All My Homies Hate Joe Rogan
Joe Rogan is one of my favorite human beings. And when I tell people this, they generally have one of three reactions:
- They say nothing, a blank and confused look on their face.
- They laugh at me, thinking that I must have watched one too many “Joe Rogan Ultimate Life Advice” videos.
- They scoff and saunter away, reveling in the pleasurable sensation of moral superiority.
Even Joe’s fans often don’t understand what I mean when I say that Joe is one of my favorite human beings. “Yeah I love him too,” they might say. “I love how he exposes CNN and owns the libs.” To which I am left muttering something about “I like him for a different reason…”
This is the story of how something I love became something I can’t endorse without ridicule. It is a story about what happened with podcasting, and about why all my homies hate Joe Rogan.
Part 1: Opie and Anthony
Our story starts in an unlikely place: with a radio show, by the name of “Opie and Anthony.”
Opie and Anthony aired on a variety of broadcasting platforms, and it mainly featured standup comedians as guests. It was at one point the highest rated afternoon radio show in New York City, but suffered continual deplatformings due to the propensity of its hosts to act like small children on crack, doing things like filming their colleagues using the restroom and making fun of a mentally disabled man who was raped in a bowling alley bathroom using a plumber’s snake.
I must confess that I’m not the biggest fan of the Opie and Anthon show. Sure, its hosts are quick witted and funny, but their whole shtick is that they are unapologetically self-absorbed assholes who bully their guests, and that just isn’t very appealing to me. However, despite not being a fan of the show, there are certain episodes from the mid 2000’s that I loved listening to.
These were the episodes that featured Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan was first a guest on Opie and Anthony in 2005, and would appear many more times over the coming years. He was invited onto the show because Opie and Anthony were fans of his comedy. During the beginning of the show, the conversation was what you would expect to hear on a radio show: a civil, grammatically correct discussion of issues. As the conversation went on, however, the conversation became increasingly retarded, venturing into more and more seemingly random topics. And I loved every second of it.
When a conversation is too carefully regulated, it starts to have a dead, devitalized feel to it. To use a grotesque metaphor (avert your eyes, children!), it’s like having sex with 17 condoms on. Sure, in theory it could still be good, but you’re blocked from full enjoyment.
When a conversation is unregulated, however , it becomes increasingly fun. The things that you say can be as wild as you want them to be, and that opens up entirely new vistas of adventure.
As much as I am not an admirer of Opie and Anthony, I do respect them for the fact that they don’t regulate their conversations. They say whatever they want to, and they let their guests do the same. And if they get thrown off the air (which has happened many times), they just shrug it off.
In many ways, Opie and Anthony’s unscripted, open conversation format paved the way for many of the podcasts that would spring up in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. Most notably, a podcast known as the Joe Rogan Experience.
Part 2: The Joe Rogan Experience
On December 24th, 2009, a podcast launched. The podcast would later become known as the Joe Rogan Experience, in honor of legendary musician Jimmy Hendrix. It would also soon be the biggest podcast in history. But for now, it was just Joe and whoever he happened to be with goofing around for a couple hours.
If you’ve listened to the early episodes of the JRE, you’ll know that, like Opie and Anthony, Joe was coarse and unrefined. Vile even. Most people filter themselves to avoid stirring things up. But Joe didn’t do that. And as a result, topics like blue cheese diarrhea (no, I will not be elaborating) came up quite frequently.
However, as the alchemists said, “in filth it will be found.” And there are certainly treasures to be found in the filth of Joe’s early podcast episodes. Occasionally (especially when he’s talking to a particular one of his stoner friends), Joe will say something that seems a little strange coming from the Fear Factor guy. For example:
Of course, this is all subjective. I can easily see someone watching this video and seeing it as nothing more than hippie nonsense. And maybe it is. Whether or not it’s true, however, I think that the idea itself demonstrates a certain degree of creativity on Joe’s part.
Crazy ideas like these are what made me fall in love with the Joe Rogan Experience’s early episodes. Back then, Joe was willing to consider any idea, no matter how strange. As Joe himself said back in 2008, “I’ll believe anything for at least 30 seconds.”
And even if you think that Joe is just a crazy stoner — which, I’ll admit, is very possible — that does nothing to detract from my point. Again, it was not the truth or falsehood of his ideas that mattered to me. It was their craziness. That’s why I always loved hearing Joe talk about DMT, one of the strongest psychedelic drugs known to man:
In this clip there are some questionable claims. DMT has never been directly linked to dreaming, for example, and the idea that it is produced by the pineal gland is still very much up for debate more than 15 years of research later. But to me none of this matters, because I don’t listen to Joe for facts. I listen to him for the rush you get when you consider an absolutely crazy idea, like simulation theory. Is the universe a simulation? I have no clue, but that doesn’t make it any less cool to think about.
In Joe’s words:
Life is infinitely more fucking bizarre than we can ever wrap our heads around, and we’re only capable of tuning into a very, very narrow band of reality. And the real reality that we get in glimmers and hopes is positive energy, and love, and friendship, and the idea of escaping the ego, and it comes to us in lightning bolts of inspiration, and loving feelings, and warm hugs. It’s almost there letting us know, but even our idea of what the big mandala could be is just so limited by our shitty little imaginations, and our petty human instincts, and our ego, and our lies, and our knowledge that we’re going to die, and all the fear that goes with that.
I think the big picture might not just be simulation theory; it might something way more crazy than that. It might be undefinable realities all around you all the time that you blink in and out of. And it’s not as simple as a computer program; it’s as simple as the fact that there was no fucking computer to begin with in the first place. None of it was ever real. All of it is an imaginary thing, and the mind creating things and making them real: that’s the illusion. Knocking on things that you’ve created to block yourself from the infinite wisdom of the universe: that’s the illusion. Your car, your house, you boat, your private jet; everything you can hit with a hammer is an illusion. That’s the illusion.
The reality is the field, the life, the love, the soul, the interaction with human beings. That’s the reality. Jets are fake. The ocean isn’t real. You can’t drown. You don’t exist.
For me, this was the core of the Joe Rogan Experience that I enjoyed: crazy ideas and one too few fact checkers. And besides, most of Joe’s ideas back then couldn’t be fact checked in the first place. How do you fact check the claim that we’re all the same person living different lives, or that DMT is a chemical gateway to other dimensions?
Like all good things, however, the Joe Rogan Experience that I had grown to love eventually had to come to an end.
Part 3: The End of the World
One of the crazy ideas that Joe used to discuss on the podcast was the idea that the Mayan calendar could tell us when the world would end. Apparently the Mayan calendar predicted that the world would end on December 21st, 2012. I read a few articles and tried to understand how historians determined this prediction, but I’m too dumb to understand it, so I’ll just take them at their word.
Obviously, the world didn’t end in 2012, so I guess the Mayans were wrong. However, right around December 21st, something fascinating happened. Who Joe Rogan was as a person changed drastically.
Obviously others will disagree with this, but for me it’s like Joe was replaced by a clone. He still acted similar, but he didn’t seem like the same person. The quality of his standup comedy, for example, seemed to decline.
For example, consider the following standup comedy bit from Joe, pre-2012:
Maybe my sense of humor is crude, but I personally find this funny. Joe’s post-2012 comedy, however, I do not find funny. Consider this bit, for example:
Not only is this bit less funny than the previous bit (in my humble opinion), but it’s not even relatable. Joe seems to be projecting his own fantasies into the heads of other men. I’m sure some men are with Joe on this, but I’m willing to wager that most aren’t.
Besides just a change in the quality of his standup, there are also other pieces of evidence to support the idea that Joe Rogan was replaced by a clone on December 21st, 2012. Before 2012, for example, Joe had hair. Afterwards, he was bald (or he at least stopped covering his baldness with a beanie). The podcast’s longtime co-host Brian Redban was also replaced around the same time, by some random COD player going by the name of “young Jamie.”
This YouTube video, uploaded in 2010, may have even predicted Joe’s 2012 death/replacement:
And maybe Joe’s replacement by a clone was even a CIA operation. Three frequent guests on the podcast, for example — Duncan Trussell, Joey Diaz, and Eddie Bravo — all believe that something like this is possible. Here is Duncan confronting Joe about this:
Notice how Joe acts very strange and immediately changes the subject. As soon as Duncan asks Joe to give a serious answer, rather than just parodying freedom-loving Americans, Joe immediately derails the conversation by talking about how he and his friends like to bow hunt. Strange…
Part 4: Joe Rogan Today
I still think that the post-2012 Joe Rogan Experience is a decent podcast, but to me it’s just not the same. Joe suddenly renounced all of the conspiracy theories that he was into before 2012, for example (almost as though the CIA forced him to). And whereas before Joe was a kind of fringe, conspiratorial philosopher, I would argue that he is now simply a skilled interviewer. As one YouTube commenter so eloquently puts it, “Joe Rogan is Oprah for dudes.”
While the Joe of today speaks about politics with relative frequency, I loved the old Joe Rogan because he didn’t get tied up in politics. I do sympathize with those who quote Vaush and argue that “politics is dumb but important,” and that not being interested in politics is therefore nothing to be proud of. But I also think that there is value in seeing past the weird political narratives of right vs left that are peddled by the media. For example, consider what Joe said about politics in 2010:
When it comes to having a political opinion, to me that’s almost the same thing as having an opinion on pro wrestling. Politics in this country (and all around the world for that matter) are an impossible tangle of bullshit and corruption. When I start paying attention to it and forming opinions I almost get mad at myself for following the projected storyline. The truth is always far more complex and twisted than what’s being broadcast through the media, and behind it all is a wave of special interest money and propaganda. It almost seems impossible to fix.
If I ever had to go on a political talk show I think it would be very hard to take the whole proposition seriously, and I would almost certainly just start ranting about how ridiculous it is that we’re even discussing it instead of unveiling the true motivation behind all world events; people with fuck loads of money want to make more of it, and they don’t give a fuck who has to die to make that happen.
In the past, Joe has also said things like “At this point I’ve completely given up on politics, and I’m just holding tight until the aliens land and sort all this shit out.” Today, though, Joe doesn’t seem to have “completely given up on politics.” Instead, he seems to have become embroiled in them. It seems like every other week he says something about COVID-19 vaccines that stirs up leftists. And while he has every right to say whatever he wants about vaccines, it frustrates me to see Joe getting caught up in taking sides (in this case the stereotypically right wing side). Previously, Joe would have said something like “both sides are full of shit” and laughed. Something that Oprah would never do. But now he has become the very thing he used to ridicule.
Joe’s post-2012 transformation from fringe conspiratorial philosopher to “Oprah for dudes” had the final nail hammered into its coffin on September 1st 2020, when, in exchange for $100 million (give or take; the deal isn’t quite that simple), Joe moved his podcast exclusively to Spotify. And while pre-2012 Joe Rogan had served as a much needed antidote to the mainstream, post-2012 Spotify Joe Rogan now is the mainstream, with more listeners than even CNN.
Just because Joe is now the mainstream, however, doesn’t mean that he isn’t controversial. Far from it. Joe is currently under fire for various reasons, the main being that he has been accused of spreading false information on COVID-19. While others say that Joe is acting as a grifter, I personally think that Joe is trying his best to be objective, but that he inevitably ends up being biased and partisan like the rest of us. I hate to say this because I know that I sound like every right winger on the internet, but perhaps Joe is simply giving voice to opinions that clash with standard narratives. (Of course, Joe’s popularity means that in many ways he now is the standard narrative, but I think that the point still stands.)
And even if the things that Joe says about COVID-19 were 100% proven to be complete horseshit, I don’t really mind. Other people being wrong doesn’t bother me, only me being wrong does. Yes, Joe does have a responsibility to try to be accurate, especially when millions of people listen to him. But, whether or not he’s succeeding, I believe that he is in fact trying. And if he’s failing, then that’s for him to worry about, not me.
There is of course also the constant complaint that Joe is giving right wing conspiracy theorists like Alex jones a platform. Personally, though, I think that Joe can talk to whoever he wants. Censorship has rarely proven effective throughout history, and I think that people are smart enough to make up their own minds about whether or not what they hear is trustworthy.
Part 4: All My Homies Hate Joe Rogan
One of the deepest-seeded human desires is the desire to be seen as quirky. And the easiest way to be seen as quirky is to hate whatever is currently mainstream, in favor of what is underground. This is perhaps the reason that I have come to watch Joe Rogan slowly become someone who most of my friends denounce. And perhaps it is even at the root of my own disdain for the post-2012 Joe Rogan. In any case, though, liking Joe Rogan is just not as quirky as it was 10 years ago.
One of the clearest ramifications of this is what has happened to the Joe Rogan subreddit. Even just a few years ago, the sub was a place for Joe Rogan fans to get together and share their love for him, serving as a more civilized refuge from his 4chan-esque, now defunct message board. Today, however, it seems that there are just as many Rogan haters posting on the subreddit as there are genuine fans, or even just neutral-minded listeners. Posts that are heavily critical of Joe (and not just in the spirit of playful teasing) now routinely get thousands of upvotes.
I also notice a similar pattern among my friends and acquaintances. Most of the people I know now see Joe Rogan as something like a braindead right wing shill, and someone that I should be ashamed of liking (even though the Joe I first fell in love with has been dead for over a decade). Hence “all my homies hate Joe Rogan.” And even if someone I know is a fan, they still often can’t quite understand why he is one of my favorite human beings, because the Joe Rogan that they know, the post-2012 Joe Rogan, is not the one that I grew to love.
I do not see this as a good thing or a bad thing. Simply an observation of how Joe has fallen out of the vogue.
Part 5: Conclusion
I miss the old Joe Rogan, the “we are mold” Joe Rogan
The not controlled Joe Rogan, the not bald Joe Rogan
I hate the new Joe Rogan, the CNN fake news Joe Rogan
The young Jamie Joe Rogan, the Spotify pays me Joe Rogan
I miss the free Joe Rogan, the DMT Joe Rogan
I gotta say, at that time I’d like to meet Joe Rogan
Cause bow hunting invented Joe Rogan, it wasn’t any Joe Rogans
And now I look and look around and there’s so many Joe Rogans
I used to love Joe Rogan, I used to love Joe Rogan
I even had an isolation tank, I thought I was Joe Rogan
What if Joe Rogan made a 3 hour podcast about Joe Rogan?
Called “I hate the old Joe Rogan”? Man that’d be so Joe Rogan
That’s all it was Joe Rogan, we still love Joe Rogan
And I love you like Joe Rogan loves Joe Rogan