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Editor's Note*: Like all articles published by the chronicle, this is neither an endorsement nor a condemnation of any political, medical, or intellectual agenda. It is merely an expression of certain personal perspectives, not necessarily even held by the writer.
For some a Boogie Man, for some a Strawman, and for some just the overdue new standard of acceptable ideas, the specter of “cancel culture” has consumed the American political sphere on all sides for years now. Regardless of those who would misunderstand its existence, its motivations, and its extent, cancel culture is here. Unopposed, it will continue to poison the American cultural sphere and mold a whole new generation of Americans who would reject the spirit of the first amendment in a way that makes its legal protections worthless; censorship enforced by the mob or censorship enforced by institutions serve the same end. Censorship is a tool to this end, regardless of how it's used or who wields it.
Yet this month, it seems the cancelers, so to speak, bit off more than they could chew. What resulted from the attempted cancellation of Joe Rogan is a fascinating case study of the transforming media landscape and perhaps a pivotal moment in the digital age’s ascendancy over traditional legacy media.
Who Joe Rogan is and what he represents is the true target of his most recent (though surely not last) attempted cancellation. Understanding who Rogan is as a person is key to understanding his incredible popularity. He doesn’t hold exactly the typical resume for a world-famous interviewer. He grew up working class, dropped out of college, and worked various jobs on construction sites. He spent much of his time practicing and excelling in martial arts, which he became exceptional in, and later served as the basis for his current job as a cage-fighting commentator for the UFC, another oddity for a guy who produces the world's most listened to media product.
But martial arts didn’t make Rogan famous. His big break came after he struggled for years as a rising stand-up comic and signed a deal to become the host of the viral show “Fear-Factor” in which contestants would do absurd challenges for cash prizes. Since then, Rogan developed an iconic persona that included saying or doing shocking things for the sake of entertainment. Rogan’s unorthodox persona is also dominated by one other key tenant: he is a man’s man. He is the everyday Mr. Blue Collar. He’s that guy who works hard, likes to drink beer, and watches sports with his buddies on the weekend. Furthermore, Rogan is smart but not condescending or intellectually self-aggrandizing, and he talks in the everyday dialect of a guy one might find at their local bar. This “man’s man” is both Rogan and Rogan’s audience.
The format of Rogan’s podcast furthers this sort of common guy populist sentiment that is key to his success. It was revolutionarily unique at the time Rogan launched his podcast and is still antithetical to the way mainstream media creates their products. Take, for example, the second-largest podcast in the world: the New York Times “The Daily Show.” It has pre-interviews, script supervisors, editors, entire casts of producers, and multiple takes. It is fundamentally a hyper-produced product. Rogan’s product couldn’t be further from that. It consists of him sitting down talking with someone he finds interesting, often sharing drinks or smoking with them, talking about whatever comes to mind for hours and hours. He records it live, then the video is uploaded whole and untouched to consumption platforms. Rogan doesn't pretend to be some Anderson Cooper-like professional journalist. He is transparent, vulnerable, and as he will be the first to say, kinda crazy sometimes. He is quite literally the furthest thing away from the traditional legacy media and that is where his power and popularity come from.
Thanks to this persona, Rogan is the most popular content creator in America. For comparison, on a good night this year, CNN’s primetime host lineup got about 700,000 viewers; Rogan’s average podcast this year got about 11 million listeners. His numbers speak for themselves. The American people today simply prefer Rogan to the old institutions of media. So, it should be of little surprise that these old-power institutions seek to stop him.
For decades, newspapers and nightly shows had a collective monopoly on the realm of professional discourse. The internet fundamentally shattered that, and Rogan is a creation of this new world. But like most people in positions of power, the old order is desperate to maintain the status quo. Now, many have been trying to frame this battle from a political lens, yet that is not fully accurate. While these old media institutions are largely liberal, so is Rogan. Despite this, in the past few weeks, Republicans have been trying to use Rogan’s attempted canceling as a rallying point, but that is really just an attempt to ride on Rogan’s popularity, not because they think Rogan is truly one of them. In fact, previous attempts by the old media to smear Rogan were based on misrepresenting his political beliefs. Hilariously, in 2018, Vice Media wrote a now-famous article labeling Rogan “Alt-Right.” At face value, this is patently absurd. Rogan is a weed-smoking, lifetime California resident who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries. However, there is certainly nuance to his beliefs. Rogan voted for Bernie, but he is by no means a traditional democrat. Rather, he is a guy who said he would never vote for Biden but will vote for Bernie, but also could see himself voting for Trump. A seemingly paradoxical position for those of traditional party affiliations. The media’s opposition to him, therefore, isn’t necessarily a purely politically ideological one but is instead over the issue of control and how he shattered their status quo.
This recent cancellation saga started with his interview in December with Dr. Maloney. Dr. Maloney is a Ph.D., specializing in mRNA science, but recently became ostracized by many in the medical community for his open skepticism of the true efficacy of the COVID vaccines. In the interview, the two had a conversation that defied currently accepted mainstream ideas about COVID and its treatment. Rogan, it is worth noting, has also had many proponents of the vaccine on his show, along with various other mainstream medical experts since the pandemic started. Nonetheless, the blowback started and came hard. Left-wing groups began demanding sites take down Rogan’s podcast; musicians began pulling their works from platforms; the Twitter mob lit its torches. Widely, they labeled Rogan’s podcast as “medical disinformation,” and given his popularity, they said that it was a matter of national health that he be taken down. This, of course, was a guise, merely a pretext to do what they already wanted. This became increasingly apparent when advocates switched to a different tool of attack the second they thought it would be more effective. Now, the point of attack was race. In a widely distributed video, they clipped together audio of Rogan repeating the “N-word” over the last 20 years. Now, by any metric, the video is unacceptable and disgusting. Under no context does any non-black person have the right to use that word, and that is not a point of contention. However, it is worth noting that in every single instance of that video, Rogan was not using the word to attack or name any person. Rather, the examples were all of him reading rap lyrics, quoting people, or repeating what a black guest on his show said. That is not to defend those old actions of his, but rather to put them in context. However, these videos have existed for decades—why all of sudden are they all over the place? Well, it's because his adversaries know now is the moment to throw everything they have at him. Like sharks circling, they smell blood and know this is their chance. No one actually, in their heart of hearts, thinks Joe Rogan is a racist, they just think they can convince enough other strangers on the internet to get him canceled. Further proof of the disingenuous nature of this attack is that it is a standard not even close to evenly applied. While it can be agreed that the use of the “N-word” by a non-black person in any context is unacceptable, that has not always been the case until recent years. In fact, old videos of the sitting President using the word in the same context Rogan used it, quoting someone, can easily be found with a quick google search. Where are all the articles and angry tweets demanding the de-platforming of the president now? The answer, of course, is they are nowhere to be found because he is not in opposition to the cancelers, and the issue they have with Rogan isn’t actually old videos, but rather what he represents.
However, thus far, Rogan has remained relatively untouched by the attacks of the cancelers. Spotify, his exclusive audio platform, refused to cave and pull his show. Now, it's obvious the executives at Spotify didn’t stand by Rogan out of the goodness of their hearts, nor any personal bona fides about tolerance. It is just that Rogan is too damn popular, and he brings in such a reliable and large audience wherever he goes. So, it seems that Rogan has withstood the peak of the blowback and is just as strong as before. If this holds true, the consequences are spectacular. Rogan stood up to the old mob and didn’t bow. Cancel culture finally met a foe too big to be canceled, a foe whose growth was assured by his own existence. Not only will this surely serve as an example to others who dare defy the new bounds of acceptable dialogue, but it also exposes those who tried to cancel Rogan for what they are: the remnants of a bygone era. The legacy media could no longer accurately be called the mainstream media because there is no one more popular in media than Rogan. He is the new mainstream. So, as the old media lament their slow demise, it can only be said that they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Rogan is simply the manifestation of a popular reaction to their vicissitudes. In his ascending popularity, Rogan is not the murderer of mainstream media but is the coroner, whose popularity marks the death of the old status quo. Triumphant in the face of attempted silencing, Rogan stands poised to continue his domination of digital media.
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