“Talking shit used to be fun,” complains Joe Rogan. “It didn’t used to have so many consequences.” He sounds quite sensitive, Rogan, to the pushback against him saying the N-word on his hit podcast, or broadcasting anti-vaccine misinformation. Which is ironic, because every routine here is bookended by a peeve about how sensitive people are these days. The consequences Rogan has faced for “talking shit”, meanwhile, have not been entirely negative. Spotify bought his podcast for a reported $100m, and here he is performing his standup to 20,000-capacity crowds.
Watching the show, I can understand his resentment at being branded sexist, homophobic and the rest. Joke for joke, he’s not overtly chauvinistic – and when he risks being so (gags about his fear of predatory gay men; gags about #MeToo going too far), he takes pains to frame things in ways that short-circuit the offence. The overall persona helps: unlike his unlovely support act Tony Hinchcliffe, he doesn’t want us to admire his opinions, repeatedly (and endearingly) sending up his own stupidity and lack of authority.
Now and then, this “I’m just a dumb guy, asking questions” conceit leads him across fertile comic terrain. There’s a lively thought experiment about a tribe of uncontacted white people, a trip inside Rogan’s head when he’s interviewing Elon Musk, and a droll interrogation of the airport security policy around frisking a man’s private parts. But as the latter joke suggests – and even allowing that, as he insists, these are all just jokes – it’s striking how much of alpha male Rogan’s material has a fear of emasculation at its core.
So there’s a routine about hyenas and their matriarchal society, warning where #MeToo might lead us, and a riff on how virile Rogan was when aged 13, and hopes still to be in his dotage. When he advertises his anti-sexist credentials, meanwhile, it’s with a defence of women’s right to have sex with as many men as possible. You can see why the podcast’s such a hit: eyes popping and jokes deftly assembled, Rogan makes “talking shit” entertaining. It’s just a shame he talks it about such a narrow, macho range of subjects.
