On Saturday night, Joe Rogan started glitching.
Minutes into his live comedy special “Burn the Boats,” the movements of his mouth did not match what he was saying. Audio went in and out. Certain phrases repeated, Max Headroom-style. Someone as conspiracy-minded as Rogan might wonder: Was this payback for his criticism of vaccines and lockdowns? Is the mainstream media behind this? Aliens?
More likely, just boring old technical difficulties. Livestreaming remains a work in progress for Netflix. Following stand-up hours by Chris Rock and Katt Williams, Rogan became the third comic to try this experiment, putting out his first special in six years. You could see the logic of getting him to do it during election season but oddly, he didn’t address the latest developments in the presidential campaign. Rogan made more news last week on his podcast, where he suggested that the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump has been “memory holed” and that Kamala Harris could win. He also suggested that the reason President Biden sometimes seems more coherent is that he uses a body double.
Part of the reason that Rogan has built the most popular podcast in the world is that he promises to explore ideas that he says the mainstream media ignores or downplays. Was the Moon landing faked? Are aliens landing in Roswell the reason we invented fiber optics? Does wearing a mask make you seem like less of a man? Joe is on it.
And yet, there is one question you don’t hear investigated on his podcast, one relevant to his success but taboo in certain precincts of the comedy world: Is Joe Rogan good at standup comedy?
That can be a dangerous one for some comics to touch on because Rogan has become a powerful gatekeeper, the owner of a club in Austin, Texas, and a host who drives viewers to specials and movies. Rogan tends to be talked about as a political or sports figure, a guru for bros, a symptom of a culture rampant with conspiracy, transphobia and misinformation. But his current notoriety is all built on a decades-long career of standup, which provides a contrast with his other media job.
Whereas he performs patient thoughtfulness in his podcasts, his standup is frantic, animated, full of unmodulated yelling. His eyes pop out and his face reddens. Midway through “Burn the Boats,” a jagged line of perspiration forms on his tight yellow shirt, making him look like Charlie Brown on steroids. Even if it seems too hammy for a close-up, there’s a cartoonish aspect to his persona that tells you to not take him seriously.
His jokes rely on the most well-worn of stand-up subjects. Pat-downs at the airport. The comedy of old people having sex. Describing a drug trip, man. When it comes to sex, men (have you heard?) are different than women. The variation with Rogan is an additional sentence mocking the straw man of those who think the differences are purely cultural.
His joke constructions are also familiar — the things you think but don’t do, the words you can’t say. His leans into stereotypes that have cracked up drunken club crowds for generations. When he discovers from a genetic test that he has some African ancestry, you just know a joke about penis size is on its way.
In a possible effort to exploit the live aspect of the show, he tries crowd work, asking an audience member to speak up when they yell out something after he worries aloud about the influence of China. Then when they shout out “cobalt mine,” he appears oddly irritated. “Congratulations,” he sneers. “You know a thing.”
Contempt for the crowd is a theme. He pokes fun at the idea that he has any responsibility for the information he hosts on his podcast. “If you’re getting your vaccine info from me,” he asks, “Is it really my fault?”
In one of his more persuasive self-deprecating riffs, he says the funniest way for him to die would be from Covid. “The memes would never end,” he says.
It will surprise no one that Rogan brings up getting canceled and reminds the crowd that this is “just jokes.” This of course is key to his brand, the dangerous comic bucking conventional wisdom, annoying the scolds and owning the libs. There is plenty in this show to get people mad. He says he believes in Pizzagate. He compares gay men to mountain lions (“I am glad they exist, but I don’t want to be surrounded by them”) and says slurs for cheap laughs.
Not only will nothing he say here get him in real trouble, but it bonds him to his audience, who are told repeatedly that critics are humorless and the media is unfair, deceptive and weird. Long before the Kamala Harris campaign embraced “weird” as an insult, Rogan used it, perhaps more than any other. He doesn’t set up his conspiracies with a web of connections. He does it by saying we live in weird times.
While his stand-up here is cliché, his podcast is not. It’s less dogmatic or more paradoxical than his fiercest critics allow. He can make the ugliest jokes about shooting homeless people in one episode with the comic Tom Segura, then have a serious discussion about the stigma that this population faces with Alan Graham. (Graham created a nonprofit organization in Austin with affordable housing and meals for people living on the street.)
On his podcast, Rogan can be deeply cynical (about the media and the government), then staggeringly gullible (name a conspiracy). He can also have long, interesting conversations if the subject is one of his preoccupations (drugs, Mixed Martial Arts) like his recent talk about the Nazis’ role in the creation of psychedelics with the author Norman Ohler.
Rogan is interested in ideas on his podcast, whereas in his new special, he prefers playing dumb. He describes his mind wandering when talking to Elon Musk, whom he calls the smartest person alive, which might be the most unintentionally effective troll of the special.
As a showcase for him as a comic, the live format did not benefit Rogan. He came off more assured in his earlier specials, and even, occasionally, a little introspective. In his first one, “Triggered,” a title that now seems like a parody of a title for a special by him, he even gives voice to a critique that people have of him. “I sense a lot of macho posturing,” he says, articulating it. Then he agrees with them and describes how we all respond to what people like and veer away from what they don’t.
Rogan has found a podcast audience that likes conspiracies and picking culture war battles with the left. And he gives it to them. But he also indulges his own obsessions and eccentricities. That’s missing in his conventional comedy. You can sense him busily trying to serve an audience in his stand-up. He’s giving people what has already worked. And he’s hustling doing it. But comedy is trickier than politics. Audiences want more than just what they want. Sounds like nonsense, I know. But we live in weird times.
