Just to be clear, I don’t hate Joe Rogan because of his “politics” or because he’s an objectively shitty comedian. I hate Joe Rogan because he’s a bizarrely specific kind of guy. Any man who has ever had a friend has come across this type: the guy who floats on the edges of everyone’s friend group but is actually no one’s friend.
I know you know this kind of guy. Your girlfriend has probably referred to him as “that one guy”. You probably went to high school with him. You might’ve taken a couple of classes with him in college. But your conversations with him have never lasted longer than three minutes. He’s probably nodded a few times to something you said, and then uttered something along the lines of “yeah totally dude!”. Yet you never got the impression that he actually understood what you were saying. But that’s okay. While you get the distinct feeling that something’s off about him, he’s never done anything to warrant raising a red flag.
In the days before Internet forums, when this guy showed up to parties or walked into a bar, a few rolled their eyes and thought “there’s THAT guy”. But most shrugged and shared the same insipid conversations with him like everything was normal. Nowadays we know better. While we have no solid proof, we suspect that they have a prolific 4chan and a few faceless troll accounts on Instagram. But in the eyes of most, he’s simply a harmless and friendly piss ant.
And we go on assuming this innocuous perception until they show up fashionably, if not eyebrow raisingly, late to social gatherings. This is where they show their true colors. It’s almost always after midnight when they come sauntering in with their entourage of weirdos and outcasts. They drink your beer and smoke your weed and then embarrassingly try to fuck your girlfriend. Then they vanish, almost as mysteriously as they appeared. In the morning, your girlfriend informs you that he tried to spike her drink and that your wallet is missing. So you confront this guy. Usually he’s loitering around JC Penney or Shoe Carnival and you ask him “did you try to drug my girlfriend and steal my wallet?”. And he will lie to you, quite successfully. You don’t beat his ass because he’s too wormy. In fact, you will continue this vapid “friendship” because the man knows how to maintain a harmless and friendly facade. But deep down you know that he’s an empty vessel who ceaselessly moves from one hollow interaction to the next in a desperate effort to conceal his profound sense of inferiority.
That’s THAT guy.
That’s Joe Rogan.
The Internet Ruined Everything 