this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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That's a headline that needs sorting
So did Rogan ask Zuck to be on the show, or did Zuck ask Rogan?
Almost certainly the latter. Rogan has forged a remarkable career in legitimizing authoritarianism, and he’s never been more valuable to oligarchs than now.
I’ve been thinking on this a lot. It’s genuinely amazing and deeply disturbing how innocuous he seems to people who aren’t aware of what he actually is.
I think he’s been able to market himself to his most ideologically aligned audience as a smaller deal than he really is, despite having the highest-possible profile guests on his show.
For better or for worse this man and his show will be studied for years to come. As someone who was an occasional listener back before the mask-off phase I have so many thoughts on the guy.
I think one thing to understand is that most of his casual audience very likely engages through watching clips, not sitting through whole interviews. The reasonable, mainstreamable stuff gets clipped out and perhaps you run across it sarching for something else, or it's algorithmically fed to you because of your interest in an adjacent topic. Clips of the weirder, creepier manosphere/Alex Jones/Art Bell guests don't get surfaced as readily, at least until you're down the rabbit hole, so Rogan himself ends up having a veneer of reasonability and respectability that he doesn't really deserve.
Same goes for Trump rallies, or probably almost any major political speech now. There's a front line of people who will watch the whole thing, but then they recirculate specific clips based on how they want to portray the subject.