Joe Rogan and the Age of Loneliness
By: Mahesh Louverture
Tags: Podcasting, Alienation, Analysis, Joe Rogan, Idea

There is real value in exploring the societal function of new trends. What is Facebook, to someone, who is as smart as us, but does not have words such as “social media”, “ad revenue”, or “friend list” in their vocabulary?

The least dangerous trend in the technology and media we have seen in the past decade seems to be the medium of podcast. We all know, how Tik Tok is designed to release dopamine into our brains with every swipe down, alternating between videos of underage girls dancing to a catchy pop song and bald 40-somethings telling us a pun about boats, then proceeding to sing a Sea Shanty. Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, even E-Mail, seem to be designed to give us that amazing feeling of receiving another Like. Maybe it’s even going to be a Like from someone we fancy.

I still constantly do it. I upload a picture of myself on Instagram and spend the next two days constantly checking who liked my picture. Did I generate more interaction than the last time around? Why or why not? Of course, we know of the addictive quality of these mediums, yet we still fall prey to their more unsavory sides.

In this jungle of apps trying to gain our attention, Podcasts with a capital P seem to be a real fresh breath of air.

90-minute conversations about philosophy, life, sports, politics, fashion, cat pictures, or whatever else tickles one's fancy are generally considered Podcasts. Joe Rogan will talk about the experience of taking some obscure mindblowing drug with a brain surgeon, while you listen in to this perfectly normal conversation between two people. Chapo Trap House will make a funny joke about millennials with bad haircuts and while 3 of them break out into laughter, you listen and grin along. But why do we listen to these people?

Most of the time we aren’t learning something radically new, that we want to implement into our life.

I believe Podcasts are the thing that replaced a world without friendships.

1 in 5 millennials doesn’t have any friends. People are losing their virginities later and later in life. Our ability to interact with people in authentic ways has diminished greatly with SMS, Messaging Apps, Social Media, E-Mail, and many other new digital tools disrupting the way we communicate over and over again.

Granted, new ways of communication aren’t a bad thing per se.

But looking at our good friend Joe Rogan can give us some real insight into how people generally see and use the medium of Podcasts. Joe isn’t super funny. He clearly isn’t the smartest person. He holds a lot of bad political opinions in my opinion.

But he has 1 thing going for him. He is just really friendly. As an archetype, he is maybe the perfect friend, uncle, or father. He is into cool stuff like weed and drugs, he works out, he is successful and he says “Wow, that’s amazing” a lot. He is the perfect friend. Someone we like to listen to. Someone who encourages other people’s ideas with relatively little judgment.

We don’t listen to Joe for his clearly non-brilliant takes. We listen to him because he is the friend we don’t have. Where in the past, our 24 hours of the day were filled with work, chores, sleeping, physical activity, and friends, the latter has now been replaced with Podcasts. In the Age of Loneliness, the Age of Alienation, we humans seek human connection wherever we may get it. And Joe Rogan telling us about hunting moose is the closest we have to human connection right now.

Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker and any grammar feedbacks are always welcome!