Joe Rogan is keeping Austin weird. And not in a good way.
The massively popular podcaster, who also happens to be a stand-up comic, moved to Texas during the pandemic, opened his own comedy club in Austin, and filmed his first live globally streamed stand-up special Saturday night for Netflix in San Antonio, where the comedian praised his Texan BFFs Alex Jones and Elon Musk and sounded off on some weird ideas of his own. Just how weird?
Although he covered lots of topics, Rogan fixated throughout the hour on men receiving sexual pleasure in ways the comedian felt were unnatural.
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Rogan, who joked onstage about the possibility of alien life long before he became the world’s richest and most popular podcaster, returned to that topic once more, saying he’s “so invested” in aliens existing that “if they’re not, I’m going to feel real f---ing stupid.” But this time around, he zeroed in on the propensity for abduction stories to include anal probes, and mused that what these abductees aren’t telling us is how the aliens gave them the best orgasms of their lives.
“I just want to be real clear. I believe in trans people,” Rogan insisted. “Because I think the world is strange and nature is strange, and nature can throw you a curveball and you believe you’re in the wrong body. And I fully support your right as an adult to do whatever you want that makes you happy. I believe in freedom, and I believe in love. But I also believe in crazy people.”
Rogan wondered why “suddenly every man in a dress is stunning and brave,” and blamed pop culture of his lifetime for depictions of killers as crazier when they wore dresses, citing Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and Little Red Riding Hood. “It’s almost like a pervert wizard waved a magic spell on the whole world,” he remarked. “With a wave of this wand, you can walk through the women’s locker room with a hard c--k, and anybody who complains is a Nazi. Abracadabra! And it just worked.”
Like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, Rogan needed his viewers to know that he’s not “weird,” it’s the “new reality” that’s “weird,” arguing: “You can’t just put lipstick on, now you can s--t in the women’s room.” When his fans cheered him on, he grabbed a drink of water and chuckled, “All of a sudden, it’s a hate rally.”
He then told a story about watching a hairy “dude in a dress” at a reproductive rights rally screaming at a cop, and suggested: “First of all, that’s probably not even a real trans person. That’s probably a Republican. That’s probably an agent provocateur sent in to discredit your organization with ridiculous behavior. Look. Alex Jones taught me about this s--t 20 years ago.”
“Listen, he’s right about a lot—he was wrong about that one thing, though,” indirectly referencing the defamation lawsuit from the parents of Sandy Hook’s mass shooting victims virtually bankrupting Jones for suggesting the 2012 massacre never actually happened.
"Joe Rogan: Burn the Boats. Joe Rogan at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas. Cr. Troy Conrad/Netflix © 2024"
Troy Conrad/NetflixEarlier in the live hour, Rogan playfully riffed on his own reputation as a prominent conspiracy theorist. “We lost a lot of people during COVID, and most of them are still alive,” he said to cheers and an applause break. “Yeah. Right? Right! There’s a lot of people I don’t f--- with anymore. Before COVID, I would’ve told you that vaccines are the most important invention in human history. After COVID, I’m like, I don’t think we went to the moon. I think Michelle Obama’s got a dick. I think Pizzagate is real. I think there’s direct energy weapons in Antarctica.”
The audience howled its approval, only for Rogan to quickly backtrack about the former first lady. “I’m just kidding. I don’t think Michelle Obama’s got a dick. But I believe all that other s--t.”
The comedian would later go further in taking the piss out of himself, noting that “the funniest way for me to die is if I die from COVID” and reacting to criticism from Prince Harry about his anti-vaccine misinformation. “My first thought was: F---. Did I? I might’ve!” he declared, grinning. “But here’s my take on that, sincerely: If you’re getting your vaccine advice from me, is that really my fault?”
“That’s not my job, kids. I’m a professional s--t-talker, OK?” he offered up in his own defense. “Some of the things I say make sense. A lot of them don’t. It’s up to you to figure out what’s what. That’s the fun part.”
While he complained that his harshest critics have taken his words out of context, he also admitted that “if you take me out of context, I give you a lot to work with,” and that when he watched a YouTube compilation of all of the times he uttered the N-word on his podcast, he thought he might be racist.
And finally, to critics claiming he’s homophobic, Rogan replied: “I’m not even remotely homophobic. I’m the opposite. I wish I was gay,” believing his life would be easier and allow him to say the F-slur for gay people again. “Oh, how I miss it so.”
He conceded that homophobia exists still for gay men, but added: “Nobody hates gay women, and that’s why you can say ‘dyke.’” Then he argued for making more jokes in that vein: “If you want equal love, you have to have equal jokes, because that’s how we find out if you’re annoying.”
He’s not hateful, Rogan insisted, because, “I love gay men. But I think about gay men the same way I think about mountain lions. I’m happy they’re real, but I don’t want to be surrounded by them. They’re a bunch of dudes who f--- dudes. I don’t like my chances!”
He went on to use slurs for gay people and developmentally disabled people, all the while defending himself by saying, “I’m more afraid of Black people than I am r----ds. Duh. Don’t you know how jokes work, f----t? It’s all just supposed to be funsies. Words are for fun, kids.” His suggestion? “I think you should have to pay money to use the most offensive words and then that money goes to cancer research.”
Rogan did not disclose how much of his Netflix paycheck he planned to donate for all of the slurs he used in his live hour.
