53-year-old Joe Rogan is among the most consumed personalities in media. He has enough power to shape politics and even medical decisions. He owns the podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience” where the topics of the conversations range from psychedelics to quantum mechanics, politics, comedy, and anything in between.
Spotify licensed the show in 2020 for an estimated $100 million. Joe Rogan is dangerous in a comical way. Taking him at face value would not be a great idea except when you should, you as the listener should be able to tell them apart. If it were up to the establishment, Joe Rogan would definitely be canceled.
Rogan in 2019, said The Joe Rogan Experience was downloaded 190 million times in a month. Some of the episodes got tens of millions, such as the famed interview with Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, and the far-right conspiracy theorist and Rogan’s longtime friend, Alex Jones. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable news host expects around 3 million live viewers every night.
He is a very good listener and likes to share his thoughts aloud. Depending on the listener, Joe can be the jock or the scholar, the bully or the victim.
Joe is also a comedian, and is liable to discuss the coronavirus intelligently with a health researcher and with another comedian, discuss public health less intelligently. He creates market movement by recommending diet supplements and CBD infused drinks. He publicly admits he can not be regarded as a “respected source of information.”
What is exciting for some and scary for others is the sheer amount of social following he has garnered while being defiant of the traditional restrictions of mainstream fame. His is a story about persistence and having a keen sense for the prevailing winds of culture.
Joe is said to have “his own thing” which has grown big enough to occasionally collide with many different institutions such as the White House and the British Monarchy. Rogan suggested that young healthy people don’t need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, and then later stressed that he is “not an anti-vaxx” person, and that people should not consider him as a medical authority. His comments were condemned by the Biden administration and Prince Harry, who is also a podcaster. In his defense, Rogen said, “I disagree with me all the time.”
Rogan’s career in entertainment began earl, with a magic act on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. He had relocated to the area after living in Newark, New Jersey with a violence-prone father. After moving to the Boston Area, a teenage career and a short time at University of Massachussets Boston before dropping out. Joe got into stand-up in 1988 when his friends coaxed him onto the stage and he took to it. He caught his biggest early break when he moved to Los Angeles and landing a cast role on the sitcom “NewsRadio,” which was ran from 1995-1999.
Rogan was the kind of stand-up that today, would try to find another way to get booked “The Joe Rogan Experience” discussing the animalistic impulses of men and what it’s like to date “the kind of girl when you look deep in her eyes, you see the back of her skull,” he once said.
Joe, who could be considered a crusader against cancel culture, perhaps carried off the first celebrity cancellation of the internet age.
In 2007, Joe went onstage at the Comedy Store to confront fellow comic, Carlos Mencia over allegations that Carlos Mencia stole other comedians’ jokes. The exchange was filmed and Joe posted the clips online, with footage of Mencia performing versions of jokes that had already been done by others. Rogan told him, “I’m a real comic bro.”
Mencia’s reputation would worsen as the video went viral. In a recent interview, Mencia said “it is ironic that a guy who is now saying you shouldn’t cancel anybody started the building of his podcast by cancelling me.”
Although some die-hards might complain, Rogan’s audience remains young, loyal and fast growing on a global scale. He is central to Spotify’s ecosystem that his podcast is listed as a separate category on the app i.e., Sports | Music. Politics. Joe Rogan.
Rogan has said to have a “love-hate relationship with conspiracies.” He was among the earliest and loudest in spreading the word of the possibility that the pandemic was as a result of a leak from a Chinese Laboratory, an idea that has prompted scrutiny from the Biden administration.
Rogan has more often promoted comedians in his circle, further enabling his goal of growing the spread of comedy in Austin and starting his own comedy club. His friends have teased him about being his generation’s Johnny Carson.
During one episode, Rogan lamented how timid modern comedies are. He argued that today’s America would never let films like “Superbad” or “Step Brothers” air on the big screen.
