The cultural tides have turned on Joe Rogan in 2022. The infamous podcaster, UFC commentator and TV personality ran into a media storm when he opted to feature several controversial scientists on his podcast. This choice prompted Neil Young and his catalogue owners to call for Spotify to deplatform Rogan and the monolith podcast.
Joe Rogan Experience is estimated to average 11 million downloads per episode. To put things in perspective CNN viewership peaked at 1.8 million viewers back in 2021.
Rogan had successfully defended the first wave of detractors by issuing a nuanced statement. However, a political hit job soon followed. An old video featuring Rogan repeatedly using a slur surfaced online. To Rogan’s credit the clips were edited together out of context. He was often quoting music or other pieces of pop culture during. This time the backlash was louder. This led to Rogan hiring a security team for his family. During these trying times it had become apparent – which of the personalities who received huge boosts from Rogan would be backing him up in the eye of the storm.
For instance politician Andrew Yang – tweeted and deleted his support for the comedian. Former democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard also provided her support.
But what’s more surprising is that support itself encountered a backlash. Chinese social media platform TikTok – censored the Breaking Points channel on the platform after political analysts Saagar Enjeti and his cohost Krystal Ball shared the following edit of JRE showcasing Rogan’sa nuanced politics.
COMPILATION: Debunking the medias “right wing” Joe Rogan narrative. Video by @0rf for Breaking Points https://t.co/F3BxugtQlH pic.twitter.com/01I6GRvjCV
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) February 10, 2022
After fans noticed that the show was no longer on tiktok, host Saagar Enjeti shared an update:
“We’ve gotten 50,000 followers in just three weeks, which I’m told is pretty good by some of the teenagers who I’ve met before. And all of a sudden, our tik tock account has been locked for 24 hours. And the reason that we are given Krystal, is that we violated their community guidelines for hate speech. And the video that they are pointing to specifically, is a video where we defend Joe Rogan.”
“Now I can tell you, and you can go and watch these videos for yourself. We at no time said the N word. All we said was the N word, which really didn’t say the actual word. At no time, did we utter anything which could be construed as hateful in any way. Now, this is the I believe third community guideline violation that we’ve received on our account in just three weeks, I wonder if has something to do with some of the criticism I’ve made in the past.”
Enjeti frequently criticized the lobbying Tiktok does in Washington. Meanwhile Rogan is a vocal fan of the twitter account Libs of tiktok that often mocks radicalized leftists present on the app.