Summary
The “Rogansphere,” a sprawling ecosystem of podcasts and online shows led by figures like Joe Rogan, has become a powerful cultural force for younger audiences, functioning as a “Fox News for the young.”
With its mix of anti-establishment rhetoric, distrust of Democrats, and casual conversations blending left-leaning and conservative ideas, it normalizes figures like Donald Trump for a disillusioned, lonely audience—particularly young men.
Democrats risk underestimating its influence, as this ecosystem fosters deep listener loyalty and has contributed to a significant shift in young male voters toward Trump.
We are being downvoted for this but it’s funny to me that they are calling him Fox News for young people. The show really isn’t all that political. Instead of whining about Rogan, democrats need someone who occupies a similar space as Rogan that young people want to watch.
When I was younger we had Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Times have changed and right leaning comedians are edging out left leaning comedy, for whatever reason. Maybe the left is too PC? I don’t know.
The problem is that Rogan is the beginning of algorithmic rabbit holes that relatively quickly draw people into further right-wing political commentary, pundits like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh or Tim Pool start popping up more and more on recommended pages, for whatever criteria the almighty algorithm had decided Joe Rogan and right-wing pundits have in common.
He might not seem very political, but he has politically engaged figures on his show quite often.
Even on my own YouTube, I actively curate the recommendations and channels that get suggested to me and tend to cut out the extreme right wing and I still get suggestions for anti-woke conservative videos.
Rogan is an inflection point that leads many people to right wingers.
People often think propaganda is done by hiding something or lying. More often they don’t need to do either of those things. Once you have a pulpit it’s more about who you choose to elevate and amplify.
For reasons I cannot explain sufficiently, YouTube seem to be in full we-have-no-ideas panic mode and spitting out lots of right wing crap regardless of what your algorithms used to be.
I’m sure I trust someone with the username “ThirdWorldOrder” telling me Joe Rogan isn’t al that political. It’s just a joke, bro!
I’ve had this username since StarCraft 1… so a long time ago. What does ThirdWorldOrder mean to you? lol
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it another hundred times but that.cannot.happen. It’s not possible. It’s like saying “democrats should fight an armed conflict with water balloons and paste” - it is not a possible thing to do.
There are some really interesting reasons why that is, but the TL;DR of it is right-wing conservative bullshit does not translate. So what we’d get is a left-wing liberal papier-mâché version that wore thin quickly.
All I’m saying is don’t bother going down this road. It’ll eat up lots of time and have no results that will help. The answer to Fox News Limbaugh Rogan Chudville Station is not the opposite sameness. It’s entirely different media.
Well, good luck finding something that appeals to young men then.
Don’t fight against them, expose the sources of funding they get and go after the money. Almost immediately after Tenet was found out to be a Russian front paying for and delivering talking points to Podcaster like Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, etc and was shut down. All these shows suddenly started dropping what they could do because they lost a significant source of funding and content.
In my opinion, the heavy policing of language during the 2010’s made the Democratic Party a hostile environment for improvisational artists. The whole style of their art is to make an omelette on the fly while definitely breaking a few eggs along the way. It is fundamentally necessary for them to be able to make a mistake and move on, and that is something that the “cancel culture” was progressively trying to deny.
It has gotten a little better, but this latest round of blaming comedians and podcasters for Trump isn’t going to help. The Democratic Party needs to realize that when they point the finger at others, there are three fingers pointing back at them.
Is this cancel culture in the room with us now?
A lot of Democrat spaces have been in purity spirals for closing in on a decade. It’s not enough to just be pro choice anymore, you have to support free home delivery of abortion meds via text message, elective abortion into the third trimester…
Where in any Democrat aligned policy us this the case? The only people getting late term abortions are people who’ve had something catastrophic happen during their pregnancy. No person is going through 6+ months of all the challenges and difficulties associated with pregnancy just to decide they don’t want a baby at the very end.
Don’t just parrot what you hear off of Fox News or Breitbart or Daily Wire, look shit up and verify what they’re saying is true.
Top line policy and allowed opinions in various groups are different. I don’t think you understand a purity spiral, it’s not realistic or logical, it’s about signalling increasingly extreme adherence to a belief. Whether that is third trimester abortion, or anyone not worshiping X god in exactly the right way or you burn in hell, it’s the same root problem.