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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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Joe Rogan has finally endorsed Trump after his podcast with Elon, seemingly swayed by Elon’s persuasive ability in his making of “the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear”, with Rogan agreeing him “every step of the way”. It’s interesting as a sort of demographic signal for whatever psychology you think Rogan is closest to in terms of the electorate, as most people think of him as a typology of the male base which consumes his podcast. It’s somewhat telling that he only did this at the very end after the possibility of a Kamala interview was absolutely off-the-table, as the irony is that Rogan’s male base is also similarly completely not the target of any communication from the Kamala campaign, sidelined for the young female demographic completely in terms of appealing to one principal issue (abortion) to the exclusion of anything else besides “we’re at least not Trump!”.

The latter argument would have worked better if Trump was running without the associated star-power of RFK, Elon, Gabbard, etc., all of whom Rogan has tremendous respect for individually, collectively allowing the scales to tip in terms of Trump being the figurehead bringing everyone to the finish line.

Incidentally I don’t think Rogan has voted for any Republican Presidential candidate before, and still was resistant even after the trauma of the pandemic (which changed his perspective on a lot of CW topics). The fact that the guy was a Bernie supporter not too long ago just signals how big of a shift there has been.

This probably doesn’t mean anything substantial (especially as a large chunk of Rogan’s fanbase is probably already Trump sympathetic) but it’s still an interesting development in the anxiety preceding the election tomorrow. What do you think?

The replacement of traditional writing with a combination of discord, streaming and 4 hour long podcasts truly is a disaster. Want to see Elon’s “most compelling” case for Trump? Just waste all your free time today listening to my podcast and it might come up at some point. At least TikTok forces some kind of pace.

ChatGPTBox will summarize yt videos