Joe Rogan & Sam Harris on Twitter Trolls

Hello freak bitches. What comes to, what's the effect on my mind of looking at my Twitter ad mentions? Well I wondered that when you were asking people what kind of questions we should ask on this podcast. Yeah sometimes it's incredibly useful. But I was thinking what are you doing? You're opening yourself up to the green frogs. Yeah, yeah. But I've had both kinds of experience. I've had people send me articles that I would have never found otherwise. Yeah. They're fascinating, super useful and it's just, it's like this is the perfect use of this technology. And then again then I get this river of green frogs and weirdness. But the, so, but the, to the previous point, I pay attention to something for long stretches of time rather than doing something I know is good for me with my attention. I kind of spin the roulette wheel with Twitter and rather often there's just this kind of toxic undercurrent of mental activity that it produces in me that, I mean it doesn't make me feel, I mean it doesn't equip me to do anything better in my life. It doesn't make me feel any better about myself or other people. I mean if it has any net effect it's, it basically grabbed a dozen dials that I can just sort of dimly conceive of in my mind and turn them all a little bit toward the negative. I feel a little bit worse about myself, a little bit worse about my career, a little bit worse about people, a little bit worse about the future, a little bit worse about the fact that I just was doing this when I could have been playing with my kid or writing or thinking productive thoughts or meditating or doing anything that I know is good. So you still do this. I still understand your Twitter compulsion. You argue with people. I found that fascinating periodically. Periodically. I go for weeks without arguing with people. Well, but also you argue with people on your podcast. Well, yeah, but that's different. No, no, no, but I mean it's just on the podcast you'll also be talking about people you're arguing with on Twitter or so the arguing is a part of your... Well, I get trolled a lot on Twitter. I get trolled, I mean you have guests, you have guests who come on your podcast and savage me on the podcast and then troll me endlessly on Twitter and... You mean like Abby? Abby Martin? Well, she doesn't troll. I mean she hates me, but I haven't noticed her trolling me. But no, you... If you got in a room with her, everybody would calm down. She just has... There's people that have radical misconceptions of who you are. Yeah. I'm sure you heard the Josh Zepes, Pat Noswalt thing. Pat Noswalt, don't listen to it. Okay. He went off the rails. Pat went off the rails like Hannibal style. Oh, no, no, no, no. Are you thinking of Andy Kindler? Oh, yes, I am. I'm sorry. Did I say Pat Noswalt? I'm so sorry, Pat. So sorry. How did I connect Pat Noswalt? Yeah, Pat Noswalt. Well, Pat Noswalt is very smart and very reasonable. As is Andy for the most of the time, Andy's kind of crazier. I discovered this very late. I did a... So I kept seeing this guy. I didn't know who he was. I kept seeing him in my Twitter feed. Andy Kindler? Andy Kindler. And then I realized, wait a minute. He is actually... He seems to be... I mean, he's an established comic. He seems to be friends with people who I really respect, who I don't know. Like, you know, like, I mean, Sarah Silverman, who I don't know personally. I mean, we've, you know, communicated a little bit on Twitter, but it's like... I'm just nothing but a pure fan of Sarah. Jim Gaffigan, other big comics, so I totally respect. I don't know how close he is with these people, but he... Basically, he has endless energy for vilifying me as a racist and as a bigot. I mean, he's just... He's a madman. And I discovered... So I did a search of his Twitter feed, and he's got hundreds and hundreds of tweets where he's... He's going after me in the most retail way. So for instance, like, I tweeted out, can anyone recommend 500-seat halls in all these cities? And I think your friend... Is Duncan Trussell a friend of yours? Okay, so Duncan wrote back saying, oh yeah, DM me. I've got a great place in Boston or something. And then Andy Kindler jumped into that thread talking to Duncan, saying, don't help him, Duncan. He's a bigot, right? So like, he's like, this is... Andy Kindler's just got endless energy for this. And then I looked at, you know, what he was doing, and he had been doing it for years and I wasn't aware of it. Just to you? Just to me and Bill Maher. He hates Bill Maher. But then you've got another guy on this podcast, Hunter Matz. Oh, I had him on once. Okay, so he was on here, and I actually had to go back and watch what he said here because I had been getting so much of this on Twitter. And I mean, it's incredibly common. People are tweeting at me saying, why won't you debate Hunter... It's Matz, right? Yeah. Why won't you debate Hunter Matz? I went back and looked at what he said here. You know, half of it, frankly, didn't make any sense. But his attacks on me on Twitter are the most juvenile... It's like the idea that he thinks this is a way he's going to establish a conversation with me by sending me two tweets and then sending me 400, which say, you're scared to debate me, right? Yeah. It's crazy behavior. I think Hunter's on the spectrum. I don't know. He's a very, very, very smart guy, but taking a terrible, socially retarded approach to establishing a debate. And I've contacted Brian Cowan about this, and Brian Cowan contacted Hunter about this. He's like, what the fuck are you doing? And he continues to do it. It's crazy behavior. He said he wouldn't do it anymore, and then he did more. Every time I look, I see him somewhere in there. But then there's this guy, Mike Cernovich, who actually has effects on the real world. I mean, Mike Cernovich is, again, he's a Twitter troll. Again, one of these other guys who's challenged me to debate him. And I, you know, I mean, there's absolutely no possibility of a profitable dialogue. You need to spend less time on Twitter. Yeah, listen to me. But Cernovich is just on 60 Minutes. I mean, he's like, he's in the world, and he's affecting people's perception of trust. I'm just talking about you're a psyche. Oh, yeah. Well, for sure, right? Yeah, so they could come back. It's not, yeah, it's not, it's not the nine times out of 10, looking just makes me think. I mean, it's an illusion because if you met most of these people, if you, if they came up to you at a conference or at a, you know, book signing or so, you know, after a gig of yours, and you saw, you had more information about them, you saw all of the, you know, all of the crazy coming out, you would say, I don't have to pay any attention. There's no reason to pay attention to what this guy is saying. Whereas on Twitter, everything is has the same stature. So whether it's, you know, a Washington Post columnist who's tweeting at me, or some, some guy like Hunter, who I had no idea who he is, but he's telling me I've got something wrong. Everything has the same stature. And he just there's no signal to noise sense of what, you know, well, first of all, you fucked up, because you talked about them. Both of them. You were a handyman five times. And now you got a problem. You talked about them right now on this podcast. This is the first time I've ever mentioned the guy. But I should have talked to you before this. I'm bringing it to you because you, but you created it. It was his, it was his podcast with you that kicked this whole thing off. I certainly didn't think that Hunter was going to do that. And I know for a fact that Hunter is actually a fan of yours. I think what Hunter is trying to do, I don't think it's a smart way. I think what, what he's trying to do. And he, when I was trying to hold his feet to the fire and get some sort of a logical definition of what you do wrong, he really didn't have anything. Yeah. Well, but he thinks he does and he, but did he, when I talked to him about it, did you know what he said? And half of what he said about Dawkins and me was totally wrong. Half of what he said about the relevant biology was wrong. I mean, he's just, he's not, he doesn't have his shit together, but he thinks he does. And there's this, what there's a, there's a level of, of arrogance and, and incivility and just a kind of a lack of charity in interacting with other people's views, which is now kind of getting rebranded on the internet as just, just American can do chutzpah. Right. And it's like, it's given us Trump, right? It's like, you've got a Trump is the ultimate example. He's like the cartoon version of, you know, a person who doesn't know anything relevant to the enterprise who doesn't show any aptitude for civilly engaging with differences of opinion. And this thing gets, you know, amplified to the, to the place of greatest prominence now in human history. Everyone's on social media or many people on social media are playing this same game. And you know, Miss Cernovich is another just malignant example of this, where you have someone who's got a fairly large following. I mean, it's not as big as yours, but it's, you know, it's, it's a very engaged following. I mean, this whole Trump phenomenon has, has, has shown me that Pete, that if a small percentage of one's audience can have like a hundred times the energy of the rest of your audience, like whenever I went against Trump on my podcast or, and this is still the case, the, the level of pain it causes in, in sort of the feedback space is completely out of proportion to the numbers of people who are, who are, you know, on that side of the argument. And it's, so it's incredibly energized, but it's just this weird style of self-promotion where all you do is that you brag about yourself. You say you're the best, you're, and you're, you're, you're, you're someone who has absolutely no basis to back up those claims. And yet an audience thrills to that level of, of arrogance and, and empty boast. It's just bizarre. But well, there's a, there's a big issue, I think online where people find like-minded people, and then they develop these communities where they just support each other and they, they just have these, these gigantic groups of people, I mean, not even necessarily gigantic, but groups of people that find any subject. Like for me, you know what it is? Flat earth. Right. I get trolled by people all day that claim I'm a sellout because I don't believe the earth is flat. This is real. But, but don't think that there's a, there's a, I think this phenomenon that you're describing is both, has really serious negative consequences, but also has some beauty on the same, by the same token, you've got parents all over the world who've got children with rare disease, but they can connect on the internet and bond over that and share tips and doctors and all that stuff. So it is, it's actually, they're both outgrowths of the same kind of phenomenon, but it can be, we see the, the really difficult consequences of this in our politics right now, et cetera, et cetera. I think we're talking about two different things though. You think so? I'm talking about confirmation bias. I'm talking about a bunch of people that get together and say, yeah, obviously I'm woke and the earth is flat and pay attention is an art. Technology allows both. There's an ice ball. Yes. But they're different things. The groups of people that will find, you know, communities where maybe your child has autism and there's some sort of an issue that can be mitigated with diet and parents have had, you know, some success with that and they could, you know, give you some enlightening information and you can communicate with each other and that's nice. It's beautiful. And some of the hashtags that people use that they find searched through, it's great. But you know, these little communities that you bond, they're not, that's those, those ideas, there's no confirmation bias in those ideas, but there's confirmation bias in the idea that Trump is the man. There's confirmation bias in the idea that the earth is flat, you know, and if you just huddle in those little communities and just bark the same noises that everybody else barks, there's some sort of sense of community in that too. Yes, absolutely. And people love that. They love being a part of a fucking team, even as a stupid team of green frogs. And you don't have to, you don't have to listen to other people's views and you get deeply, deeply entrenched. I think we're seeing, we're seeing this all through our politics and media right now. Well, you also see when you go to those people's pages, which I do often, I don't engage with people in a negative way online very often, very, very rarely. Do you not look at your ad mentions? I do a little bit. You know what, man? I just like to just go on about my day. I've found that the negative consequences that you're discussing, I can see. It's rare that I go down the rabbit hole and I go for days without looking at ad mentions. I mean, it's more that if I publish something, if I ask for feedback, I want to see the feedback. It's not necessarily that there's anything wrong. I mean, just as your friend, I mean, I feel like there's nothing wrong with, I look at my ad mentions, but I just- But you function in a very different space. I mean, you're not pushing controversial stuff out there. No, definitely not. Definitely not. So I agree. I stay offline. I'm sorry, go ahead. I was just more worried about, again, back to your psyche. Like, it feels like you need a little bit of a middle ground. I stay offline after UFCs for the most part. That's when I get the most crazy people, especially if there's any sort of a controversial decision. But are they criticizing you for something you said? Oh, yeah, they get fucking mad at my commentary. They'll just disagree with who I thought won her. And then they're so fucking vicious about it. I'm just like, just yell. Just yell in your own space. So you don't want to see any of that. There's too many people. You're dealing with millions and millions of people and who knows how many of them are rational. What you're dealing with, there's a bit that I had in one of my specials where I was talking about the number of people that are stupid in the world. If you get a room full of 100 people, the idea that one person isn't a complete fucking idiot, of course. You're being very charitable. Right. I'm being charitable. But if you do that, we're talking about 300 million people in the United States plus. That's 3 million fucking idiots. So if you have 3 million fucking idiots and all your ad mentions, if you look at your ad mentions and 3 million comments are saying you're a fucking moron, and just too many people, the numbers are not manageable. The numbers of human beings you interact with online are not manageable. So anytime anything gets negative or insulting, I just check out. Next, next, next. I don't pay attention because you can't. But if I fucked up and I know I fucked up, I think one of the most important things that I do is I admit that I fucked up. I talk about it and I apologize and I say, look, I'm flawed. I'm human. I'm in a mistake. Sorry. Like let the fucking chaos ensue in the comments. Let all the people call you a show and a whatever. Let all that happen, but don't let it in. Like you're letting it in and then you stew on it and you have to bring up Hunter and all these other people. You're letting them way too deep. No, no, no. I mean, no. Perhaps I gave a false impression of how under my skin this has gotten. Just the fact that you talked about it at all though. It's too much. Well, no, but I think it's a huge consequence. I think it's given us Trump. This way, the fact that this style of communication is attractive to so many people. The fact that the bluff and bluster and empty boasts and lies, being caught in lies without consequence. Right. The fact that people never admit mistakes. What you just described, you do and which I do, you make a mistake. You want to hear about it. You want to correct it as quickly as possible. That is the antithesis of what we're seeing now in this space. When has Trump admitted a mistake? But isn't it the difference being that neither you nor I have any desire to control anything? I don't want to be the leader of anything. Well, no, but you want effective ... You want good ideas to win. Sure. You want the truth to win. You want the truth to propagate. You want facts to propagate. You want to be able to correct errors, whether they're your own or others, especially when they're consequential. I think that we need a common ethic where lying has real consequences. Many people are trying to figure out what's the antidote to fake news. Well, one antidote is to be caught lying has to be devastating for your career. Right? Politically, journalistically, academically, as a public intellectual. To be caught in a whopping lie will require, at minimum, some serious atonement. And historically, it has been. Yes, absolutely. It still is in many spheres. We have slipped those rails, just to a degree that I never thought possible. We're going light speed right into the woods. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about ... People have figured out how to just use dishonesty as extra fuel. I mean, it's like the nitrous oxide boost in those hacky cars. We can use this stuff. The way you behave when you get caught, which is to say, just go fuck yourself, just redounds to your credibility among your tribe. This guy is so powerful, he so fully doesn't give a shit what people think, that he can catch him in a lie and just watch how he gets out of it. When I was bringing up these guys like Cernovich, I mean, this is ... I actually ... I trolled Cern ... I decided to troll Cernovich one day, and I thought it was hilarious. It was just nothing but fun. There was nothing toxic about that. He was obsessed. But the thing that bothers me is that this has real political consequences. Do you think that this is a time period where we're in this sort of adolescent stage of communication online, where you can get away with saying things that are dishonest, and that there might be some sort of a way to mitigate that in the future? There might be some ... I don't think we should act like dishonesty and bluff and bluster, to use the phrase you used before, is somehow new to the human repertoire. I get that ... The acceptance of it seems to be, though. I think we're in a period where that is true, and I think it is aided and abetted by ... I think technology and social networks. I agree with your diagnosis on many levels, but I was having an interesting conversation with a guy that you introduced me to, Joseph Goldstein, who's an eminent meditation teacher, had become my meditation teacher, old friend of Sam's. He was ... We were talking about the current political situation. He used a phrase that I liked when I was asking him what he thought about it. He said, I'm kind of slotting into geological time. I think that actually makes some sense, not to say that what should ... What does that mean? Meaning that I'm just viewing it from a far ... I'm widening the lens to look at the broad scope of human history, to see that over time, we've got these ups and downs. He's getting to the top of the mountain near Denver with a big bucket of margaritas. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. They're slotting in. They're slotting in. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.