In 2021, Spotify offered a contract of around one hundred million dollars to the comedian Joe Rogan to exclusively stream your podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. This week, Neil Young asked the streaming platform to download his music if he continued to offer Rogan’s program that “is spreading false information regarding vaccines” once morest the coronavirus. “They can have Rogan or Young, not both”said the musician. Spotify stayed with Rogan.
Rogan – born in New Jersey in 1967 – began his career as a stand-up comedian, but rose to fame in the late 1990s working as a mixed martial arts fight host for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). In 2009 he launched his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which quickly became popular on iTunes and by 2015 had an audience of around 11 million people, a figure higher than that of the television shows of large networks, becoming the main podcast in the United Statess, although it has been singled out as misogynistic, transphobic and anti-vaccine.
Echoing the criticism once morest him, Rogan has defined his podcast as “a sewer of toxic masculinity that discusses deer hunting, mixed martial arts, anti-trans stances and harmful information regarding the coronavirus pandemic”. According to a study carried out by the NGO Media Matters, the definition would not be very wrong.
“A megaphone of lies from the right”
According to the investigation, Rogan “is a right-wing bullhorn of lies and when called out for his dangerous rhetoric he shields himself by saying that he should not be considered ‘a respectable source of information'”.
The podcast, according to the comedian’s website, consists of conversations with “friends and guests including comedians, actors, musicians, mixed martial arts fighters, authors, artists and more.” In 2018, Elon Musk was one of the guests and the show went viral because the businessman smoked marijuana live.
Media Matters notes that during the pandemic, rogan spread On numerous occasions false information regarding the coronavirus: said “If you are 21 years old and you ask me if you should get vaccinated, I would say no”; assured that the quarantine “makes things worse” because people “are trapped inside and that is where it is transmitted” and also has promoted the use of ivermectina (an antiparasitic for animals) once morest covid.
Also, the comedian opposed the sanitary pass because, he argued, it puts the United States “one step closer to dictatorship.”
transphobic comments
Rogan also has a history of transoding comments. According to the Media Matters investigation, the driver assured that “men who transition to women use masculine tactics and behaviors while invading feminist spaces.”
A direct victim of his attacks was the athlete Fallon Fox, who in 2013 became the first openly transgender athlete in mixed martial arts. “She’s not really a she”, He said.
The dispute with Neil Young
After the Canadian musician’s request to Spotify, the company issued a statement in which it regretted Young’s decision and assured that they have “precise policies on content” and that they have “removed more than 20,000 podcasts related to covid since the beginning of the pandemic.”
Last year, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said during an interview that the company “has no editorial responsibility for Rogan.” The comedian has so far not commented.