents, than Joe himself\u2014two men talking unironically about what constitutes abuse on a social-media platform. Then he brought back Dorsey and<\/em> Pool, and Dorsey brought along Twitter\u2019s global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, for a four-way deep dive that was so circular and confusing it reminded me of Twitter itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJoe likes Jack. He likes Milo Yiannopoulos. He likes Alex Jones. He wants you to know that he doesn\u2019t agree with much of what they say, but he also wants you to know that off camera they\u2019re the nicest guys. If we all have fatal flaws, this is Joe\u2019s: his insistence on seeing value in people even when he shouldn\u2019t, even when they\u2019ve forfeited any right to it, even when the harm outweighs the good. It comes from a generous place, but it amounts to careless cruelty. He just won\u2019t write people off, and then he compounds the sin by throwing them a lifeline at the moment when they least deserve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nI put off listening to what Joe billed as \u201cAlex Jones Returns!\u201d (episode No. 1255) for three weeks, and then another week once I saw the running time: nearly five hours. Two windbags gusting for so long they could\u2019ve powered a desert of turbines. Rogan and Jones have been offline friends for years and share a fondness for conspiracy theories, though Jones takes them somewhat more seriously. Jones\u2019s first appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience<\/em> was two years ago (episode No. 911), but this one was fraught because he and Joe had recently fallen out over Jones\u2019s insistence that the Sandy Hook massacre had been a hoax. For Rogan, this was a banishment-worthy sin. Until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHis invitation to Jones was indefensible, and his defense was even worse. I had assumed going in that Rogan would explain himself at the top, similar to what he\u2019d done after booting the Jack Dorsey interview. But he didn\u2019t. He went the other way. He promised a \u201cfun\u201d interview with Jones, as if it was a joyful, long-awaited reunion rather than offensive for even existing, and he assured his listeners that \u201cyou\u2019re gonna love it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even before Jones sat down, Rogan seemed unpierced by the genuine anguish that Jones had caused the parents of murdered first graders. I won\u2019t quote anything Alex Jones said on the podcast, so just picture a walrus with a persecution complex, or a talking pile of gravel. They got the Sandy Hook stuff out of the way first\u2014Jones evaded responsibility, Joe grumbled about the media\u2014and then they got into what Jones was really there to talk about: aliens, suicidal grasshoppers, Chinese robot workers, that kind of thing. My breaking point was at the 21-minute mark, when Jones apologized for \u201cranting\u201d and Rogan replied, \u201cIt\u2019s okay\u2014I want you to rant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Joe Rogan experience ended because he wore me out. He never shuts up. He talks and talks and talks. He doesn\u2019t seem to grasp that not every thought inside his brain needs to be said out loud. It doesn\u2019t occur to him to consider whether his contributions have value. He just speaks his mind. He just whips it out and drops it on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet I came away more comfortable with Joe\u2019s vision of manhood\u2014and more determined to do the exact opposite. We\u2019re just different. Joe Rogan lives every day like it\u2019s his last. I live every day like I\u2019m going to have to do most of this crap again tomorrow. I like naps. I can\u2019t seem to get in the habit of taking vitamins and I just need to accept that I never will. I\u2019m glad, though, that the men of America have Joe Rogan to motivate and inspire and educate them in limitless ways, including how to recognize a moron. Whatever gets the job done. It might unsettle some of us that we must rely on his fans to separate the good stuff from the bad, but that\u2019s the hard work of being a responsible adult in the modern era\u2014knowing what you should consume and what you shouldn\u2019t. We all need to decide for ourselves, but trust me on this one: You can skip the mushroom coffee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every morning of my Joe Rogan experience began the same way Joe Rogan begins his: with the mushroom coffee. It\u2019s a pour-and-stir powder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias-campal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campal.com.br\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}