Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

https://www.theverge.com/22632213/joe-rogan-experience-spotify-exclusive-audience-reach

how do you deplatform someone who had a greater reach before they were on a platform?

hopefully he just loses a lot of fans with the fuss i dunno.

oh yeah i guess you do have a point there, idk

could say that YouTube shouldn't allow his stuff back but that would disqualify a large chunk of YouTube...... hmm....... let's do it

Rogan's worst effects were because of the Youtube algorithm - the Rogan fitness grifter to Ben Shapiro to open fascist channel pipeline.

Spotify limiting his reach? Is there numbers to demonstrate that?

Lots of data in that link from The Verge above.

Didn't realize he was exclusive to Spotify now (which explains a lot).

I don't think taking stances in a culture war is a bad thing per se, maybe Neil Young's actions won't do anything to combat anti-vaxx sentiments. Sometimes you just don't feel like sharing a platform with a Joe Rogan and that's okay too I guess. Or maybe he thought it was the right thing to do to combat anti-vaxx sentiment and if it isn't the best way that's okay too!

No one on the episode criticized Young (or defended Rogan), Felix just pointed out that there a lot of bad people on Spotify and his own complicity in patronizing them there (King Von).

I love my boys but whenever Felix starts talking about rap music, get out of the way

No, it wouldn’t do anything - it’s not ‘deplatforming’ him. Spotify limits his reach if anything, lose his deal and he puts up an RSS feed accessible by every podcast app instead of one and he’d be back on YouTube. Fucking with Rogan might be personally satisfying but it’s not combating anti-vax propaganda.

That's assuming the audience he comes back to is the same size as the audience he left, which I don't think has to follow - he's receiving the most scrutiny he ever has outside of left spaces. That might not do much but I don't think you can take it as a given either way.

Regardless of how that pans out, though, Rogan chose to go with Spotify and forsake a larger audience because it's of greater benefit to him financially. So what this is doing as well is telling Rogan, and others in the same sphere/grift, that having anti-vaxx people on is a bad business decision. That will influence spread more than listening figures.

At the very least, it guarantees that the next time Rogan has some anti-vaxx person on, his listeners will be reminded "oh yeah wasn't there some stink about that? is this the guy I should be listening to on this issue?". And yeah sure plenty will go "hell yeah the mainstreem media tried to censor the truth!", but as you've said Rogan is a gateway drug, so plenty will take a step back, too.

As for all this "Rogan is a bad person" bullshit...a group of scientists didn't call on Spotify to stop working with Rogan because he's a bad person. Do some ppl have more emotional and less thought through reasons to support the idea? Sure. I can point you to some ppl with pretty dumb reasons for having voted Corbyn too, who gives a fuck? It's what happens in any movement. It's a clearly articulated intiative with concrete demands.

Very much otm. Also yeah he may have gotten more promotion through YouTube when he was mainly just pimping the leading lights of the dark enlightenment etc but Spotify not actively promoting his current crop of murderous lies would no doubt put a dent in his audience.

His audience would be larger if the lib'rul elites persecuted him off of Spotify, making him even more of a cause celebre for reactionaries - this is already happening to some extent but actual "cancellation" would kick it into overdrive when he was back on platforms that don't limit his reach.

At the very least, it guarantees that the next time Rogan has some anti-vaxx person on, his listeners will be reminded "oh yeah wasn't there some stink about that? is this the guy I should be listening to on this issue?".

Whaaaa? No it won't, his listeners will be more excited to hear these rule-breakers and truth-tellers because the people they don't like told them it was bad to listen to them.

As for all this "Rogan is a bad person" bullshit...a group of scientists didn't call on Spotify to stop working with Rogan because he's a bad person.

That is, however, the driving force - because kicking Rogan off Spotify doesn't serve any purpose in combating anti-vax propaganda. You cannot make him shut up - there's no actual way to do that. It's driven by personal satisfaction (with being right) and personal distaste (for Rogan and those who are wrong). Which is fine, I cancelled my Spotify account because I don't want to give them money, but it was not in any way a meaningful act aside from how I feel about where my money goes.

That's super reductive. I'd acknowledged in my last post that some listeners would indeed react in the way you describe, but not every Rogan listener is a fully paid up True Believer, his appeal is far wider than that.

Assuming that just because you think it wouldn't work everyone else also secretly believes the same thing and is therefore acting because they think Rogan's a bad person...that's some real making up a guy to get mad at shit.

His audience would be larger if the lib'rul elites persecuted him off of Spotify, making him even more of a cause celebre for reactionaries

It's true! Look how well it worked out for Milo Yiannopolous! Why, he's unavoidable!

think i was right to find this argument exhausting but i lost the moment i engaged with it

The whole reactionary echo chamber 2.0 is basically maxxed out at this point. Sure there are few unaffiliated dimwits they can scrape off the bottom of the info-highway ecosphere but I don’t think there’s much genuine growth left in the ‘owning the libs’ market. Unless they find some new even more scary boogeyman to hunt for.

Although as a newbie to world of Chapo there seem to be a few horseshoe theory tones in the mix that give me some pause.

It's true! Look how well it worked out for Milo Yiannopolous! Why, he's unavoidable!

It's really unlikely Rogan will be banned from all major platforms the way Milo, Alex Jones and others are.

Also Milo didn’t have the biggest podcast in the world. Good luck banning Rogan from all hosting for an RSS feed.

Assuming that just because you think it wouldn't work everyone else also secretly believes the same thing and is therefore acting because they think Rogan's a bad person...

Getting Rogan kicked off Spotify does nothing to combat anti-vax propaganda, so what’s it about? Punishing Spotify for hosting bad actors and Rogan for being a bad actor. But even that’s not the end result for Rogan, it wouldn’t hurt him.

He’d get a payout from Spotify and hop right back on his old platforms with an increased audience and a new martyrdom to exploit.

Which, going back to what started this, if punishing bad actors is the point then Felix is completely justified in pointing to all the other bad actors you can access on Spotify when you’re deciding whether or not to patronize Spotify, punish them, or simply not care too much.

Yeah dude, as stated previously, I don't accept your premise that it does nothing to combat anti-vax propaganda and I don't think most ppl participating in the boycott accept it, either. You're assuming that this is some shared assumption and theorizing based off that.

who are the other bad actors who have exclusive mega million $ deals with Spotify? Are we talking about R.Kelly music being on the service?

xpost

RSS is a pain in the butt and for most people, podcasts that aren’t automatically delivered on a convenient platform like Spotify are a pain in the ass too. The primary mainstream alternative would be returning to YouTube.

It’s conceivable if he keeps doubling down on both covidiocy and “race realism” crap that all major platforms could be pressured to take him down. And it could possibly lead to stricter policies in general, I’d say especially with issues of medical misinformation which could pose a direct liability to the corporations.

Isn’t this mainly a intended discussion based in democratic socialism? Is throwing our hands up at the proliferation of unregulated toxic industries typically an effective approach?

There are similar issues with the regulation of widespread environmental pollution, but the harm from those industries has been demonstrated much more thoroughly. They also have substantially more political clout than Spotify — just wait til we get a Secretary of State who used to be the CEO of YouTube.

If Rogan were to be banned on Youtube, it would mean banning a million of Youtube's most popular channels as well.

they still have guys like Stephen Crowder on there, who has been trying to get himself banned for months now

Podcast apps just manage RSS feeds. There’s no work involved to searching “Joe Rogan” on Pocket Casts or whichever app you use.

Yeah dude, as stated previously, I don't accept your premise that it does nothing to combat anti-vax propaganda and I don't think most ppl participating in the boycott accept it, either. You're assuming that this is some shared assumption and theorizing based off that.

Well, what I responded to is your post that their ‘dogshit take’ ‘compared anti-vax propaganda to hip-hop records’ - which isn’t what happened!

The comparison was explicitly about supporting bad actors by patronizing them/Spotify and was never less than critical of Rogan for being anti-vax.

As already noted above, Spotify exclusivity has limited Rogan’s reach. You’re not describing any mechanism where his anti-vax propaganda would actually be diminished by anything happening.

The Yiannopolous example is a good one, though, because his life was destroyed (which is awesome and funny) but it hasn’t done anything to stem the tide of fascism. His deplatforming didn’t actually matter in the end.

Which says that maybe the key is to create countervailing, positive forces and voices rather than just trying (and inevitably failing) to make Rogan shut up.

Even within adiscussion of bad actors - which again I don't think this is really about - comparing ppl who've done fucked up shit in their private lives or have created offensive art to anti-vaxx propaganda is a dogshit take, I stand by that.

As already noted above, Spotify exclusivity has limited Rogan’s reach. You’re not describing any mechanism where his anti-vax propaganda would actually be diminished by anything happening.

Saying that it limited that reach is no proof that removing itwill increase it and, as I said before, economic incentive clearly trumps listenership figures when it comes to figures like Rogan. Fine for you to find that reasoning unconvincing!

If you got an irritating podcast de-listed from most of the main directories/aggregators it'd probably put a dent in listenership from people being too lazy to manually add a url to their podcast app unless they were really interested and would kill it showing up in recommendations

There are only a handful of podcast directories all the main apps pull from, mostly Apple and Google's

I do like Ryan Broderick’s take, that you have to understand that Sptfy is now Rogan’s publisher; they paid him to produce the show, they distribute it, they advertise on it.

He wrote it here: https://www.garbageday.email/p/ah-the-cognitive-dissonance-it-hurts

And talked to Jared Holt about it here:
https://shtpost.substack.com/p/the-joe-rogan-misinformation-experience

Yup.

If they remove him, he's still going to get a payout of some sort, he could go back to listing his show publicly, etc.

I think the underlying sentiment (which coincides with the platform vs. publisher dichotomy) is that we live in a world where paying for something gives it legitimacy. There are a number of arguments against adopting that socioeconomic stance, but "large corporation spends millions, so this thing must have worth" is something that's ingrained in how we talk about business and culture -- despite companies spending ridiculous amounts of money on things that have absolutely no real worth.

I mean, if Howard Stern suddenly used his couple hours a day to interview quacks, I can imagine a similar migration away from Sirius/XM.

Which says that maybe the key is to create countervailing, positive forces and voices rather than just trying (and inevitably failing) to make Rogan shut up.

I'm really confused, you guys are in favor of deplatforming someone?

prefer to flag their posts and let someone else do the dirty work

I thought the idea was to counter bad faith ideas with a well thought out good faith counter speech?

yeah maybe i could record my own good faith podcast and just put it on spotify

paraphrasing a tweet I saw the other day:
“I was at a party in the mid 2000s and one guy said he watched a documentary on how the 9/11 narrative was false and started spouting conspiracy theories. Everyone groaned and went to the basement to hang out, except for one woman, and she’s his wife now”

the thing about fighting narrative with narrative in the public sphere is you’re acting like it’s a competition or that narratives hold equal weight, when in normal human interaction you’d just say “no” or leave this person alone (with their future wife, apparently)

I do like this statement from Max Collins, the Eve 6 dude interviewed in that Garbage Day post:

As for actionable advice for any podcaster or musician out there, Collins stressed that there are other platforms you can use. In fact, the platform that I personally think is the best, while definitely skewing more emo and punk, is Bandcamp. I’d almost go so far as to say it’s one of the best UGC platforms to ever exist? Not even just for music, but in general.

“I hate that the responsibility and sacrifice is again falling on artists who are the ones who’ve been getting summarily fucked by the industry since it’s inception, but like here we are,” Collins said. “Now is the time to collectivize and demand fair compensation from Spotify. They are weakened. They are losing billions in this moment. The artists’ side of the story is only beginning to be told and more and more people will be joining the fight. I’m getting messages every day from artists who are like, ‘fuck yes let’s do this. The time is now.’”

I also favor Bandcamp as my preferred online vendor.

The Yiannopolous example is a good one, though, because his life was destroyed (which is awesome and funny) but it hasn’t done anything to stem the tide of fascism. His deplatforming didn’t actually matter in the end...

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, February 2, 2022 7:54 PM (yesterday)

Well this conveniently discounts a whole host of independent variables (eg well-funded campaigns of disinformation, a pandemic). Not to get too personal but is this sort of circular logic a standard pattern with milo z?

Just to be clear Mr. Z, my questions about social democracy and regulation of toxic industries was directed specifically at you. Pretty clear that shit has sailed tho.

Er, the SHIP has sailed.

I'm really confused, you guys are in favor of deplatforming someone?

― JacobSanders, Thursday, February 3, 2022 1:01 AM (seventeen hours ago)

I sure as hell am. Should we just let Alex Jones spread toxic propaganda on YouTube unchecked? What planet is this guy from.

I also keep forgetting we're democratic socialists and not social democrats.

*purges self*

Well this conveniently discounts a whole host of independent variables (eg well-funded campaigns of disinformation, a pandemic). Not to get too personal but is this sort of circular logic a standard pattern with milo z?

What does the pandemic have to do with Yianoppolous, who was deplatformed in 2018 and whose deplatforming didn't matter at all in the end? The ruin of his life, or Richard Spencer's life, or theoretically Joe Rogan's life is immensely satisfying but it doesn't appear to actually be useful politically. In part because the people with money and a vested interest in reactionary ideology aren't deplatformed and can't be, unless Mr. Choppy comes out and we start executing right-wing billionaires.

Just to be clear Mr. Z, my questions about social democracy and regulation of toxic industries was directed specifically at you. Pretty clear that shit has sailed tho.

Consumer boycotts are not "regulation of toxic industries," though. Neil Young didn't ask for Spotify to be expropriated and turned into a public utility.

"Stricter policies in general" are very much a double-edged sword for the left - because the right-wing billionaires own the media in question, they come for us first using those rules, as anyone who has been put in Facebook or Twitter jail for joking about guillotining CEOs can attest (or as Mother Jones has written about re: their traffic numbers from Facebook). It's kinda like how enhanced domestic terrorism laws post 1/6 would just get used against environmentalists and Muslims and left-wing activists of all stripes.

Yeah I have no issue with Alex Jones saying whatever he says, I've listened to what he has to say and it doesn't interest me. I understand what's wrong with his views, because I was allowed to hear his views, I made a judgement. If others agree with him then that's on them, I remember hearing Alex Jones when I moved to Austin in 1995, I remember him screaming with a megaphone about George Bush and the Iraq War in front of UT. He seemed like a sweaty chain smoking lunatic. If someone wants to discredit him that's easy. He has years of being online. I struggle to understand the cynical view that the public needs to be protected from dumb people whoever they are.

Would this be the Alex Jones who is still mired in court appeals after being found liable for perpetuating a hoax that further ruined the lives of people who lost their children in a school shooting

yeah that's the cost of free speech, if you lie the courts will punish you. Using Alex Jones as an example of free speech is almost perfect, it's free but it's accountable.

I'm somewhat skeptical about the efficacy of consumer boycotts and calls for accountability, but there are a handful of terrible fringe media outlets that basically just run ads for shitty pillows, reverse mortgages, and spurious companies that can "help you with your medicare" because no advertiser wants to get near them

I get "ooh the nanny state" vibes from the idea others need protection from dumb people, but when the platforms we're talking about are just poorly-moderated ad traffic venue companies like YouTube, twitter, and facebook, and the type of content starts to fall from passive income (ad revenue) to active engagement (being a producer by paying up front), I fail to see how telling them you're going to walk if they don't drop a bad actor is any different from someone crankily writing to their newspaper several decades ago to say you're cancelling your subscription if they don't stop running a column.

xp and that's exactly one guy who may be held legally accountable out of...

It's less "protect people from this dumb guy" and "why would I subscribe to your service or publish my music on it when you gave this asshole millions of dollars?"