Iconic podcaster Joe Rogan interrupted his own show to react with delight to the news that Elon Musk had bought Twitter Monday, bursting out, “Oh s***, oh s***! Elon Musk just bought Twitter! We got a movie star cut type of a superhero.”
Just before news broke of the Tesla CEO’s stunning, $44 billion deal to take the powerful platform private, Rogan had been discussing his fascination with cancel culture, and how it allows groups of like-minded people to exert outsized influence. Little did he know, he was building up to the perfect segue into the biggest story of the day.
“Now, I’m not saying it’s good, but when people realize that they can organize a campaign to attack a politician or attack a celebrity or attack someone they feel like is deserving of that, and then they spend a lot of time online doing that, I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s fascinating,” Rogan said. “It’s fascinating because it’s a never before available portal for expressing yourself and I think just like everything else in life there’s this bad aspect of things that happen and then there’s a correction that may at least potentially be good.”
Rogan was discussing how “all this cancel culture s***” makes it a “strange time for the processing of information, the distribution of information” just before the Twitter news broke.
“Like here’s the thing, there’s so much culture shifting happening on the internet but nobody controls the internet,” he said. “That’s what’s so crazy, so for the first time in the history of human beings, regular people, just people people, who got a YouTube channel, who get a f***ing Twitter page, have a massive say, a massive say, in the way people think and feel about things. I think ultimately that’s going to be a good thing but we have rough water ahead. That’s what’s going on.”
As Rogan opined about how “all this cancel culture s***” makes it a “strange time for the processing of information, the distribution of information” he was leading right into the bombshell that was about to drop.
“Oh s***, oh s***! Elon Musk just bought Twitter!” he chortled when the announcement came through. “We got a movie star cut type of a superhero. It’s like a movie. Like if you had a movie and there was a guy who was like a hero in the movie who happened to be a billionaire who does wild s***. Like makes his own rockets and drills under the city with electric cars and then buys Twitter.”
Rogan, who has 8.7 million followers on Twitter, has frequently hosted Musk on his podcast, and the billionaire backed Rogan when the cancel mob came for him earlier this year of his past use of the “n-word.” Rock n roll relic Neil Young tried to force Spotify to drop Rogan’s podcast, telling the platform to choose between his archive and the popular show.
Musk posted a meme showing a picture of Young, and the words, “If you won’t censor the guy I don’t like, I won’t let you listen to ‘Keep on rocking in the free world.’”
Rogan went on to predict Musk will bring much-needed changes to Twitter.
“First of all, he believes free speech is important, and not just important, vital for a democracy, for a functioning democracy,” Rogan said. “And I agree with that. And what’s interesting about this is we’re – we found out some things about things about Twitter and one of the things they do is shadowban people. They make it so that your content, whatever you put out, has less impact. It has less engagement. They limit your ability to express yourself. They ban accounts and they ban accounts if the account says something that they don’t agree with.”
Rogan zeroed in on Twitter’s policing of punishing posters who “deadname” someone, using Caitlyn Jenner as an example. If people refer to the transgender former decathlon star by “Bruce” Jenner, they can be banished from Twitter.
“I’m saying a f***ing name and it was a name that someone used for a long time,” Rogan said. “It’s not meant in any way, shape or form to be disrespectful. That will get you banned for life from Twitter. That’s crazy ideological s***. That’s what that is. It’s cult s***.”