[The Hill] Spotify sides with Joe Rogan after Neil Young ultimatum

First off- Joe Rogan is a douche

Second- I don’t think this is a Bill Cosby level controversy all the sudden and I don’t think Spotify or Youtube should drop him. I know enough about Rogan to know he’s not David Duke. However I am surprised at how many times he used the N word.

Lastly- there are ramifications for going mainstream and getting millions to be a figurehead media persona. The behind closed door conversations with friends that you broadcast is going to get scrutinized when you take that level of pay and fame. When Rogan took the deals he did and outlets signed him up, they should have known it was only a matter before someone noticed.

I think Spotify should just put disclaimers before streaming an episode that:

“ this episode might contain racist language or antivax misinformation. Joe Rogan is NOT an expert in any professional field and is simply a dumbass who has some interesting guests who have some interesting things to shoot the sh*t about.”

 

I think when you’re doing a long form podcast for10+ years, filled with unscripted, uncensored and unedited conversations, you’re inevitably going to say some offensive things now and then. And it doesn’t make you a bad person that warrants cancellation years down the road when someone decides to dig up all the offensive bits they can find. He can apologize for not having more of a filter for things that come out of his mouth and are recorded down, but that’s always been the point of his podcasts. To feel like a conversation you might have with friends.

 

OTOH, Rogan did decide to take the 100 million dollars and him getting censored to protect Spotify’s image was going to be part of the deal. I’m not particularly happy about that, but I can’t feel too sorry for him given that he’s well compensated financially for it.

 

I agree with both of your points here. I would add too that there has been a recent distinction given to him as an information provider on very important topics... some life and death. When you are in the context of now being a provider of political and medical information to more people than Walter Cronkite ever did then you step into scrutiny that you would never have as a entertainment podcaster or comedian.

I think the best thing for Joe Rogan's brand would be to find a way to backtrack back into entertainment and BS. He's been playing Covid expert wayyy too much and I think that has been the biggest mistake he's made career wise that has backfired, and brought realization of his true reach, and the data that shows that he's a news and information source, and could get alot of people killed.

 

Spotify and Rogan should workout a buyout of his contract so he can go back to his regular podcast. Liberals can still cry about it but he will have his own platform to discuss whatever he wants to. There were many who said that Rogan took far too little money from Spotify based on the amount of viewership he gets.

 

there is not a monopoly on anti-misinformation.

i have many conservatives in my social circle, many are anti-mis-information

 

Well, part of this is true but that doesn't excuse the racism.

Many people have podcasts for years and don't just randomly say stuff like "Black people have different brains" and comparing a black area to "Planet of the Apes".

You are right that he doesn't have much of a filter but that just means he's more likely to say how he truly feels.

 

Was the Planet of the Apes thing random? I thought they were talking about the movie before he said that. He claims he didn’t mean to compare black people to apes but understands that’s how it came across.

 

Yes I get when I first posted about Joe Rogan destroying the viewership of the legacy media
Nobody knew who he was but got mad

but now suddenly the d&d discovered iPods at their local pawn shops and realize that it’s an audio format that could be listened by trillions and it’s not on their time Warner cable box they got in 1990

now he’s public enemy number one because it threatens your love of Fox News and CNN

I would also like to inform the d&d that electric cars are real
And so are spaceships
@basso
@Os Trigonum
@AroundTheWorld

 

His claim is that it is random and it just was more of a coincidence of the conversation basically but it is hard for me to believe that if they were watching Star Wars or any other movie that he would have thrown that in there instead. He's also told a biracial guy that he "Has the best of both worlds, the body of a black guy and the mind of a white guy"

Jigglyfly put together a lot of the things he's done and I think if people dig into more of his podcasts especially those where he discussed race realism they would find more questionable comments.

As I've said in that longer post, I don't think he's maliciously racist and wants to genocide black people...but I think we really need to stop thinking of racism as this extreme thing where you have to be tatted up with nazi symbols or a KKK member to actually be racist. A lot of racist people are passively so. They believe other people in general are lesser than them...it doesn't mean they don't believe a black person can't be a doctor or scientist or CEO or whatever the case, but they do believe that black people in general are less intelligent. It doesn't mean they 'hate' black people but the general feeling of inferiority is there. These same people will have black people they look up to and admire and of course friends but again...you drop them into a majority black area and there comes the anxiousness.

Also, there seems to be this very high standard for anti-black racism that is even playing out here in this story where even a guy that says black people have different brains can't be considered racist. Joe would have to be a card carrying KKK member for some people to admit it.

 

I think he's said racist things, stuff that he'd even acknowledge as racist. I also think "casual racism", in our private words and attitudes, is a lot more normal than people care to admit (but less so today than in years past). So, if you take anyone who has had thousands of hours of conversations recorded on various politically and socially charged topics, where the people in the room are encouraged to speak their minds freely (and sometimes say outrageous things to just get a laugh) and just see where the conversation goes, you'll find instances of it. Maybe not for the wokest of woke among us, but for the vast majority I think that would be the case. So, if having said racist things or having had racist thoughts makes one a racist, then sure he's a racist as are most of us.

Now, I didn't see the clip of him talking about Black brains and don't know the context in which that came up. My guess is that it's probably not as bad as people who have an axe to grind with him really want it to be, because I think otherwise we would have heard about it before. It seems possible that he wasn't being serious with that. Comedians sometimes intentionally say racist things for a laugh, where part of the joke is that it is obviously racist and wrong.

I'd much rather people focus on the content Rogan is spreading to encourage people not to get vaccinated during a pandemic, rather than trying to cast him as a closeted racist who needs to be canceled on that basis. I try to be careful about drawing conclusions about a person based on soundbites someone has picked out from countless hours of conversation specifically for the purposes of making that person look as bad as possible.

 

The clip that is really bad is Joey Diaz bragging about making female comedians give him head to get a spot on stage at a comedy club and all of them laughing along with him -- this is of course after another clip of the gang discussing Cosby and rape.

 

So he's said racist things, things he'd even say were racist...but we then can't call him racist? You even admit he has no filter which would generally just mean he's speaking honestly more often than not.

I think that's a poor excuse as well, plenty of people have podcasts without saying racist things in them. Comparing that to casual private conversations that may or may not exist is pointless to me because it's something that isn't comparable to someone on a podcast saying these things. I also don't care what people say in their private conversations nor do most people. If Joe was privately saying these things then there wouldn't be an issue at all.

Here is the clip...


I really don't hear the punchline there or anything. People keep bringing up context but what is the context of a guy that has a history of saying racist things over and over again? Then add the n-word compilations as well? There is a massive different in "Black people like chicken haha" and "Black people have different brains." the former I would not even consider racism and the latter 100% is. If the former is what you're considering casual racism then I don't agree that it is. I believe racism is exactly as it is defined and someone like Joe believes white people are generally smarter but that doesn't mean he hates black people or anything of the kind. It's a passive kind of racism that yes, exists in a lot of people...but it is still racism.

We can do both at the same time though.

but I do understand that nowadays there is a really HIGH tolerance of being racist against black people to the point where you actually have to be an out and out neo-nazi or KKK member because literally in all my years here in the D&D and online in general even when people do blatantly racist stuff like say black people have different brains it gets tons of excuses and defenses. Even people like Rush got excuses for the racist things he said.

There is this narrative that you will get canceled the moment you talk about black people and yet you have people that make it part of their whole careers and thrive off of it and people wonder why there is so much division.

 

Yep, heard about this one years ago too. People tried to cancel Joe for this one years ago, maybe 2 or so years ago IIRC?

You can't do it though. Joe is an avatar for what a lot of people want to be just like that former last president and so they'll defend whatever he says or does.

This one is even worse than the racial comments too because Diaz really does describe this woman in detail

 

Scientists and medical professionals are not all liberals. Not by a longshot.

 

Totally agree. I had never heard that before, but I remember listening to Rogan a few years ago and him and Ari Shafir, and a couple of other comedians laughing about some story Diaz was telling about ****ing some desperate girl and just thinking there's nothing funny about this at all. It's really sad and ****ed up.

 

I thought I said you can call him a racist, if by that you mean he has said racist things or had racist thoughts. Not having a filter means you’ll say whatever pops in your head. People have all sort of thoughts, some being deeply held beliefs and some are just random ideas floating in and out of our minds that we may recognize are wrong when we reflect them on them for a minute.

The clip you posted of him talking about Black people’s brains sounds awful, and I’m surprised he’d think something like that. I’d like to know what year it’s from and also more about where that conversation went. It’s hard for me to react to a few words cut out of what was probably a multi-hour conversation.

 

I believe the clip is 10 years old at least, I'm not sure about the year.

 

i wonder how many of the D&D Denizens actually watch cable news of any sort, except for random clips posted on social media that are often w/o context.

For that matter, how many listen regularly to Joe Rogan (I never have), use Spotify (I don't), or listen to NY (eh, 40 years ago...)