This is the best explanation I've heard of the show's appeal: Back when I was a kid you didn’t need Joe Rogan. Your best friend had a 27 year-old brother who was a fucking loser who would smoke pot in a room with blacklight posters and tell you that the Mayans invented cell phones.
Joe Rogan facilitates discussion with interesting people and not much more. Mainstream news has done just about as poorly as it could have reporting facts, unknowns, and probabilities with Covid...as the anointed truthsayers, they most definitely created a vacuum by dismissing credible questions and skepticism (lab leak, mask effectiveness, how to think about vaccines long term). And they have been eager to bless the opinions of those who have been far too optimistic https://youtu.be/_FvWnlIEHVo
There is no way we just deplatform or content moderate our way out of honestly misguided information like Malone and McCullough. Misinformation and disinformation cannot include people who are trying in good faith to present a pov that happens to just be just wrong…at some point in time that would include…everyone.
What I hate about “skeptics” these days is that they think an opinion is a valid scientific argument. I mean, just go work with the published data and prove it isn’t valid. Instead, we have guys who go around saying things like “Covid is not a virus, it’s our own EXOSOMES duh”. And clueless idiots who amplify those.
Ben Shapiro is a funny guy sometimes, but his recent episode on JRE was disgusting. “We don’t need any measures because I got sick and I was fine!”. That ignores all of the scientific and clinical evidence on the population scale.