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The Futile Quest to Build a “Liberal Joe Rogan” (theintercept.com)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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For months, pundits have decried the absence of a “Joe Rogan of the left” — an online media figure who can galvanize young men to support Democrats in the way that popular right-wing creators like Rogan, Adin Ross, and the NELK Boys have done for President Donald Trump. Now, it appears that Democratic operatives have a $20 million plan to build such a figure.

Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Stacey Abrams, said instead of propping up a creator who checks the perfect ideological boxes, Democrats should embrace the online spaces for young men that already exist.

For example, creators like Hasan Piker, a left-leaning creator with over 5.5 million subscribers on Twitch and broad popularity among young men, has largely been ignored by the Democratic establishment. Piker’s political content leans farther left, sharing a populist economic message paired with strong criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Israel.

“There is a tendency to shy away from those spaces because our favorite thing to do in the Democratic Party is to, pardon my language, shit on the left,” said Smith.

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[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Joe Rogan was the liberal Joe Rogan. What they should do is study how he fell to the right because that's basically how everyone in America did. There's plenty of his podcasts material to work with. In his very early years he had plenty of scientists and actual doctors and interesting people on there where he would just shut the fuck up and listen. It took years for his public opinions and guest pool to devolve to what they are now.

[–] nthavoc 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Money. The answer is money. No study is needed, it was just greed. You're not going to come across some grand character arc of a "good guy turning into bad guy" with some kind of study. He was always a greedy bad guy from when he started on Fear Factor. The more outrageously dumb his podcasts became with really off the wall guests, the more money came in.

[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

I think there's also an anti-intellectual streak in this country where some idiots think that contrarianism is a shortcut to the truth.

[–] Breezy@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

I listened to a lot of joe Rogen back in my podcast years. It was definitely the money and he pretty much said so a long time ago when he signed that deal to spotify. He was so excited to be even richer, that's when he fell to the darkside, it was spotify.