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Comment by YEwSdObPQT | Hacker News Reader

I was expecting such a reply. It is really frustrating talking to people with an attitude such as yours.

He has a large inter-national audience and the number of people that have watched his podcast is in the 10s if not 100s of millions. That is more people than a lot of countries in Europe. Yet you find it hard to believe that the audience can have diverse (in the truest sense of the word)? That is quite frankly moronic.

As for the people I've talked to about it. These are people in aren't in my "bubble". I simply had a passing conversation with them in a break-room or on a Slack call (I work remote now) while waiting for people to filter in or some random people I've spoken to on Discord. These are not close friends, or people I even regularly speak to.

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> Yet you find it hard to believe that the audience can have diverse (in the truest sense of the word)?

I find it hard to believe because up to this point you've made zero effort to offer any proof of that apart from 'trust me bro'. I'm skeptical that Joe has a diverse audience because to have that you need to make an effort, and from what podcasts I've listened of his he became noticeably less accepting of other viewpoints over time, on some topics like covid especially. This could easily lead towards radicalization of his audience, but you just dismiss this possibility. He should really follow his old advice and go to woods and do some ayahuasca, his third eye is fully closed at this point.

Unforunately, nobody has to "prove" anything against your skepticism. It's up to you to educate yourself. To claim the reverse is not an argument tactic, it doesn't prove anything, besides the fact that you seem to be lazy and think other people should do your bidding/run errands for you. We're not your research assistants, hah!

But for a more meta and enlightening take, check out dang's comments on why any sufficiently large community/audience can often incorrectly seem to one person as biased toward a certain stance, when in reality it's that person's bias, rather than the community, that skews their interpretation. Dang explains it way better than I could: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Thank you for linking the dislike-notice bias comments, dang makes a good point here.

No worries! Yeah it is a good point, eh?! :)

It's obvious that Rogan has a diverse audience from looking at the facts.

It's up to you to provide evidence to the contrary or you will have proven yourself to be arguing in bad faith which wastes people's time and harms discourse.

From what I could gather, this whole 'cancel jre' movement is fueled by his covid stance, which many consider contrary to current medical recommendations. Judging from the fact that democrats are more vaccinated [0] I'm making the assumption that they would be more likely to have a problem with his views, meaning his audience is less likely to be mostly bipartisan, reducing the diversity and increasing polarization. What can we call a diverse audience and does Joe have it? Only Joe and spotify know, but my point is it's trending downwards.

[0] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co...

The cancel JRE movement has been going on for a long time. He has been attacked for years by the same people. He is competition (and an effective competition) to traditional news and media. They don't like that because he is a self made man and not beholden to them they have nothing to control him with.

His questioning of the official wisdom is just the latest thing they have attacked him on.

> find it hard to believe because up to this point you've made zero effort to offer any proof of that apart from 'trust me bro'.

You and I both have no accurate metrics on his audience demographic. We are not privvy to it. However I can infer from the size and the fact it is inter-nation that the idea that only people that fit inline with the "US Conservative" viewpoint cannot be correct. Which was the original claim I was responding to. I am not asking you to "trust me bro". I am asking you to use some good judgement.

As for Joe Rogan being conservative leaning is that is a nonsense. He is in support of socialised of healthcare, legalisation of cannabis and other viewpoints that many conservatives in the US are deeply opposed to. If you need any evidence of this watch his interview with Steven Crowder. They were at compete loggerheads about it. I was quite shocked at the time as the interview become extremely combative.

> I'm skeptic that Joe has a diverse audience because to have that you need to make an effort, and from what podcasts I've listened of his he became much less accepting of other viewpoints over time, on some topics like covid especially.

What Joe believe and his audience believes maybe different things. You are making the mistake that many people make of assuming that because somebody watches or supports somebody that they fall inline with the views of the host. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What Joe Rogan brings to the table is long form discussions with a guests that are generally aren't combative. The listeners can make up their own minds. This idea that people are too stupid to make up their own minds has is the bigotry of low expectations.

> This could easily lead towards radicalization of his audience, but you just dismiss this possibility. He should really follow his old advice and go to woods and do some ayahuasca, his third eye is fully closed at this point.

The radicalisation accusations comes from older news media which he is in direct competition to. I can dismiss it on those grounds alone. Joe Rogan is only guilty of having conversations that are deemed to be verboten in the current political climate. What is deemed to be verboten and what isn't is subject to political expediency.

> You and I both have no accurate metrics on his audience demographic. We are not privvy to it. However I can infer from the size and the fact it is inter-nation that the idea that only people that fit inline with the "US Conservative" viewpoint cannot be correct. Which was the original claim I was responding to. I am not asking you to "trust me bro". I am asking you to use some good judgement.

My opinion of him attracting more conservative (not just US by the way) audience is based on his antivax stance, which is very popular among them, and he seems to shoehorn this topic quite frequently in his recent episodes.

> As for Joe Rogan being conservative leaning is that is a nonsense. He is in support of socialised of healthcare, legalisation of cannabis and other viewpoints that many conservatives in the US are deeply opposed to. If you need any evidence of this watch his interview with Steven Crowder. They were at compete loggerheads about it. I was quite shocked at the time as the interview become extremely combative.

I didn't watch it before because it's Crowder but you piqued my interest here, I'll have to watch it later.

> The radicalisation accusations comes from older news media which he is in direct competition to.

I'm not taking this argument from older media, I don't read it. I have visited /r/JoeRogan a lot over the years, and the discussions there changed quite a bit. The difference between new and old listeners and the discussions/opinions they have is quite palpable, although not scientifically admissible sadly.

> My opinion of him attracting more conservative (not just US by the way) audience is based on his antivax stance, which is very popular among them, and he seems to shoehorn this topic quite frequently in his recent episodes.

I listen to another newscast frequently and I completely disagree with the host on vaccines (he is anti-vax, I am pro). You are assuming that people won't just skip that part of the podcast. People are willing to listen to people they deeply disagree with if they believe that person isn't being disingenuous.

Just because someone has some view point held by another group holds it doesn't mean that his existing audience is going to abandon them.

> I'm not taking this argument from older media, I don't read it. I have visited /r/JoeRogan a lot over the years, and the discussions there changed quite a bit. The difference between new and old listeners and the discussions/opinions they have is quite palpable, although not scientifically admissible sadly.

This is a complaint of many people that as the fanbase grows that the fanbase is of lower quality. It is a common complaint and you are not the first to complain about it.

That doesn't mean that his audience has become more conservative. It just means you have noticed that there are more conservatives present. Which ironically might indicate that his fanbase is more diverse, not less.

I agree, his fanbase has grown and some of the issues I've mentioned could be attributed to that. I also think that a good chunk of the diverse core audience he used to have left over this issue, but as you mentioned we don't have the data on the scope and implications of both processes.

What do you mean by "diverse core audience"? I literally mean a plurality of people.

Also we don't need hard metrics to accept that podcast has broad appeal. Demanding data for what are obvious things is asinine. If it didn't have broad appeal it simply wouldn't be as popular as it is. I listen to things with much less broad appeal and those things will never become as large because of the very nature of the subjects they are talking about.

Joe became popular for inviting all kinds of guests and just letting them speak, I consider that to be a great boon to forming truly diverse audience, and I have no doubt he had it before spotify days. After that I've seen him almost going for a streak, inviting right-wing guests one after another, but judging from responses I got here this might not be the case anymore, I'll have to listen to his recent podcasts to get a better picture.

> Joe became popular for inviting all kinds of guests and just letting them speak, I consider that to be a great boon to forming truly diverse audience, and I have no doubt he had it before spotify days/

He has been continuing to do that. Before and after the move to spotify.

I looked up exactly when he moved to Spotify. According to Wikipedia it was May 2020. So I spent time (which you could have done before making your erronous claim, because I won't like being wrong) going through the spotify podcast listing.

Just scrolling through the listing since May 2020. I see Mike Tyson, Glenn Greenwald, Oliver Stone, Jon Stewart, Bret Weinstein (who politics is firmly on the left btw despite the claims to the contrary), Bill Burr, Dr Debra Soh. Generally there are a lot of musicians, comedians, body builders, MMA fighters. So there is a fair mix of Right, Left and non-political people on there.

So I don't see how you have a basis for your claim.

> After that I've seen him almost going for a streak, inviting right-wing guests one after another, but judging from responses I got here this might not be the case anymore, I'll have to listen to his recent podcasts to get a better picture.

Right so you are arguing from ignorance? You don't know who he has had on (as I've shown above). I actually looked them up just now just to see if you claim is valid and it clearly isn't.

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