A Tale of Two Libertarians: Joe Rogan and Vince Vaughn

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | August 5, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | August 5, 2024 |

About a year ago, after quitting Twitter but before fully embracing Threads, I found myself spending considerable time on Reddit. My curiosity led me to click on a post from the Joe Rogan subreddit, inadvertently signaling to Reddit’s algorithm that I was interested in Joe Rogan content (which I’m not). Consequently, I was inundated with Rogan-related posts, which I continued to engage with for one compelling reason: they were overwhelmingly negative. Surprisingly, Joe Rogan was being criticized in his own subreddit. A frequent question posed there, even as recently as yesterday, is: “Is this a Joe Rogan hate sub now?”

This shift in sentiment is not without cause, as evidenced by roughly 70% of the posts: Joe Rogan has undergone a transformation over the last six to eight yeares. His once-lauded free-speech libertarianism has soured, morphing him into a figure reminiscent of a comedian version of Ron DeSantis — though even DeSantis has moderated some of his more controversial stances after Florida voters rebelled. Despite four years having passed since the onset of the pandemic and three since vaccine rollouts began, Rogan remains fixated on these topics. His obsession is so intense that he often spends up to half an hour talking over guests about it, even though most of his audience — like the rest of the country — has moved on.

Rogan’s politics now bears a striking resemblance to RFK Jr. but with a podcast platform. His content has become dominated by culture war rhetoric and an uncomfortable preoccupation with others’ personal lives. While I haven’t watched his latest stand-up special - mostly because he’s a bad comic - the clips I’ve seen are weird. His humor seems to mirror the echo chamber he inhabits, replete with right-wing conspiracy theories, transphobic content, and anti-vaccine misinformation.

“COVID killed the show. Joe lost his mind and never came back,” one Redditor observed. “2015 Joe would not like 2024 Joe.”

Once celebrated for engaging with diverse perspectives, Rogan now caters predominantly to a specific ideological niche. For context, consider Vince Vaughn, who has been making interview rounds promoting his new Bill Lawrence series, Bad Monkey. Vaughn, often questioned about his politics due to their divergence from Hollywood norms, maintains a consistent libertarian stance. While I disagree with his political views, I respect his consistency. When Vaughn advocates for limited government involvement, he applies this principle across the board — to guns, drugs, healthcare, and personal freedoms. Unlike Rogan, Vaughn doesn’t seek to provoke outrage; his message is simply, “Live your life” — and in his NYTimes interview this week, he did something unthinkable for Rogan: He expressed more interest in the interviewer’s opinions than expressing his own.

The contrast between Vaughn and Rogan is stark. While one may disagree with Vaughn’s libertarian views, there’s an undeniable consistency and sincerity to his approach. He doesn’t attempt to inflame cultural divides or court controversy. Rogan, conversely, seems to have abandoned his original principles in pursuit of relevance through increasingly weird and extreme positions.

As one Reddit user put it, “Joe has turned into a Boomer-level Republican midwit. He’s absolutely unbearable now. He legitimately used to be good. Not anymore.”

Ironically, Rogan, who once prided himself on being a free thinker, has fallen into an ideological bubble and become a victim to the very close-mindedness he once criticized. Vaughn, meanwhile, reflects more of what I associate with the live-free-or-die mentality of New Hampshire (and my late father-in-law): Gun-toting hippies who won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.