Joe Rogan records his podcast.

Man Paid $100 Million To Talk for a Living Warns That Straight White Men Will Not Be “Allowed to Talk”

Recommended Videos

Joe Rogan is very sad. The Fear Factor host-turned-wildly successful podcaster is sad because as he sees it, white straight men are in trouble.

Speaking to recent guest Joe List about the current state of comedy, Rogan lamented, “You can never be woke enough, that’s the problem. It keeps going. It keeps going further and further and further down the line and if you get to the point where you capitulate, where you agree to all these demands, it’ll eventually get to ‘straight white men are not allowed to talk.'”

But wait, it gets worse! Rogan foresees a whole range of social reparations on the horizon “because it’s your privilege to express yourself when other people of color have been silenced throughout history. It’ll be, you’re not allowed to go outside because so many people were imprisoned for so many years.”

If you think he’s joking, Rogan says no! “I’m not joking. It really will get there, it’s that crazy.”

Wow, what a terrifying and also completely nonsensical and unrealistic hypothetical scenario that must be for him! Straight white men aren’t “woke” enough, and they can never be woke enough, so the only option available to him is to stop trying to be any sort of decent person with a capacity for empathy and claim persecution.

But who exactly is it that is persecuting Rogan and other straight white men? I’m not sure exactly but I’m guessing it’s people with less power and a much smaller reach than him, the man who literally gets paid a hundred million dollars by Spotify to say whatever he wants into a microphone for hours at a time for a program that is then disseminated to millions of people.

Rogan’s podcast episodes are multiple hours long and they vary wildly in length, giving the impression that he is allowed to say quite literally anything and everything he ever wants. So yes, I guess the idea that he might, hypothetically, not be able to do that someday would be scary to him.

What do we think prompted Rogan to fantasize about this white man’s dystopia of forced silence and imprisonment? Well, he has actually been receiving some pushback against some of his most egregious recent comments, like when he falsely and bizarrely claimed that “actual microchips” are being “injected into your arm to see if you have COVID-19,” or when he straight-up told his “young, healthy” listeners (i.e. the majority of his mostly young, mostly male audience) that they don’t need to get the vaccine.

But this conversation with List was a discussion about comedy. (You can watch here if you feel like subjecting yourself to that, with the quote above starting around the 5:00 mark.) Using Superbad as a benchmark, Rogan was bemoaning the inability to make a “good comedy” movie anymore, due to the way “they” (??) will “cancel” you (???) if you try.

We don’t know what sparked this particular lamentation, but as Fast Company notes, one of Rogan’s comedy buddies is Tony Hinchcliffe, who you might know after he recently went viral when he decided to open a set with a completely unfunny, horrifically anti-Asian racist rant.

(Warning, if you haven’t already seen this, I recommend keeping it that way. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse. I’m only including it here to make the full picture as clear as possible.)

That rant cost Hinchcliffe both his representation at the prominent talent agency WME (why they represented him in the first place is a mystery) as well as some upcoming gigs with none other than Joe Rogan himself.

Amazing how so many people are so concerned that the backlash against Hinchcliffe is a dark reflection of our society’s moral corruption, and not that Hinchcliffe’s direct racist harassment and mockery of his fellow comedian Peng Dang is the actual problem.

Again, we don’t know if this is what sparked this particular rambling in his regular multi-hour daily ramblings, but it sure is a weird argument for Rogan to take up right now!

(image: screencap)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—


The Mary Sue is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy
Author
Image of Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.