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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.
I remained timescale agnostic in my definition, so that doesn't contradict any part of my reasoning. As for blocking ideas, there are a few ways you can do that with propaganda, but they're limited. You can spam your ideas to drown others, or you can debunk / or prebunk the ones you don't like and/or mark them as low-status, but if by "blocking" you're referring to literally preventing other ideas from reaching their audience, than I'd argue you're the one conflating concepts and "approaching this from an angle where propaganda is something I don't think it is".
How is this a response to my point? I specifically said they won't need to change to block him.
Exactly what my argument would predict.
I wasn't trying to contradict any of your reasoning. That's why I said that propaganda is what you say, and then I elaborated further on what you were missing to understand my point.
By blocking I mean people with certain views and impulses can't have an outlet to vent their emotions or resonate with others.
As I tried to get across before, Rogan acts as a lightning rod for those people who fall outside the mainstream media ecosystems. He amplifies their impulses and ideas through resonance. Without him they are much like the now splintered audience of TotalBiscuit. They hate many things about the current state of affairs, but they don't do it because they are told to do so by Rogan. They already did. That's why they are there.
Then I don't understand your contention about the limits of propaganda. So long as the left can exercise power over existing mediums and curate media ecosystems, they just continue winning. They dropped the ball on Rogan, but similar things have happened in the past. I mean, how could Rush Limbaugh have been so popular whilst laughing about gay people dying from AIDS? Why can't the left have their own radio shock jock?
Fixating on the idea that the 'left' can't have a Joe Rogan, Rush Limbaugh or anyone else when the only reason such people have relevance in this context is that they are not 'left' seems asinine. Due to total cultural dominance the left have half the population isolated and starved of emotional resonance. This population then gravitates like flies to whatever guy shows them light. And even then half the flies are too scared to go against the mainstream programming anyway.
To me this all seems like a product of total left victory. Sure, it's a problem to set up a concentration camp for your enemy. And the partisans hiding in the forest are an issue. But you still won the war.
Oh ok. I thought when you said "You're approaching this from an angle where propaganda is something I don't think it is" meant that you are disagreeing with me, and that your elaboration was less "oh, we disagree less than I thought" and more "here's what you missed, and these factors is what lead you astray in your reasoning".
I mean, it sounds like you know exactly what I'm saying, you'd just prefer to talk about something else. Which is fine, for the future you can just say something like "yes, there are limits to what they can do, but it's more than enough for them to get what they want".
Anyway, I don't think it's asinine when they're spending so much time crying about no having a Joe Rogan. If it was not important for them, they wouldn't want to have one.
They're not asking for a carbon copy of Rogan, except with leftwing opinions, they're asking for someone with the same cultural relevance.
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