Remember the orc cop movie? Will Smith starred in a buddy cop flick for Netflix called Bright in 2017 that imagines an alternate present-day Los Angeles where orcs and elves coexist with humans. Smith plays a human cop who is controversially partnered up with an orc cop. Ridiculous, except for one very realistic moment. While at home, Smith’s cop character and his significant other have a laptop open to something that is intended to be playing the role of a news radio broadcast or a TV anchor. It was neither. It was Joe Rogan. This is the only thing I remember from the movie because it struck me as a surprisingly perceptive choice by the filmmakers. Joe Rogan’s podcast is shockingly popular, and anyone who’s ever been on YouTube has probably been recommended one of his podcast video uploads, which he posts about five times a week and which usually hit over two hours in duration. The Joe Rogan Experience was the most popular podcast on Apple in 2019. The second-most popular? The New York Times’ The Daily. Rogan’s most famous episode, a nearly-three-hour-long interview with Elon Musk during which Musk smoked a joint, has been watched almost 30 million times on YouTube.
Joe Rogan is not only proof that we still do have a monoculture, a small set of enormously popular shared entertainments, but he’s also proof that those pieces of monoculture exist in the shadow of legacy media, ignored and even scoffed at by the people with the most proximity to the old monoculture. The pieces of monoculture that are emerging are a shadow image of the ones that are fading in influence, enjoyed en masse by a parallel audience that mostly doesn’t cross paths, digitally or physically, with the audiences of things like the Daily. Bright was critically dragged, but the filmmakers got that one thing right. They knew which content people actually spend their time with, rather than wishfully thinking people spend their time with the same content that Hollywood filmmakers do. This disconnect was on display last week in the aftermath of the Times’ democratic nominee endorsement extravaganza across their paper, their The Daily podcast and their "The Weekly" TV show. When Joe Rogan admitted on his show that he’ll probably vote for Bernie Sanders, a moment that the Sanders campaign turned into an ad, the reaction was shock. Why use Rogan? Is he really that popular?
His influence was a blindspot to many, at least on my feed. Many in the media objected to the Sanders campaign using the endorsement from Rogan, who has said transphobic comments on his show in the past. He’s also famously given a platform to cranks, right-wingers and racists. It's partly this commitment to problematic "freethinking" that has forced Rogan into the shadow of the media establishment, but it's also his audience. “Most of Rogan’s critics don’t really grasp the breadth and depth of the community he has built, and they act as though trying is pointless,” Devin Gordon wrote in the Atlantic last year. "The bedrock issue, though, is Rogan’s courting of a middle-bro audience that the cultural elite hold in particular contempt—guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw."In this way, Rogan reminds me of FaZe Clan, a pop culture phenomenon that might seem like it's happening in a parallel dimension to the one that most of you live in.
FaZe Clan have more YouTube subscribers than Rogan even, and their has fueled their growth from content to streetwear to e-sports to talent management and marketing. The monoculture didn’t end. It might just be a blind spot for you.
The shorter stuff
I'm a sucker for stories about extreme wellness regimens, and this profile of skater Alex Olson Is the one for the week. (GQ)
Speaking of Wim Hof, Doreen St. Félix's review of Gwyneth Paltrow's new Netflix series "The Goop Lab" is gently positive, calling is "soulful sponcon." (NYer)
One of the funniest and most underrated movies of the century, MacGruber, is getting a streaming TV reboot at Peacock. (Deadline)
Everyone made a big deal about the courtside photo of Bill Clinton, A$AP Ferg and Michael Strahan at the Nets game last week, but to me all three members of Genesis reuniting at a Knicks game was the bigger news. (RS)
The last artist to sweep the four biggest awards of the night before Billie Eilish did on Sunday? Soft rock legend Christopher Cross in 1981. (EW)
Am I the only one that finds it weird that the Vine creators decided to name their TikTok killer Byte, even though the name of TikTok parent company is Bytedance? (Substack)
Netflix lands Bradley Cooper's follow-up to A Star Is Born. (THR)
Do I need to read the viral Twitter thread before I see the movie? (VF)
Cinematic Universes dominate the most read Wikipedia articles of 2019. (Twitter)
Is Worth already in next year's Oscar race? (VF)
I LOVED "Ren and Stimpy" as a kid and had never even heard of the creator before reading this very troubling item. (NYP)
A funny trend I'm noticing is schlock movies made from major IP like Birds of Prey and Sonic The Hedgehog have pretty successful, star-studded soundtracks. This Ty Dolla $ign-featuring song from the latter is...not bad. (YouTube)
Another masterclass in timing from Netflix. (NYP)
I can't really envision nice guy Chance The Rapper as a prankster. "Punk'd" had danger! (THR)
A fantastic obituary in the Times' Overlook series about Eagles- and Jackson Browne-adjacent singer-songwriter Judee Sill. (NYT)