The article provided a pretty good deep dive into the psychology and social dynamics behind Rogan's popularity.
What I'm interested in is the social dynamics. The English speaking world seems to be going through this phase where it's trying to discover how to let everyone have a voice in society. Rogan is going counter to this zeitgeist, and so has managed to become the voice of the disaffected.
How white men managed to legitimately become disaffected is an interesting topic. Even in the 80s when black artists started taking over pop culture, whites weren't seen as disaffected. There was still plenty of white artists making scads of money catering to the tastes of the majority.
I don't think this has a whole lot to do with politics though certainly the slow merging of the political and cultural spheres is making it look that way. White men and the political environment created by them still reigns supreme.
I see on Quora and it being asked sometimes that since there's such things as 'black culture' and 'Hispanic culture' and 'Asian culture' why is 'white culture' automatically synonymous with 'white power' and all that invokes? I used to think it was a product of a people in the throes of a reckoning about past sins.
But now I'd like to make a different, potentially far more dangerous suggestion. Have white people stopped being artistic? Have we truly stopped caring about anything other than power and comfort? Is the reason that white men became so disaffected that "normal guy" Joe Rogan was able to become their voice simply because white people stopped caring about their own identity?
Why does that last sentence sound so weird to even think? Nobody else feels bad about their ethnic identity.
Can anyone come up with a better and more relevant symbol for ethnic whiteness than Joe Rogan at the moment? Is Rogan really the best we can come up with? Is there nothing more that 'whiteness' is good for anymore?
He's getting back into bed with Alex Jones not because he's going crazy, but because he has no one else. Musk is too busy. Nobody else cares. Rogan's reached the end of his rope in his quest to make white men relevant again.
You need to take waaaaaaay less drugs. Or - considering that this is Hacker News and that raises the possibility you might not be on anything at all - you need to try some drugs.
What I'm interested in is the social dynamics. The English speaking world seems to be going through this phase where it's trying to discover how to let everyone have a voice in society. Rogan is going counter to this zeitgeist, and so has managed to become the voice of the disaffected.
How white men managed to legitimately become disaffected is an interesting topic. Even in the 80s when black artists started taking over pop culture, whites weren't seen as disaffected. There was still plenty of white artists making scads of money catering to the tastes of the majority.
I don't think this has a whole lot to do with politics though certainly the slow merging of the political and cultural spheres is making it look that way. White men and the political environment created by them still reigns supreme.
I see on Quora and it being asked sometimes that since there's such things as 'black culture' and 'Hispanic culture' and 'Asian culture' why is 'white culture' automatically synonymous with 'white power' and all that invokes? I used to think it was a product of a people in the throes of a reckoning about past sins.
But now I'd like to make a different, potentially far more dangerous suggestion. Have white people stopped being artistic? Have we truly stopped caring about anything other than power and comfort? Is the reason that white men became so disaffected that "normal guy" Joe Rogan was able to become their voice simply because white people stopped caring about their own identity?
Why does that last sentence sound so weird to even think? Nobody else feels bad about their ethnic identity.
Can anyone come up with a better and more relevant symbol for ethnic whiteness than Joe Rogan at the moment? Is Rogan really the best we can come up with? Is there nothing more that 'whiteness' is good for anymore?
He's getting back into bed with Alex Jones not because he's going crazy, but because he has no one else. Musk is too busy. Nobody else cares. Rogan's reached the end of his rope in his quest to make white men relevant again.
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