I'm curious what people here think. I'm sure everyone here has seen the salt about Joe Rogan and how Kamala should have gone on his podcast (her team kept her off so she wouldn't show off how retarded she is to even more people) or how the left needs its "own Joe Rogan" (not possible because they would cancel it the minute it deviated from leftist orthodoxy). A lot of that is the left blaming everyone but themselves like they do every time they lose an election, but I kind of wonder if there's something to the theory. I don't listen to Rogan, but my understanding of his podcast is that politics isn't really the main focus and his listening base contains a lot of largely apolitical young men who are drawn it him because he talks about things they're interested in and doesn't shit on them like the legacy media does. If I'm a Joe Rogan listener who's not plugged into political stuff and I see Trump do a 3 hour interview for the podcast and see Kamala make excuses not to do the same, that's gonna leave me with a favorable impression towards Trump and make me more likely to vote for him. Since Rogan has 50 million listeners even a tiny percentage of them being moved from Kamala to Trump or not voting to Trump could move the needle.
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I’d say Musk acquiring Twitter played the largest role as it took away the uniparty’s #1 narrative pipeline.
Rogan’s interview with Trump (and Vance) happened very late in the election cycle long after early voting began. It did have a notable effect though in terms of winning over undecideds and improving Trump’s image (his favorability is at its highest currently).
Had the Rogan interviewed happened before the early voting period started, Trump’s margin of victory would’ve been larger.
Librats crowing about how he wasted 44 billion dollars, but the information which resulted in being released thanks to this purchase is well worth over a trillion dollars in my opinion.
He spent 44 billion and now he's basically a member of the cabinet with an incredible mandate. He came out so far ahead you can't quantify it.
Elon understands the power of the memeplex. He is now the king of 4chan 3.0, and its reach is terrifyingly broad. He also has access to all of it for Grok.
Pay attention to Palantir as well.
Who/what was 2.0?
Being honest, I think it shifted the election a few decimal points more towards Trump. Easily missed but grand scheme still VERY important.
But the biggest thing going on Rogan and other alt media did was felt culturally before and after the election:
It broke mainstream hegemony, the fact 1 podcast with 1 guy in his little studio eclipsed EVERYTHING the mainstream did with Trump in terms of views really hit home how not required they were in today's society.
It broke their narrative as Trump and Vance came off as human and in touch with regular people from those podcasts, not Hitler/Satan like the media tried to always claim. It hurt the Democrats not just in it showed how hollow their lies were but also showed how much of a coward they all were by not appearing on anything like Rogan.
So election impact, can be missed but cultural impact, very big.
I'd say Kackles refusing an interview was a bigger factor than Trump doing an interview. And Rogan even admitted he agreed to leave certain topics "off the table" and her team still wouldn't agree to do the interview in his studio.
Before these long-form 'everyman' podcasts there wasn't really anything you could show to somebody who thought Trump was a dozen-adjective literally Hitler. Clips, rallies - nothing convincing and they'd only see the most distorted excerpts anyway.
But after the podcast tour you have this singular thing you can point to, Rogan or Theo Von or another, where he's personable and asked honest questions normal people have, with no deceptive editing, where you can say go watch this and it'll change your mind about Trump.
It's a metaphorical pin you can point to and say "oh you don't think you're a bubble? well then this pin can't hurt you". They'll either have their bubble popped or retreat in fear from it.
I don't know how much the rogan interview really did anything, his listeners were mostly trump people anyway.
IMO This election was an already baked cake. The obama-era insurrectionists failed to groom an heir and despite limping along through Biden for one more term they didn't have anyone they could cheat over the finish line when old age caught up to him.
But imo without musk buying twitter there wouldn't have been that preference cascade that gave normies permission to openly say to their wives and co-workers trump is just a better candidate.
That interview helped normalize supporting Trump in the mainstream.
This works even if you don't listen to Rogan. Trump was willing to go where Americans are to talk to them. Kamala was not. Even if you don't listen to the interview, that's a shift in favorability towards him. Same as the McDonald's stunt. Even if you know it's a staged photo op, the fact that his side knows what kind of staged photo op is relatable was beyond anything Kamala's camp was capable of.
Yes. But not for the reasons they think. Such a figure on their side would mean they had made huge strides in changing their culture because having someone who will chat with people they aren't in lock-step with is antithetical to the left. Having their "own Joe Rogan" would mean the echo chamber had gone away already, so yeah, they would be in a better position culturally. But when they say "own Joe Rogan," they just think they need a different flavor of propaganda. That's why it will never work for them.
I think Musk purchasing Twitter was the biggest factor. It seems that the average leftist wasn't prepared for their biggest messaging machine to suddenly come under enemy hands.
I don't know that it changed much.
I think it was more the measures that had been put in place to prevent Democrat and establishment GOP cheating.
To quote ShoeOnHead, "You people had a leftist Joe Rogan! HIS NAME WAS JOE ROGAN!"
ShoeOnHead did an entire video on this that was, from my PoV, utterly hilarious, and a demonstration of how the Democrat party seems incapable of reflection and/or self-criticism of all the flaws that cost them the election. (Whether that holds true in the future, we'll have to see.)
As for Joe Rogan... I honestly don't know. I think it certainly gave Trump a boost to have people hear him sit down and do a one-on-one back and forth banter with someone else, sans any sort of media filter, but wether that gave him a state or two, fuck if I know.
Speaking for myself, my big worry running up to the election as whether or no the entire media ecosystem constantly gaslighting for Kamala was enough to sway the uninformed voter(on top of the already baked-in fraud). But apparently the reality on the ground was enough to turn people around - apparently paying for gas and food is important for people who can't afford working from home and EVs!
I'm probably projecting because of my own personal tastes (listened to Rogan's 1st 1000 episodes in order, then never listened to another full episode again when he left YT for Spotify), but I feel like Rogan's peak as a cultural icon peaked many years ago.
Leaving YT for dumptrucks full of Spotify money really took him out of the cultural zeitgeist at a key time.
It's not necessarily Rogan's fault. He's a repetitive arrogant meathead elite LARPing as an everyman.
Listeners reach a saturation point where they've heard all his anecdotes and hot takes so many times that they become grating memes. So the only thing keeping one interested is the quality of his guests and the hope that Joe's input is to a minimum.
Agree.
I think it's less a direct effect they had than literally everyone in power trying to shut them down for giving conservative leans the time of day causing the absolute redpill.
Side note: lots of people watched alt media on election night instead of MSM. That’s a a big deal. The election is supposed to be the Super Bowl for them
I definitely noticed a shift, I had co workers who didn't have strong political opinions but were avid Rogan listeners, and now they are Trumpers.
I think people had made up their minds already, as it was far too close to election day to really heavily swing the election.
But it did throw mud in the face of the traditional media who loathe the fact that a guy with a little studio and a couple of microphones got to sit with the former president and president elect, and ask them questions they did not pre approve.
And that made Trump and the VP elect Vance look very personable and human. And I think that's what upsets them the most.
If you just go where the people are turning their attention to, instead of the mainstream media who are basically controlled assets at this point, through either money or ads, or both, that they can no longer hold the reigns of the conversation in a way that doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth as you watch.
You see someone who is usually a pretty normal talking head turn into a raging asshole if they ask badgering questions, or come across as insufferable, which means they are either really good at blending in, or love being horrible and they have a very carefully crafted mask, and are itching to fully drop it.
As was pointed out by The_Mad_Draklor when Musk bought Twitter, that really ticked them off. They lost their censorship edge that they were counting on. They still have the zuck, but that can only do so much.
Who still uses anything Meta produces? Facebook is known as "that platform your aging Boomer parents use", and Oculus is an expensive, faddy toy people with spare bedrooms play with.
I think some young-ish moms still use FB because it's more visual than X with the focus more on personal photos.
The women under 40 with kids I know use FB to post curated pics of their own crotch goblins for clout and to creep on the personal lives of their competitors that they mostly know as acquaintances.
I personally don't know any normies that unsolicitedly admit to using X. It's all Reddit, YT and FB.
They did have one.
His name was Joe Rogan.
Feminists lie all the time and people are starting to see that. When the truth is allowed to come out (i.e. Rogan, X etc..) people see that they're being gaslit by the MSM. There can be no such thing as a "left" Rogan because the left always lie and any such "influencer" will just be lumped with the rest of the woke feminist trash as lying sacks of shit.
What really decided the election is how tired everyone is of the woketard moral terrorism schtick.
This is why they will never have their own "Joe Rogan" because they are incapable of having a rational discussion with anyone not perfectly in lockstep with the current woke morality bat signal.
Any disagreement is heresy, and heretics are ostracized, always.
These moral terrorists will eventually have to be seen as the evil people they are before anyone on the Democrat side of the isle will be capable of building a coalition with those to the right of them. Progressive moral dominance ideology has total control.
zero.