Don’t underestimate the Rogansphere. His mammoth ecosystem is Fox News for young people
Don’t underestimate the Rogansphere. His mammoth ecosystem is Fox News for young people
Podcasts like Joe Rogan’s and Theo Von’s aren’t on the fringes. Their blend of off-the-cuff, Trump-leaning commentary blurs traditional lines between left and right – and offers listeners companionship
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.
I was annoyed with Kamala's lack of appearances on podcasts. Podcasts are quickly replacing legacy media especially with young people, and especially during the last 4 years with a ton of people now working from home. Kamala went on Call Her Daddy, and it was way too short. I think like 45 minutes. She treated it like a CNBC interview imo and didn't really seem to get the fact that a podcast should be a little less buttoned up. I don't think she went on any other podcasts.
I listened to Trump on Theo Von, and if I was a young, dumb, uninformed, undecided voter, I could see him resonating with me. Being that I am informed, I could barely stand it, but trump definitely got some voters going on that show. I guarantee it. Bernie did Theo like a week later and I was wondering when Kamala would be on? Then Trump did Rogan, and I still waited for Kamala. I couldn't force myself to sit through Trump's Rogan interview because Rogan is a moron, but having said that, he has millions of followers, and neglecting to try to reach that audience was a major misstep. To my knowledge there are no articles saying either wouldn't have had Kamala on, so I can only think they willfully stayed away from those shows because of the perception of their audience. They should be fighting to get their message to those people, and frankly anyone who will listen.
But, I've been assured that the guy who moved to TX to avoid taxes, despite benefitting greatly from services that they provided in CA, routinely gives the far-right a megaphone, endorsed the orange guy, and is chummy with the Gov of TX, despite being an open drug user was a moderate centrist!!1
He only did that because the Left rejected him
Broprah is a tool, in every definition of the word.
I've been a comedy fan my entire life, by and large nobody respected comedians outside of whether or not they make you laugh. I don't understand how or know when the culture changed so much. These podcasters are comedians. Why is everyone comparing them to News broadcasting companies or any other industry that is supposed to have merit and accountability? At most/best, these podcasts are a long form version of Regis and Kelly or Ellen. You people taking these CLOWNS seriously, is the reason stupid kids and dumb men my age think they should be taken seriously. Joe Rogan is talked about on the news like he's a fucking politician, why is anyone surprised his show effected politics after YEARS of the news talking about him and politics in the same breath?
I'm not a Rogan fan and have only seen a couple of his "interviews" but the guy is really stupid. The ones I saw Rogan acted like the kid that didn't read the book before attempting to interview the author for three hours about the book.
It is all good to have an open mind but maybe not so open your brains fall out. Anyway, the problem I have is that these are not serious people, Rogan is either unwilling or unable to do even the most basic amount of research into a topic before platforming a guest. What is impressive to me is that people eat this shit up. Rogan is like Fox News because they are both just sugary nonsense with no meat and potatoes.
The way I see it these casters are doing to politics what Ancient Aliens did to history.
Yes, we need more attempts to "reason" with the horse paste people.
Oh, you still think ivermectin is only for horses?
We use it as medicine for our dog. And, if you have parasites, it's good in human doses. I think it can also be given prophylactically. I haven't seen any evidence it should be used to treat any virus, respiratory or other.
Oh, you still think it treats COVID?
The same people I know who fall for bullshit on Fox fall for bullshit on Joe Rogan. They'll complain about "THE MEDIA" and tells you all about their "research "
Well, all the news outlets are pretty biased one way or another, and some are willing to lie to their viewers to make a point cough CNN cough. Which is pretty horrid. When people think "research" means using Google for a few minutes or hours, that is a problem, but "the media" does suck
Unlike fox News though Rogan isn't outright hostile to liberals. If you go on fox News as a liberal you'll maybe be able to get half your point across before the host calls you an un-american communist. On rogan you could probably get through a 10 minute Marxist diatribe, as long as you dont use any scary or long words like proletariat, and he'd probably be to dumb to see what your doing and nod and agreee.
For better or worse the democrats seem to have abandoned the identity politics that angered this group so much so it wouldn't be too hard to bring this crowd over if the messaging is right.
This, I honestly believe that if Kamela had just done the Rogan interview she'd at least have won the popular vote
Possibly, but he's not listening to shit and in the end says the same thing he was already stupidly convinced of in his roided out brain. Nothing redeeming in this chud.
"Yeah, but this shit you eat doesn't have any little rocks in it, so it goes down smoother"
Just don't eat shit, cowards.
Yeah, not saying you should listen to him. But a lot of people do and telling that audience he's an idiot and shouldn't be listened to wont work as well as playing along and trying to use his platform to promote something besides conspiracies and light fascism.
The podcast host famous for letting guests say what they want with no criticism isn't even on the same planet as Fox News. People are way to eager to brand everything right of Marx as far right.
If you give a platform to morons then you are a moron. If you listen to morons and find their thoughts and ideas not painful you are guess what a moron. Rogan is Rush Limbaugh part 2, follow the script and collect the cash from morons.
joe rogan, fox news. cult of idiocracy. cult of idiocracy. cult. of. idiocraccccyyyyyy....
Yes because insulting the voter base is the way to win their votes. This is why we keep fucking losing. Instead of adjusting we call the voters lonely and stupid. Sounds like a sure fire way to win on the fence voters.
This article is essentially saying anyone that listens to these shows is the problem.
This, many people who voted for Trump weren't going to vote at all until Hillary called them deplorable.
Tbf, anyone listening to Joe Rogan is stupid.
This article is essentially saying anyone that listens to these shows is the problem.
Fascists are usually the problem, yea
They killed their chance with Sanders who had a better approval rate than Hillary and could have won that election. Thats when i realized the democratic party is GARBAGE.
I like Galloway's analysis here: https://www.profgalloway.com/the-podcast-election/
I am going on AC360/MSNBC/Smerconish to discuss the male vote — this election gave us the opposite of the expected referendum on bodily autonomy; it was the Testosterone Election. The only thing I’m (fairly) certain of is what medium played a pivotal role, for the first time, in young people’s decision to violently pivot to Trump: podcasts.
Almost half of adult Americans, 136 million people, listen to at least one podcast a month. The global audience is now 505 million, a quarter of the internet’s reach.
Rogan has 16 million Spotify subscribers and can reach many more people across a variety of other platforms: In just three days after the live podcast, his three-hour-long conversation with Trump was viewed 40 million times on YouTube.
By comparison, when Trump appeared on Fox News’ Gutfeld!, which averages about 3 million viewers, he reached 5 million people, and the full episode has been viewed 2.3 million times on YouTube.
Among Fox’s 3.5 million regular viewers, 70% are 50 and over and 45% are women. The No. 2 cable network, MSNBC, reaches 1.5 million viewers most days; its median viewer is a 70-year-old woman. So: a big audience of young men vs. a small audience of older women. People listen to pods to learn; they watch cable TV to sanctify what they already believe. The former is (much) more appealing to candidates and advertisers.
Rogan’s demographic is 80% male, 93% under 54, and 56% under 34. Men under 34 are the Great White Rhinos of advertising, the most valuable beast in the consumer jungle, and they’re increasingly difficult to find.
He also mentioned in a CNN interview: "Look at the top 10 podcasts. 8 of them lean right, and Trump went on 6 of them."
Don't a lot of people who listen to podcasts do so while driving? If so, this is eerily similar to how conservative AM radio brainwashed people who drove a lot, especially in remote areas where FM radio with music wasn't available.
Plugging Behind the Bastards from coolzone media.
And the people bankrolling these podcasts, or at least sponsoring them to push a slant to the right, are fully aware of the similarities. It's why they do it, they already did the math.
Personally, i don't like joe rogan. He does a horrible job at making sure he isn't spreading misinformation and he is indeed contributing to influencing people in a bad way
That being said, i think acually challanging and approaching these mindset is valuable to show that the left is present in politics, not just the one we agree with all the time. If we dont open up discource on platforms that the right accually watches, more left wing discource, ideas and topics gets lost in the echo chamber of "we don't want to talk to anyone on the right". We cannot think people on the right and people alienated by the democrats will suddenly start consuming leftist idea if we wont bring that to their turf. I think a lot of people supporting the right are accually in agreement with the left such as economic reform etc , just that the right have much better platforms and charismatic people that accually adress their concerns.
Im not saying we should consider rasist, misogynistic and hatefull speech to be okay at all, and we are not part of the problem if we are present on platforms trying to challenge them. But we need to show that we are here for everyone, not just ourselves. The people we disagree with don't vanish because we dont want to talk with them, because they will find other people who want to talk, and they might be encouraging their already damaging viewpoints.
I came across this video a few days ago and i was intrigued, i reccomend watching, it gave me an idea on why we are stuggeling to reach more people:
I thought he was smart enough to not endorse a political candidate like proper independent media, but he's succumbed to the same polarization and thus a part of the same widespread problem. Good vid though, I find it's very much like one of the commenters point out a battle of lobbyism vs. populism rather than the standard left vs. right, people are desperate for change of any kind and Harris stating that nothing would change was just about the worst thing she could've possibly said during the campaign.
Harris stating that nothing would change
Are you referring to that one "The View" interview where she flubbed the question about what she would have done differently than Biden before returning to it later in the same interview to add in a bit about reaching across the aisle, or is she on record elsewhere saying that nothing would change during her presidency?
Because when I search for it all I see is tens of right-biased news outlets talking about that "The View" interview.
A thoughtful and lucid answet.
you will be destroyed
Like these young Trump voters. TikTok is where they get their news and Rogan is who they listen to: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/politics/video/ufc-trump-fans-digvid
I find this frustrating. Yes, many of those podcasters are conservative and have participated in spreading misinformation, but there is a huge difference between a private cable news company that is designed to manipulate the electorate, and a bunch of loosely connected yahoos on YouTube who share similar opinions.
Trump gained ground with nearly every demographic out there. They weren’t all watching Kill Tony. Working class people, comedians who rely on unrestricted speech, and a whole lot of other demographics have legitimate grievances that the Democrats have either ignored or shamed them for. They either need to lean how to address these people’s needs, or they will continue to suffer the consequences.
And when you aren’t trying to form a political opinion about it, Kill Tony is actually a pretty funny show. That is why it is the number one comedy podcast, not because of Tony’s political opinions.
loosely connected yahoos
This particular yahoo has a $100 million deal with Spotify.
He may not have the multi-billion dollar revenue of Fox News Media. But he does only have a fraction of their staff and operating expenses. That is certainly no pittance.
The rest of the yahoos are emulating him. Together they have a huge impact.
But they are not a coordinated cabal like Fox, which is the point I was trying to make.
I agree with everything you said, except Kill Tony being funny. I have not heard anything from him that made me laugh.
I am genuinely still waiting.
Kill Tony is the name of a show that has featured hundreds of comedians—that is what I was endorsing as funny, and that is what most viewers come to see. Tony Hinchcliffe is a person, and he serves primarily as a judge on the show, not a featured entertainer.
This exact misunderstanding—that enjoying the product is an endorsement of the political opinions of the creator—is a good example of what I’m talking about. If Democrats want that audience to watch a Democratic comedian’s show, then all they have to do is make a better comedy podcast than he did.
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.
democrats need someone who occupies a similar space as Rogan that young people want to watch.
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.
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.
Not young people, a specific brand of misinformed idiot of all ages. If you can't read no good, and you don't know what "Roberts rules of order" are or you think they have something to do with the McDonald's drive thru, then Rogan and his type are your fox news - the dumbest person's dumb news-style product
His influence is gigantic.
The sad thing about Rogan is that I don't think he's a bad guy at heart. He's a once pretty bright guy with an inquisitive mind that is utterly drug addled at this point.
He asks good questions. Curiosity killed the cat, though.
He's just smart enough to ask a good question and have an engaging interview, he's not smart enough to ever be informed by the answers.
Rogansphere
Roganisphere
Rogaineosphere?
Roganexosphere
and casual conversations blending left-leaning and conservative ideas
Oh shit, it's almost as if there are more dimensions to politics than just the single axis the Democratic Party is willing to acknowledge.
And then they wonder why they lose.
You know what other sorts of figures that sort of conversation could "normalize" for "for a disillusioned, lonely audience—particularly young men?" Left-wing populists!
But the Democrats would rather have Trump.
Oh shit, it's almost as if there are more dimensions to politics than just the single axis the Democratic Party is willing to acknowledge.
Shit leftie go on and tell us what that single axis is. Make sure to use "libs" a lot.
I’m a 42 year old Democrat and I don’t mind his show at all. You really don’t have to agree with things you disagree with. AMA
Ya’ll are going to downvote which is fine. You can make the choice to live in your own echo chamber. Turned out well this election cycle.
Welcome to .world where everything is black or white and there are only two opinions - one of which is wrong. I’m not sure they (well, some of them) can even spell nuance.
It's crazy to me how honesty and truth are downvoted here. It truly is just reddit 2.0. I'm not a loyal Rogan watcher but from what I have watched he seems like a true middle of the road kinda guy. Talks about the benifits of weed and psychodelics and then also talks about hunting and other things. Sure he's had crazy conspiracy folks on. But he's always seemed to just let people talk.
Yeah I’ve only seen less than 20 of his videos, usually when it’s a guest he has on that I like (rob zombie, bill burr etc). One episode I watched he was even calling out Trump and saying he didn’t want him on the show.
You are exactly right, he lets people talk and he is great at keeping the interview feel organic and moving.
People downvoting because they prob never even listened to him and are just doing the echo chamber nonsense.
