Many royal fans and many Sussex fans tend to have a siloed view of the Windsors and the Sussexes. I’m guilty of it too, where I’m so focused on what’s happening between the royals and the media, I miss the bigger picture. That’s what happened writ large following the announcement that Spotify and the Sussexes were parting ways – everyone focused so heavily on what Harry and Meghan did or didn’t do, what money they’re making or not making, and we missed the bigger picture. Which is this: Spotify is openly going full-blown lunatic fringe anti-vaxx conspiracy nutjob. That’s the Spotify brand now, because they’re all-in with Joe Rogan and his $200 million Spotify contract. Last Thursday, Rogan did a three-hour show with Robert Kennedy Jr, whose entire presidential campaign platform is being a dangerous anti-science, anti-vaxx wingnut.
A broad swath of the anti-vaccine universe celebrated Thursday, when Joe Rogan, the biggest podcaster in the country, hosted a three-hour conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vax luminary turned presidential candidate. The conversation was an orgy of unchecked vaccine misinformation, some conspiracy-mongering about 5G technology and wifi, and, of course, Rogan once again praising ivermectin, an ineffective faux COVID treatment.
As RFK began his campaign by downplaying his anti-vaccine activism, the conversation represented a bit of a return to form. But the episode also conclusively demonstrates that Spotify, the platform that reportedly paid more than $200 million to host Rogan’s show, has completely given up on addressing his relentless torrent of medical misinformation, except in the most pallid and surface-level ways.
The show began with Rogan monologuing effusively about how he changed his mind on Kennedy, saying he’d gone from thinking the latter was “a fringey-thinking conspiracy-type person” to agreeing with Kennedy’s stance on vaccines during the pandemic. “I was like, ‘Is this possible that this is the guy that’s telling the truth?’” Rogan asked, rhetorically.
What followed was a detailed survey of Kennedy’s most dangerously incorrect views, a far too extensive list to outline in full, all of which Rogan accepted uncritically, his mouth quite often literally agape in awe. (There was also a casual aside near the end in which Kennedy, who believes his uncle, JFK, and his father were both assassinated by the CIA, suggested that he himself may be targeted by the organization. He told Rogan he takes “precautions” against the CIA, although it’s unclear what those might be.) They included innumerable talking points that have already been debunked: at one point, for instance, Kennedy falsely suggested that vaccines cause autism, which has been repeatedly and roundly disproven, with Rogan interjecting supportively.
So, all of that happened last Thursday. Then, over the weekend, it got so much worse. A virologist and pediatric doctor named Dr. Peter Hotez tweeted the Vice article, above, with a message about how people actually believe RFK and Rogan’s misinformation and “nonsense.” That began a Twitter war between Dr. Hotez and Rogan in which Dr. Hotez was like “Joe, let’s talk about this like adults” and Rogan was screeching “DEBATE ME!” Elon Musk got involved as well. Then the lunatics began showing up to Dr. Hotez’s home and harassing him in person. This is Spotify’s brand now, I’m so glad they didn’t want a second season of Meghan’s feminist pod!
Peter, if you claim what RFKjr is saying is “misinformation” I am offering you $100,000.00 to the charity of your choice if you’re willing to debate him on my show with no time limit. https://t.co/m0HxYek0GX
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) June 17, 2023
Elon Musk continues to stoke and promote conspiracy theories.
Here he is siding with Joe Rogan and RFK Jr., who spewed discredited anti-vaccine lies on Rogan’s show, over a renowned scientist.
So much for Twitter being a beacon of truth. What a fucking embarrassment. pic.twitter.com/5vannc8oTY
— Walker Bragman Supports the Orcas (@WalkerBragman) June 18, 2023
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Joe Rogan’s Spotify show, Rogan’s social media.
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- West Hollywood, CA – Kim Kardashian rocks an all-black ensemble as she exits Craig’s after dinner with her family. Pictured: Kim Kardashian BACKGRID USA 5 JUNE 2021 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- West Hollywood, CA – Kim Kardashian rocks an all-black ensemble as she exits Craig’s after dinner with her family. Pictured: Kim Kardashian BACKGRID USA 5 JUNE 2021 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
As I said in the earlier post, ever since Joe Rogan joined, Spotify has been Joe Rogan. The Sussexes had already called them out on this. They are not the only ones leaving, so it is not hard to guess who is wrong here.
So Rogan wants to debate science. Boy, the ego is large on this knuckledragger.
I imagine that this is the kind of stuff Harry and Meghan got a whiff of behind the scenes and it’s just surfacing now. They got out just in time.
Yes, it was brilliant timing for them to leave NOW. I’m about to go delete my (free) Spotify account. I’ve never paid for it. This makes me not want to even have a free account.
It makes me sick how Dr Hotez— a true hero— has been targeted. Very glad that the Sussexes recognized what is going on over at Spotify and decided to leave.
Aside from being a very nice and knowledgeable person, Dr. Hotez created a pandemic vaccine and gave it away – patent-free – so developing countries could scale up and vaccinate their populations at low cost. He also wrote a book called “Vaccines did not cause Rachel’s Autism” – and he would know, because Rachel is his daughter. It’s sick what they’re doing to him.
These types of antics by Rogan, or anyone else, with the power and position to entice hate and rhetoric should be held accountable. Dr. Hotez doesn’t deserve the fallout from Rogans heathens and I wish that there were laws to protect those who are unfairly targeted and treated.
Joe Rogan is going for what is going to make Joe Rogan more money, truth be damned. He could care less if his audience dies from it or that good people are hurt by it. Joe Rogan only cares about Joe Rogan.
Good on the doctor to refuse to go on Joe’s show to get heckled and make Joe more money.
More and more media are being taken over by right wing types with money that love it when people argue over LGBTQ+, vaccins or Meghan.
As long as people argue over that, they don’t question how there can be an ever widening wealth gap and destruction of the middle class.
THIS.
Yeah, this.
The Sussexes always make the right moves. They are working on vaccine accessibility worldwide. While their podcasts and content could exist side by side with Rogan’s – at some point it’s clear that the salacious and false is being wildly favored over content with true meat and marrow. Content that inspires and uplifts instead of deceptions and bullshittery.
This is awful and the fact that Spotify hasn’t said a word about is even more terrible. They’ve officially hitched their wagon to this man and I hope their podcast arm continues to see problems as folks continue to take their talent elsewhere.
Yes! And to add the antics of Bill Simmons, Spotify should be taking steps to shut down these hateful statements. It makes Spotify complicit in every possible light.
What the actual fuck. “Debate me.” Seriously? The debate is waged in peer-reviewed articles and evidence-based research, not on an intellectually lazy conspiracy podcast. If RFK JR. was such a luminary, he’d have published his own. Instead, this is his only forum. Lazy thinkers looking for some reinforcement that they’re smarter than the rest of the world. I’m so sick of this shite.
No one should ever debate a conspiracy theorist. You can’t win because they just keep making up 💩 while getting the attention they crave. I hope during the three hours on the podcast, RFK Jr. left Anne Frank’s name out of his mouth.
Sam Harris has mentioned this in regard to why he doesn’t have these people on his podcast — he’s said that there’s no way, in real time, to be able to critically and intellectually respond to something that they just pull out of nowhere.
Correct, because it’s not a true debate. I remember when I was in college one of my anthropology profs ‘debated’ a creationist. He came to class the following Monday bemoaning, why? why? why did I do that? Never again!
@ Brassy Rebel, agreed! You can’t convince stupid or crazy so it’s utterly pointless. Rogan is simply looking for an opportunity to use the debate as an opportunity to peddle his conspiracies all whilst showcasing his stupidity.
Oh Spotify wanted a second season of Archetypes. That’s why Simmons is so angry that they left. But this Joe Rogan thing has got out of hand. Fans going to that doctor’s house is out of order and scary. I’m so glad that Harry and Meghan have left Spotify.
Joe Rogan is the reason I cancelled my Spotify last year. I see I made a good decision.
I’m in the same boat. Zero regrets.
I did too.
Genuine question: what do you use now and were you paying for premium with Spotify? I ask bc I hate that my $9.99 a month pays for this idiotic rhetoric but I genuinely use it all day long. Due to my work, travel for work, etc. I’m alone a lot so I kind Of constantly have it on and don’t know of a true substitute.
I was paying for premium with Spotify. I now use Apple Music.
I use Amazon Music, it’s cheaper too.
I’m in the process of canceling this morning, I created a soundiiz account that can go into your Spotify account and transfer all your songs and playlists to a new music account. I’m transferring them to both Apple Music and Amazon music because I’m not sure which service will be best for me. The soundiiz costs $4 a month or something, but I’ll do this once and cancel.
@kcat this is why I love celebitchy! Thank you for this tip!
Thank you for writing this! I just transferred my playlist to Amazon and Apple. It was free for both of them.
I’m so glad I did too, especially once I realized I was really just paying for music I already owned, for the most part.
This has been obvious for a while now—it turns out that Spotify’s original premise didn’t work out. Turns out on-demand radio is a little business of fractions, not a big business of large aggregated audiences. Spotify is pivoting to the biggest business it can find, the same type of niche audience that Fox etc is also chasing. Crazy wing nuts are loyal listeners, they don’t want to be confused; they want pablum that feeds their narrow views. Joe Rogan is going in the Jerry Springer carnival freak show direction because it’s the largest lane he can find.
He looks like a potato.
Fox for younger audiences.
I still cannot wrap my mind around how the Fear Factor guy from the 90s/2000s has become such an influential voice… especially when it seems like 90% of what comes out of his mouth is such BS.
And not everything should be a debate!
I loved Pandora and Scribd but I’m not a podcast listener.
ETA: Love. Present tense.
I listen to Pandora basically exclusively, unless I”m listening to Apple Music I’ve purchased. I listen to Apple Podcasts as the app to get all my podcasts.
Joe Rogan is and has always been the burn out, pot head 20 year old who only sounds smart to 15 year olds who don’t know any better.
Even 20 years ago on the Kevin & Bean Show, he would just go find conspiracy theories on YouTube and parrot them, and people would say how “smart” he is. He has always been this guy.
It is absolutely infuriating that he has any platform.
I get the concept of herd immunity, but I really don’t understand why all these anti-vaxxers aren’t just dying off in bigger numbers…..
At one point they were, but the most vulnerable populations had co morbidities so it’s easy for the loonies to deny that Covid was the actual cause and the vaccine would have saved many of them. People are still dying from Covid in much smaller numbers but not vaccinated people. I know several people in high risk groups who got Covid after 3-4 vaccines, and it sucked but wasn’t deadly. Meanwhile, if a 40 year old relatively healthy anti vaxxer gets it, they’ll likely survive and go on to preach against a vaccine that has saved millions of lives and made a return to normalcy possible.
I know two 38 year old men who died, leaving five little girls behind between the two of them (one died on his daughters first birthday). They both died in fall of 2021, long after the vaccine was available. Someday, their daughters will realize that their dads could’ve been vaccinated and lived. The widow moms act like they lost their husbands to getting hit by a car or something.
Anti vaxx has consequences.
That’s truly heart breaking and so pointless. Trump, Rogan, Murdoch all have so much blood on their hands.
There are studies that indicate excess deaths along political lines in the US — after vaccines were widely available. An even bigger issue though, IMO, is the death rate in the US compare to the death rates in other countries — yet we still don’t have universal health care.
https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/study-finds-large-gap-in-excess-deaths-along-partisan-lines-after-covid-19-vaccines-introduced/
@BLITHE – thanks for the paper reference!
Also, Susan Cheng’s new paper (cardiology/Cedars on increased rate of diabetes post COVID) – gawd- they’re gonna get diabetes at a much higher rate if they didn’t die.
COVID sux.
Here’s the thing about blowhards: they lie.
A lot of these “anti-vaxxers” are vaxxed for everything including Covid. Many of them had to get vaxxed for their jobs or because they secretly know the truth about the dangers of Covid.
I’d be willing to bet $5.00 (USD) that Rogan is vaxxed.
Also, approx 1000 people per week are still dying from Covid. Most of them are unvaxxed.
Yes, there’s a difference between what you do for yourself and what you tell the plebes.
I’d like to know if they’re also forgoing measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio, shingles vaccines. What else? Do people still get smallpox vaccinations? In any case, I’d like to know. I recall the recent rise in measles due to the false autism link and I think even more recently I read the polio is making a comeback. I wish there were a vaccine against stupidity.
My crazy cousin has gone down the antivaxx rabbit hole (she also believes oils can cure cancer). Her first child was vaccinated and she regrets that decision. Her second isn’t vaxxed and they had to actually move school districts so her kids could go to public school in one that doesn’t require vaccines.
She and I don’t speak any more. She’s crazy.
No- smallpox vaccine is not on general offer in the US, although, the government did suddenly start making more vaccines for that for…. no stated reason….. (whistles inconspicuously) a year or so back.
I’d pay good money to get one of those stuck in my arm and my kid’s arm.
RFK jr has said in the past he vaccinated his children.
I want to know if any of them are forgoing a tetanus booster. It’s a horrific way to die, and a really stupid way to make a point, which seems to be what all of these people are dedicated to, right?
I bet they are all current on tetanus.
I know several anti-vaxx couples/families. Although all of them were vaccinated themselves as children, they have not given their kids *any* vaccines that I know of. Including tetanus. And they all hold up RFK as proof that this is a legitimate and sane belief system to have.
I know.
And they all have to homeschool their kids or send them to private schools and find holistic drs who will give them vaccine exemptions.
Tetanus! Yes, I forgot about tetanus! And you’re right, it’s a stupid way to die.
We keep celebrating the dumb and demonizing the intelligent. That’s how we got Trump, Rogan, Musk, all of them. People who couldn’t graduate high school get to feel like they weren’t complete failures and stupid. No, it was the SMART people who were brainwashing them into thinking they couldn’t add 2 + 2. It’s so much easier to convince ourselves everyone else is wrong and deceiving us than to admit we might not be as smart as we think.
These guys sit in their very controlled echo chambers where they won’t be challenged and demand debates acting as if they are neutral. I’d like to see Rogan in a genuinely neutral platform trying to debate his ideas, but he’s too much of a wimp
Man, what happened to Joe Rogan? I first discovered his podcast about 7-8 years ago and thought he did some amazing interviews with different celebrities and experts from different fields.
He was always a little “bro-ish” but I thought his content was good, overall. I recall at the beginning of the pandemic he had a noted virologist on his podcast who detailed what we could possibly expect with Covid.
Then, as the pandemic escalated and lock-downs and mask ordinances took place, he took a hard turn to the right.
Was he always like this and just became more emboldened since right-wingers became more vocal?
Is he really just a grifter himself, pushing anti-science viewpoints because it’s what makes him the big bucks?
Is he really just a grifter himself, pushing anti-science viewpoints because it’s what makes him the big bucks?
Yes.
@Sean
I’m sure Rogan saw how much Trump was able to grift off the deplorables and he decided to get in on that market.
Back in the before times, the marketing world had “sex sells” as they mantra. After Trump got elected “hate sells” became the de facto playbook for anyone wanting to grift off the right wing assholes.
I have never listened to Joe Rogan.
He is a guy who got lucky getting any job in show biz. Zero talent.
I’m always flabbergasted at the fact that 11 million people look at this guy and think he’s worth listening to. It’s sad. Used to be that mediocre white men were given positions of power that they weren’t really very capable of inhabiting. Now, we’ve sunk from mediocre to subpar. Complete ignoramuses and sociopaths who relish their power to cause death and destruction.
The Democrats need to figure how to keep RFK Junior out of the debates ASAP!
I have no idea who Joe Rogan is or was, but did Meghan and Harry not delay Archetypes because they had concerns with Spotify and the spread of misinformation. They had a rather cryptic press release about it just before the announcement of the debut of Archetypes. It sounds like Archewell was almost caught up in the Fox News of podcasting. Yikes.
Is it not common knowledge that the CIA did kill those people and so many more? They’re the assassins of the ruling class. I thought people just knew that now. Or are we ignoring that fact like the Panama papers?
I checked the campaign site for RFK Jr and found no support for the statement that his “entire presidential campaign platform is being a dangerous anti-science, anti-vaxx wingnut.” He does not mention vaccines once. His platform rests on saving the environment, getting corruption out of government, restoring peace, and healing the divides that are tearing our country apart. Love him, or hate him but don’t be fooled into believing a false narrative about why he’s running, just because he will share his controversial opinion about vaccines if asked.
If you believe that, while he’s going more and more unhinged, I have a bridge to sell you.
Cry more.
He’s also anti-abortion, so he’s carefully ticking off all the boxes for Magats. I bet he’s also “anti-woke,” whatever the hell that really means.
Robert Kennedy, Jr. was recruited by Steve Bannon. He’s a Republican running as a Democrat in order to try to primary Biden. That’s the end game people. I hope that he continues to rant like this. There are Independents and displaced Republicans who don’t believe a lot that the wingnuts do. If they know he’s a wingnut, they won’t be tempted to vote for him.
Well, we know where Spotify is in all of this — right up Joe Rogan’s sorry ass. How that money-grubber has such a huge and rabid following is truly beyond me.
Joe Rogan always tries to protect himself by claiming that he’s an idiot and he’s not supporting anyone’s views by having them on his show. But it’s interesting that he always seems to platform anti-science, anti-trans, anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists and doesn’t offer the same platform for non-sensationalist professionals who have science and data to support their claims.