As I said, with the exception of five minutes yesterday on youtube, I have never listened to Joe Rogan. I can't say how smart I think he is. I gather that his audience skews blue collar and skews in the direction of MMA fans. That doesn't make Rogan dumb. But it would be just as wrong to assume that he is smart based on idealized notions about blue collar workers.

I guess you could argue that no one who makes $100 million from a podcast is dumb. But that's also a silly way to measure intelligence.

I'm skeptical that there is any way for platforms to effectively fact check all content. You can remove the derpiest conspiracy stuff. But true fact checking seems almost impossible in light of the volume of content.

And check you out now, with your fancy penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side!

Wow, that's quite the resume. Name rings a bell but don't know much about him at all, will read up a bit.

That would probably be a bit like arguing that no one who gets elected president of the USA is dumb.

I'm not saying it's in his power to do it all by himself. But he wants it to happen and is working towards it by normalizing the use of racial slurs and giving a mouthpiece to active Nazis.

The hate going the other way seems to be far more influential as bashing elites is a political staple.

Warning to others. Don't ever tell d2 that you think a neighborhood sucks.

I think I've managed to get in a solid goof every couple of months since you told me that. I'm not the #1 troll round here for nothin' ya know!

At some point, I need to figure out whether I am an elite. At present, I don't know where to direct my hate.

If you were a practicing misanthropist like me, you'd have one fewer problem.

There are many many candidates for public intellectual that go in front of Witten. Nothing "public" about Witten outside a very narrow group of people interested in a certain kind of mathematical physics. Cedric Villani or even Laurent Lafforgue would be far better examples, just to pull a few names out of a hat.

Rogan doesn't pretend to be brilliant. He pretends to skeptical and open-minded. But he's not really. Just his relaxed persona makes the fiction believable. After a while listening to him it's all the same talking points, predictable rightwingish notion that all skepticism is equally well founded.

He's not Jordan Petersen level cretin stupid, he's just lowkey entertainment and taking him seriously as an intellect is evidence of credulous buffoonery.

Well, don't ask intellectuals to do it. They can't even agree on what a fact is.

I was talking about for Americans. Witten has been featured on PBS, 60 minutes etc. He’s the most well known of the three in the US.

Yeah I agree with most of this. Although I think the supposed "pull" Rogan has among his listeners is vastly overestimated by the people on the left who are currently freaking out about him. There is certainly a market for contrarian viewpoints on just about any topic, but are people basing their health decisions on Joe Rogan? Like if Joe Rogan only interviewed guests who were 100% in agreement with the consensus of experts, guys like Fauci or Sanjay Gupta, would we have greatly minimized the problem with right-wing derps refusing vaccines, demanding Invermectin from the hospital staff when their obese MAGA dad is put on a ventilator? Trying to silence stupid viewpoints does not work, even a little bit.

I can't say for sure as I've only listened to clips of Rogan here and there, but I just don't think his core audience is right-wing Trump supporters. Many of his guests seem too educated to ever appeal to that group. I suspect it's mainly libertarian-type males, aged 20s-50s, who like to see themselves as smart and open-minded but are not really up to reading any of the source material. So they rely on Joe to kind of be their regular-dude proxy to get the Cliffs notes version.

Your undertitle is certifiable moron, not practicing misanthropist.

Those descriptors are not mutually exclusive.

I don't see how a guy can accomplish what JR did and be dumb. It's not just the podcast, the guy has the smarts to make a good career for himself in a very competitive industry.
He may be quite a lot of negative things but I'm pretty sure dumb isn't one of them.

That being said, when you talk all day you're going to say some really dumb ****. We all have the dumbness in us and if you dig deep enough your sure to find it.

I'm lucky. It's right near the top for me.

Yeah, this was comparing what a media organization does with what Rogan and Jimmy Dore and others like that do.
Some fact checking makes your content quite a bit more trustworthy. It was worth thinking about imo. There's no answer. Corporate media has presented blatant lies for clicks too so....it's just life at some point.

I never got the impression that you were an elitist.

If you're a member of 'the elite' I have no idea. If so, I'm honored you spend time chatting with me.

I'm pretty sure you have to be dumb to want the job.

the bolded is just demonstrably false.

If we randomly picked any 10 podcasts and classified all the issues talked about positions taken outside covid talk, I would estimate 85% or more of his talk would be considered not only left, but far left. Progressive left.

You can believe all the rest if you want but if he is baffoonish it is hippie, druggy, leftist baffoonish, not right.

It may have sounded like the most ridiculous nonsense but his apostrophies were good so it's not to be dismissed lightly.