A twitter exchange worth following up: the thing about a guy like joe rogan is that his style of podcast — endless, full of banter — is a friendship substitute for people. completely orthogonal to politics, fans who think he’s been hard done may rally emotionally around him as if standing up for a personal friend.— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) February 9, 2022 Right—amiable neighbor/bar mate/co-worker is his secret. He’s not a dick like Tucker or Limbaugh. Just an genial, widely ignorant person—that’s easy listening for many people.— Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) February 9, 2022 Yes, and a key part of that is that the anti-system stuff is refracted thru his “oh, that’s interesting” persona. He’s letting the crackpots do the hard pushing, he’s just an everyman “learning” along with
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the thing about a guy like joe rogan is that his style of podcast — endless, full of banter — is a friendship substitute for people. completely orthogonal to politics, fans who think he’s been hard done may rally emotionally around him as if standing up for a personal friend.
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) February 9, 2022
Right—amiable neighbor/bar mate/co-worker is his secret. He’s not a dick like Tucker or Limbaugh. Just an genial, widely ignorant person—that’s easy listening for many people.
— Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) February 9, 2022
Yes, and a key part of that is that the anti-system stuff is refracted thru his “oh, that’s interesting” persona. He’s letting the crackpots do the hard pushing, he’s just an everyman “learning” along with his audience.
— Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) February 9, 2022
sure, but if you have a brother in a bad crowd, doing something your brother will perceive as fucking over his friends you don’t like might not lure him away, however objectively not cool it is for him to hang out with them.
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) February 9, 2022
Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory - all of them about groups of friends (4 or more) whose lives are heavily intertwined with each other (unrealistically so). Even shows like NCIS and hospital dramas share this quality to some extent.
— Mitch Schindler (@MitchSchindler) February 9, 2022
I've experienced/read when someone on Twitter has a lot of followers and that person is criticized, their followers rally around the person being followed like a cult. No matter how justified or reasoned the negative feedback of the person followed. /fin
— Jerry Bartos (@jerry_b5495) February 9, 2022
Astute observation. Relatedly, I think, I keep coming back to the thought that so much turns on a longstanding and pervasive loneliness that is hardly recognized or acknowledged.
— LM Sacasas (@LMSacasas) February 9, 2022
"Friendship substitute" is a wonderful description. I would add that Ben Anderson wrote a paper last year about the politics of boredom and populism as a "promise of intensity." People begin to conceive "freedom" as anything that relieves the tedium.
— I am superfluous (@Sandwichman_eh) February 9, 2022