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I bear potentially strange tidings for a lighter episode in the Culture War.
CumTown at the Rubicon: Is Adam Friedland unironically gunning for the "Joe Rogan of the Left" title?
CumTown was a successful comedy podcast hosted by three sardonic New York stand-up comedians. The show's trio included leader Nick Mullen, who fans will call the best impromptu comedy riffer of all time. The show's second was a funny fat man that is often described as the show's laugh track. Then, every comedy trio needs the butt of the joke: the doormat, slapstick target, or the straight man. In this case the role was filled by Adam Friedland (un?)ironically described by fans as an unfunny "bug" that eats dust on top of various Jew-flavored jokes.
I didn't listen to CumTown. Mostly because I don't listen to comedy podcasts. At the time, I had an inkling of association with CumTown and the dirt-bag left. The ChapoTrapHouse-RedScare orbit wasn't to my taste, even if I were to listen to unserious political podcasts. I recall a friend, a huge fan of the show, that tried to impress upon me that no, CumTown was just a comedy podcast, and a really funny one at that. I think we were both right. At least some of the show's comedy tickles a Millennial, dirt-bag left adjacent funny bone. But, it also seems like it was genuinely funny as well as genuinely irreverent and offensive at a time when scolds were out in force. Allegedly, the hosts never did any media to avoid the Eye of Sauron. The show was extremely successful with its patreon raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month at its height.
The trio broke up, which left Nick, the best comedy riffer of all time, and Adam, the butt of all jokes, to start a new project with The Adam Friedland Show. The not so subtle joke behind the show is that Mullen, considered the mastermind and favorite of fans, aimed to shoot Adam into the spotlight as the star. Adam was to be the expert celebrity interviewer of the "Center-left" (tongue-in-cheek, derogatory) talk show. The same CumTown fan friend shared the Neil DeGrasse Tyson episode and I remember it as pretty entertaining. Other episodes I've seen include Chris Cuomo and rapper and son of Tom Hanks.
The talk show portion fell apart and Mullen left the show for some reason. Now Friedland was left alone to create a Season 2. Season 2 launched a few weeks ago with a small media campaign that includes a GQ profile titled "Adam Friedland Could Be the Millennial Jon Stewart. But Does He Want That?" The article is chock full of fan service, in-jokes and ironic humor which means it can't be taken too seriously. But, there was also coverage and an interview from Ben Smith's Semafor. As far as a serious, center-left New York media outlet goes, Semafor is fairly credible. Even if Adam's exposure is limited to its media critics.
The first two episodes in the second season of the show are credibly center-left coded. The first episode was with Anthony Weiner. Yes, that Anthony Weiner is apparently attempting to re-enter municipal politics in NYC again. The last one I haven't seen is an interview with sitting California representative Ro Khanna who, in addition to being a Bernie fan, has explicitly stated he is on board with the growing Abundance project and renewal of the Democratic party.
This is all occurring while the Democrats have loudly signaled, and been mocked relentlessly for, plans to find inroads into the minds of young men. On one hand, it's hard to fathom that Adam Friedland can be leveraged for political gain. From what I could gather fans seem to disbelieve, but also sense greatness in the irony. On the other hand, this is an established show that appeals to a nearly all-male audience with lefty coding and edgy street cred. It is pretty perfect for a Democratic messaging device. I don't know if Adam Friedland will seize the day to become the ironic Bill Maher for under-40s, or if this will conclude as a typical haha half joke, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it swung either way.
Adam Friedland is neither charismatic nor funny. He won't be the next generation's John Stewart or Bill Maher or the left's Joe Rogan or whatever he is trying. He can get around a guest per month on his show and he's not a good interviewer. This is going nowhere.
I heard the first few minutes of the Hasan Piker interview. He says he invested his life savings in this failing show. He will have to give up eventually. I suppose when he can't pay his help or make rent. So sad he squandered his Cum Town millions on this. He won't get a second chance since he is so unfunny.
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Off-topic, mostly just posting because some people who will be drawn to this thread might enjoy this and not have seen it:
Shane Gillis and Steve Gerben on Late Night with Seth Myers
Cumtown-adjacent Shane Gillis dragged his favorite jewish punching bag along with him into a mainstream national spotlight, and it went well.
There is a stark contrast between MSSP's fate vs Cumtown/TAFS (I am very comfortable calling with high certainty right now that Adam Friedland will not become "The Joe Rogan of the Left", for reasons already well explained by others in this thread), that... is not actually that surprising after reflecting on the personalities involved, but is still pretty crazy to see for people who've watched both from the early days.
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The democrats need someone who's good at his(and it has to be a man) job and not someone who can hit the right shibboleths and characteristics. Currently they have Olivia Juliana in charge of their effort, who's best known for her weight and also somewhat well known for failing at being a progressive influencer even by the low standards of the Texas Democratic trainwreck-of-a party.
'Failing upwards landwhale feminists want to appeal to you' is not how you get a workable plan for winning over young men. It's how you get troll answers and a money pit. Democrats need someone who's legitimately popular on his own, who gets to color outside the lines a bit, who's a man's man that appeals to men. Legitimately, the failing upwards reputation is one they need to shed just like the Karen reputation. I don't know if this guy is the guy for that. But I will say- Joe Rogan didn't become a big deal because of his association with Trump. He became a big deal and Trump won him over.
I feel like framing this as "Trump won him over" glosses over the Democrats own culpability in this matter.
As other have observed. The Left had a Joe Rogan up until about 2021, his name was Joe Rogan. Then the entire Democratic party establishment and maintream media spent two whole years trying to get him deplatformed and arrested as a "bigot" for saying that he didn't want his daughter competing against biological males in sports, as a "threat to public health" for being pro-ivermectin and anti-lockdown, and for "spreading disinformation" in general. Even a good sizable portion of theMotte including our very own Scott Alexander have gotten in on the game by describing his platforming of alternative views as "dangerous" and "irresponsible".
The message was sent loudly and repeatedly that there was no place for people like Joe (or his listeners) in rational and polite society, and that message was recieved.
It seems to me that the Democratic party as an institution is at that stage in the Lana-cycle where they've divorced the schlubby dad podcast (JRE), are now dating an edgy podcast of haircolor (CumTown), and are low-key mad that instead of going to peices, schlubby-dad found a new
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I'm still kinda baffled that the janitor from News Radio became an actual person of national influence.
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If I can quote Shoe on head -
"oh my God we need a liberal Joe Rogan" You had a liberal Joe Rogan his name was Joe Rogan but he was too edgy too problematic
Most ironically, he was too liberal. This was the characteristic of Joe Rogan that was damning to them and that elicted the reaction that was damning of them. He may never have been too immoderate for them in the modern sense of "liberal"=="leftist", but he was far too much for them in the older sense of "liberal"=="open minded". While the modern left was discovering the delicious joys of shunning and deplatforming, Rogan was still stubbornly letting any idiot with any wacky or problematic ideology come to him and make a case for it to him and his audience. The last straw for them in 2024 may have been that, when he offered to let their idiot take advantage of his liberalism, at a point where she clearly needed it, she simply chose not to accept!
It's possible that she was doomed either way, that she had good reason for insisting on an hour interview surrounded by her staff rather than multiple hours one-on-one in his studio like all his other interviewees, but if that's the case then what they needed instead wasn't a liberal version of Joe Rogan, it was a didn't-finish-at-the-bottom-of-the-Democratic-primaries version of Kamala Harris.
Kamala can't string a full sentence from start to end without reading a teleprompter, that's why they didn't let her get on Joe Rogan's podcast.
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He wasn't too liberal. He is a living fossil, him with his open mind and willingness to talk to people.
Today liberalism stands for western guilt, feelings and self expression over rationality, safety over openness, faith in solving social issues through social engineering, despite half a century of total failure of such efforts.
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You can't have a left-wing Joe Rogan because the next time he strays from the line on COVID or anything else, they'll get what Rogan got. Friedland has already had one brush with cancel culture for utterly inane reasons. He got past it because he was too small to be the priority target. Whoever sits in that spot will go down for something.
This whole discussion is a bunch of evangelicals sitting around trying to figure out why they can't make movies that appeal to outsiders while refusing to mention the mile-long faith statement and guidelines they need everyone working on the film to sign on to and the essential points of doctrine that must be squeezed in. There haven't been many good movies about Mohammed for a reason.
You can have a left-wing person who's at Joe's level. You can't have a left-wing Joe Rogan because Joe Rogan isn't a partisan warrior. That's how he got so big!
Even desiring a left-wing Rogan is telling on themselves. Not everyone sees their media consumption as a way to bring about the Kingdom. It's just more of the same: people need to be educated -> people resist and flee our spaces -> well, we should just colonize that outlet too so they have no escape. Doesn't work as well with new media.
That's the fault line in all of this. The outgroup is stupid cattle that needs to be herded.
I see a lot of the more liberal centrist aligned people huffing and scolding the 'left' over their inability to understand why Joe Rogan exists in the first place. How dumb the 'left' is for not recognizing that it's their own suffocating need to propagandize everything for the correct cause that creates the space Joe Rogan can occupy. But there's a small blind spot there as well.
To an extent the viewpoint that everything needs to be propaganda for the cause, and that everyone who isn't a true believe is just stupid cattle that needs to be herded and 'educated', has proven more correct than not. It's hard to find an intellectual hobby that has not been colonized or is in the process of being colonized by 'left' influence. Books, movies, TV, video and board games. For the past two decades practically every major hub and media outlet for these things has been taken over. And the stupid cattle still earnestly engage with it.
So who is really the odd one out here? The people who have managed to propagandize nigh every western institutional and intellectual space to deliver their message, or the people who periodically pop their heads out of the ocean of left wing propaganda to pissedly proclaim that you can't propagandize everything... Before diving back in.
I'm partial to "propaganda works", but clearly it has it's limits. Why else are they freaking out over Joe Rogan? If they conquered all spaces so thoroughly, shouldn't he be no threat to them?
The Joe Rogan problem for the 'left' is "We control everything except this one thing". I don't see how that is propaganda having its limits. Just that one side is not completely omnipotent. The propaganda still works well enough. We wouldn't be where we are today if it didn't.
And where did "this one thing" come from? It didn't fall out from the sky, it wasn't a preexisting institution that managed to resist takeover by happenstance, it was built from scratch. If progressive propaganda was limitlessly effective this wouldn't happen in the first place, and they wouldn't be pulling their hair out at their inability to reproduce it.
You're approaching this from an angle where propaganda is something I don't think it is.
Joe Rogan wasn't 'built'. It was an accidental fire that happened to be able to exist since it spawned from spheres that were very much not intellectual and not mainstream. Fighting sports, drugs and a clique of mildly failing comedians. On top of that it was a new and emerging medium. It did survive by chance. It was fringe enough that no one with money wanted to touch it until people figured out just how big it had gotten.
By that point Rogan, through his own personal conviction and other things, figured out he didn't need any money men. The technology to monetize was, by chance, there to be used. His ownership of this thing he had made was more important to him. You can swap Rogan out for a different person and that person could just as well have sold the whole thing out for a big paycheck as soon as he could. Let Spotify or whatever interested party dictate the guests or allow them some minimal control over what is allowed to be said about certain topics and whatever else. Really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Similar to how cries of cries of a lack of internet censorship were eventually heard, the calls for a left wing Joe Rogan will eventually be heard. This exact same game was played out with early internet culture. "What goes on the internet stays forever". Turns out this is not true. 'The Internet Hate Machine' was eventually neutered and killed off. Be that through direct action by the powers that be, or that people change, grow older, die, or whatever else. To that extent there is nothing that is lined up to replace Rogan. And like with other mediums, the slot Joe Rogan fills will either be subverted and controlled or bricked up.
Maybe. I think it's media created with the purpose of spreading and inculcating ideas and specific types of thinking, is that not what it is? What do you think it is?
His podcast is very much a result of deliberate human action, rather than a random accident. None of his story that you bring up contradicts my point, and none of what you said addresses it.
The left might one day decide to turn itself into something that can sustain a left-wing Joe Rogan, but it is currently incapable of doing so. They might succeed in taking him down, they might succeed in having him supplanted by slop they control, but unless they change themselves, they're not reproducing him or the effect he's having on the world.
Propaganda is what you say, just on a much larger timescale. With the addition of blocking certain ideas and types of thinking. You don't need to spread your message all the time. Just make sure it's the only message available.
As for Rogan, he was a mildly failed comedian with a small time career in TV. Nothing about his podcast was deliberate beyond what any other random podcast was. No one knew what could become of the medium. I'd say Rogan's success was about as deliberate as a person winning the lottery. If you want to say that you can deliberately win the lottery by buying a ticket, that's that. But that doesn't fit any conception I have of deliberate action.
The left did not need to change themselves to kill the internet. They won't need to change themselves to block the next Joe Rogan. It reminds me of an old video game reviewer called Total Biscuit. He managed to position himself as probably the biggest reviewer of video games. He passed away from cancer a few years ago and nothing has replaced him. People still play video games, people still fret about missing graphics options and bad games being sold for 60 dollars, but there's no central outlet for that like he provided. No public voice echoing their woes and reinforcing the validity of their wants and needs in the face of tone deaf developers and greedy publishers.
Around 50% of America is already not on board with the program regardless of Rogan existing or not. The question for the left is not 'how do we get them onboard'. The question is 'how do we keep them silent'. How do we keep their wants and impulses locked in a societal straightjacket so they don't threaten our power. Joe Rogan is bad for left wing propaganda since he exists as an outlet for the impulses 'non left' people already have.
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On one hand, I can understand this, but on the other, I have to question the idea that somehow young, disengaged, skeptical men will respond positively if the Democrats only... checks notes... force paid advertisements into youtube videos, in-game video game ads, and sports and gaming podcasts.
These are three hobby spaces that are notoriously known for being escapist hobby vectors for people who do not want to be bothered with Serious Things. Paid ads are not exactly popular in any of them, and the anti-ad industry that, by its nature, is skeptical of establishment forces (that would prefer such bypasses not exist).
One of those spaces in particlar- video gaming spaces- was the subject of a multi-year culture war in which Democratic party allies circled the wagons against a non-trivial part of the consumer base who, among other grievances, felt their hobby space was being encroached upon by partisans who didn't care for them.
It really begs the question of if the person making the proposal had any awareness of Gamergate back in the day, or if they remember the progressive framing but think this is a good idea anyway, or... just what this is supposed to be besides a grift for a wave of blocked/skipped ads that people allready block/skip in mass.
Youtube will profit considerably. Between the Democrats paying for ads, and how many people get Youtube Premium for the first time to escape the ads...
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Many of the same strategy consultants who helped create the position are now in charge of climbing out of it. At least one quote from the end of that article seems closer to honest:
They will likely waste lots of money. The desire to build a network to reach men with a message is understandable. Although, the masculine thing to do is to man up and engage with the Rogan's if they'd like to reach or persuade his audience.
Reaching gamers might not be so strange. Don't political streamers like (Hasan and Destiny are names I know) stream on Twitch.tv-- a game streaming platform? They play video games, entertain, and talk politics. The problem with those guys and others, such as TikTok equivalents, is they are slaves to their fandoms. They can't turn on a dime.
A story I saw last month involved a case of progressive drama for something called the "Unf*ck America" tour. It was supposed to be a handful of trendy, TikTok Zoomer pundits following around Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA to different college campuses, playing spoiler to Kirk, owning the cons, and so on. The project ended after a meltdown due to the sensitivities and conflict of the progressive stack. I'd guess all the drama surrounding the failed project was positive for each individual TikTok streamer that attended. Drama means dollars. It's pretty terrible for recruitment though, assuming any disengaged young men were paying attention. Which you are probably right that they weren't.
Is GamerGate generally known to 18-25 year old gamers? It probably can be ignored, though that doesn't make such a campaign good or justified. If the video game industry is still as left coded as ever, then that's probably common knowledge even if GamerGate is not.
Destiny has been banned from twitch for a long time. No one knows why. Best guess is he called some people trying to cancel him that happened be trans "sub-human".
He streams on youtube and Kick.
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GamerGate isn't known to as many people as this board thinks it is. People act like it was some watershed moment in the culture war, but I was in my late 20s at the time and couldn't tell you now what it was about without looking it up. I remember hearing a story on NPR about it, and it was presented as some sideshow drama among people who didn't matter, having about s much relevance as an internecine dispute about racism in the stamp collecting community or whatever. Sitting here today, I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head, beyond the fact that some people who played video games made misogynistic comments or something. I doubt most of my IRL friends could tell you any more. I doubt my parents or many people from their generation have even heard of GamerGate. A search of my archives shows that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran exactly one article about it, and it was an op-ed that originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times. In the fall of 2014, that paper ran more stories on the coup in Burkina Faso than on GamerGate.
Oh, oh, let me try. I don't know how you can't know after reading the CW threads.
My understanding is "gaming journalists" had corrupt, incestuous relationships with industry developers. Which makes sense, because gaming journalism is a fake sect of journalism and always has been. Both journalists and the industry developers went pretty hard in the Social Justice paint. Gamers got mad about the ethics and the foreign culture imposed on them. Then, during the uproar some mad people said means things to Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn who are either indie* developers
or gaming journalists. Both names I impressively muscled from memory, though their profession I did not.Once people said mean things to the individuals, then that's the only story anyone in the industry, in gaming journalism, or in mainstream journalism talked about. This side stepped any other concerns which only made people more angry. Now painted as villains, this justified categorical bans and censorship of identified GamerGaters on [platform]. The basic dynamics of -ism'ing your way out of criticism was then put on loop for the following 8+ years. It spread to other media, such as movies, TV, and literature. I understand why people consider it important for that reason.
"Anita Sarkeesian" was another big character, but I was only reminded of her after writing via Wikipedia. I also remember a funny fact that moot, previous owner of 4chan, was dating, or was friends with one of these three. My city paper has 7 hits for " GamerGate" from 2015-2016.
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Probably not.
Even if you don't take the actual hobbies into account, concentrating on hobbies as a way to attract a male audience is utterly tone-deaf. When thinking about politics, men tend to be attracted to political tendencies that conceive politics, or world as general as a struggle - class struggle appealed very strongly to young men during the ascent of socialism, national struggle a bit later, individuals struggling to make a fortune in the market even later than that - and hobbies are what you do when you aren't struggling, even (especially) if they involve a simulated struggle, like video games and sports. "Fight for your right to party" is never an actual platform.
Honestly, politics encroaching on my fun is so much of a turn off that I think even if the men would agree with the content, the annoyance would make the message radioactive. This is exactly what happened in gamergate. Woke messages in gaming turned a whole lot of apolitical young men into sold out right wingers. I’m just rather amused by the idea that the left is about to spend 20 million dollars to resurrect Gamergate of all things, and guarantee that Gen Alpha is going to see even the center-left as scolds and unbelievably stupid.
It’s just mind-blowing. You lost an entire generation of young men by invading hobby spaces and gaming and other things those young men did for fun and to escape politics and life in general. So the solution is to do it harder?
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Interesting, this does seem to explain something I've noticed recently in how little purchase the "War on Porn" that the left and mainstream media seem to be trying make into a big thing has. Considering how many guys watch porn, you'd think they'd defend their access to it passionately, but it doesn't seem to get any reaction from the public. And I doubt that it's because the public at large has untangled the media's spin and can tell that it's not something to panic over, the public is rarely that sophisticated.
A left group did put out those cringe ads which amounted to “vote for us or they’ll take away your porn”: https://nypost.com/2024/10/28/us-news/x-rated-dem-campaign-ad-claims-gop-wants-to-ban-porn-nationwide/
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Isn't that like the Republicans saying "vote for us or the Democrats will ban abortion?"
No, it's the Democrat aligned media that try to make a big deal of Republican controlled legislatures that try to (futilely) put the genie back in the bottle and require age verification for access to porn.
... I'm not sure how that relates?
I'm asking why the contemporary Democrats would expect that to work in the first place. I think you've restated your first post?
Oh, okay, I musunderstood you
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It's weird juxtaposing how ubiquitous porn is with how much its consumers seem to hate it and the people who produce it.
Like even smokers defend their hobby more.
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Yeah, like, even if you're a guy gooning to porn, you don't generally want to be reminded of being a guy gooning to porn instead of having sex or doing something not involving being ruled by your gonads.
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I don't think he's actively trying to gun for that spot, just trying to create good content. Even if he was, he should know that his association with Sam Hyde (aka the Ghost of Kiev, aka the Tiger of Jerusalem, aka the Sandy Hook Mastermind, aka The Candy Man) would preclude him from any serious talks of being a lefty Joe Rogan. Adam gets to not care right now because he's still relatively niche. If he gets a legitimate push toward the mainstream, it'll take 20 minutes for clips of him hanging out and shooting the shit with one of the biggest leftist boogeymen to surface and sink him straight into hell.
I don't think that Sam Hyde is all that well known, or at least much thought of, among the American left. I just checked and there's not even a Jacobin or Current Affairs article about him. Most of the people who do know about him would probably consider him yesterday's news. I recall some mild cancellation attempts during CumTown era on this axis but evidently they didn't much back then, either.
It would be exceptionally easy to make him both well known and universally reviled. Imagine the hit piece a talented killer at the NYT could make about Sam Hyde.
i used to be somewhat of a sam hyde defender, i definitely see him in a more forgiving light than most leftists. It would take me 30 minutes to put together a reel of clips that would make someone think he is double mega hitler. The guy is utterly radioactive in a leftist political context.
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aka austere scholar Sammir al Hayyid...
I just watched the Dear Elon letter and it was hilarious. @Closedshop what else should I watch?
Sam Hyde on debt collection: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oD2gXY4piF4
Arg that just makes me angry. I hate that so many people game these systems and defray costs onto others.
They are predatory though. I'm torn.
Oh I don't agree with it, I just like the surreal nature of the video. Like the commenter says, it's like you're strapped down as a prisoner watching these guys looming over you.
Hah that's fair. It is intense for sure.
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His big projects are World Peace and Kickstarter TV. World Peace 2 is coming out soon too. Some other clips I have saved:
Congratulating OLP Class of 2018
Google Pixel Unboxing
Migrant Crisis Stand Up Routine
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I haven't kept up with his content in recent years but my goto for his classics is Paradigm Shift 2070, where he tricked the organizers of a TedX conference into thinking he was some genius young entrepreneur so they let him speak. His talk includes things like teaching African refugees JavaScript on ipads, state-mandated homosexuality, and farming cheesy sea potatoes that will blow your socks off on the ocean floor:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4jRoatZizQ0?si=TMxHlJkiQSd6MryC
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Sam Hyde hasn't been properly canceled or cast off of Youtube for a long time now. Checking now, his Dear Elon speech remains hosted on the site at over a million views. As I recall he shares some pretty controversial statements inside it, along with a surprising amount of reasoned perspective within the context of Sam Hyde. Canceling ain't gonna happen the way it did in the past.
I don't think TAFS can become Rogan-level big or anywhere close to it* and I consider the DNC mission a fool's errand, or a consultant's wet dream. Perhaps I should have represented that in the post.
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I think this will fail.
The humor on CumTown, and the dirt-bag left in general, is built on deep irony and sarcasm with a huge helping of funny sounding nihilism. It assumes you have a college degree or, if you don't, that college was at least on your roadmap for some time.
CumTown in particular has no sense of achievement, adventure, and purpose. It may be funny, but it's "dudes sitting around smoking weed and cracking jokes" funny.
Rogan is Rogan because he mixes so many different things but the underlying themes add up to a greater whole than the dirt-bag left. Rogan is curious about the universe, likes comedy and joking around, is more curious about culture war ideas, and, of course, wants to be in shape to kick other people's asses and hunt elk. For young men, this is a podcast that promotes within them the desire to set a goal and then take the necessary actions to achieve it. That's the nucleus of manhood.
But let's assume that this CumTown sperm fellow is the one that's going to win the race to the egg of young male voters (wow this metaphor is really getting stretched). What does winning look like? Because the problem for the democrats right now is that they don't have any conception of how young men would fit into their party. The major camps of male voters in the democratic party are: aging hippy boomers or their silicon valley equivalents, virtue signalling bi-coastal (and often bisexual) elites, men who want to be women (trans), and, well, ... women.
Young blue collar men? Please.
Young white collar? Lightly Dem through college years but as soon as they see their tax bill, they start to question things. If any of them run afoul of HR, they go hard MAGA in a hurry. Many here are smart enough to code switch in public (mostly in order to get laid), but you can bet a lot of them love privately smashing that Red Button in the voting both.
Dorky engineer types (the descendants of the Gen-X style "slackers")? Used to be far more reliable, but then left in droves when woke got woke'nd.
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So they’re down two of their three major hosts and the last one standing, being probably the least comedic, is going to be Joe Rogan of the left? I guess Rogan himself is pretty unfunny so this is possible, but Adam lacks the inquisitiveness and masculine virtues necessary for the job. He’s got anti-charisma.
I’d be more willing to bet on someone like Bill Burr, being the liberal Joe Rogan, as he has already gone off the deep end of signalling anti republicanism and anti maga, but still has way more credibility and humor. He’s got a pretty big podcast where he interviews people as well.
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I know about the show in a completely different way than you.
For a brief period Taylor Swift dated a British singer named Matty Healy. Her fans were enraged that she was dating him, because he was a racist who went on The Adam Friedland Show and made a joke about watching violent porn and then a female friend of his walking in on him. One of the hosts suggested that he was watching ghetto gaggers and he agreed that was what he was watching. (This is relevant only because the host later tried to explain that he was the one who suggested the name and Matty didn't actually watch it)
Fans started circulating a petition that Taylor break up with Matty among other insane behavior.
The relationship fell apart very quickly, but Taylor released a double album that included multiple songs about Matty, one of which was a song about how much she hated her fans for clutching their pearls at her dating choices.
Anyway tl;dr: the humorless far left fucking loathes that show so I don't think it could be like Joe Rogan who I don't think is considered an untouchable stain by the far right?
Man, I remember that news story. Mostly, I remember the jokes about how it was pointless to petition Taylor Swift to break up with her boyfriend when she was obviously going to anyways because Taylor Swift.
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Is becoming Bill Maher supposed to be some sort of accomplishment? His schtick mostly seems to be begging the Democrats not to be crazy (and failing) for 1.5 years, and then spending the other 0.5 years during peak election season (midterm and presidential) sheep herding all the audience he grown being "contrarian" into voting Blue No Matter Who anyways because "The Republicans are still worse."
It's working less and less well as time goes on. And every time he goes "I was wrong, here are some of the good points Republicans make" for a few months. But then another election comes up and the mask of reason falls and the pure partisan comes back out.
You missed Step 0, where he's in denial about how crazy Democrats are. See the "menstruating men" discussion with Dennis Prager.
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Purely in terms of career, Bill Maher had a successful 20 year long running show before what you mentioned. He's a legitimate C to B list celerity. He's not a Colbert or Fallon, but he's not nobody.
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To be honest I haven't seen a Bill Maher episode in a very long time, although I imagine it the same as you describe. I didn't want to overdo the Rogan bit and Maher is likely a more realistic goal audience-size wise. I don't think we'll see a Rogan-sized alternative messaging apparatus that the DNC can wield at will. That whole idea also overstates how much Rogan is of the right.
I've said elsewhere that the Dem's would see better returns if they rehabilitated Rogan's image for their own voters, then sent people to persuade Rogan on issues that are important to them. Rogan is not inclined to think of himself as partisan, so if you can teach your voters to stomach some of his disagreeable positions, then you can win space in his head and platform. Not being able to go on Rogan is a major own goal for future D campaigns.
That's what punditry has been used for and yes we suffer for it. This show is light on punditry or commentary as that's secondary to it as an authentic comedy show. It's more a vibe of lefty, which makes it viable as a pathway to Reach Young Men in a different way than younger TikTok propagandists, or more offensive million-dollar-a-day streamers.
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