Joe Rogan talks to Colin Moriarty about the fallout from his joke controversy

Hello freak bitches. First of all thank you so much. My pleasure. This is amazing. Well Dave Rubin recommends you. And I listen to Dave Rubin's, I don't listen to a whole lot of people's recommendations, but Dave Rubin's one of them. He's been an amazing figure in my life just in the last lesson, even a month. He kind of was like my savior when everyone was, you know, kicking me while I was down. He was the one that kind of reached a handout and so I owe him a great deal. Well we should kind of explain what kicking you while you're down means. It's more silly to me than anything because it doesn't really make sense. But you tweeted a joke and it's a real simple joke. Jamie, see if you can pull up the joke. This is what happened. Colin tweeted a joke about a day without a woman. And everybody knows that a day without a woman was like that day without a Mexican thing. Where you were supposed to like, well imagine if there were no women. Well, if there were no women first of all there would be no fucking people. So yeah, women are super important. So you just write this tweet joke, peace and quiet, hashtag a day without a woman. I would laugh. I would think it was funny and I would move on and that's it. So then, hold on a second, put that, go above that. Go above that. Look at that. Sent this tweet which was roundly condemned as sexist. Yeah, not really true if you leave the gaming industry but roundly condemned in the gaming industry for sure. Outside of that, people, I think normal everyday people that don't have an axe to grind about literally everything, found it, you know, read it, maybe groaned or maybe laughed and then kept going about their day like a normal person. You're not allowed to have any personality anymore. No. If you work for any kind of a company that is in any way public where you can be targeted, you can say, oh, that's the fucking guy. Go get him. Like anything that's remotely controversial. I mean, that is really remotely controversial. It's just Al Bundy. Yeah, I mean, it's not even a good joke. And, you know, yeah, I heard you and Jim Norton talking about it. By the way, that video, someone clipped that out and put it up on some YouTube channel. That video is going to be a relic in my family forever. Everyone was like, I can't believe this. What is going on? This is so great. So I really do appreciate you stepping up. And when I got your DM, by the way, on Twitter, I was like, this is what an amazing turn of events this has been for me. So I really am appreciative of you again. I just want you to know that. Thank you. Stop saying it. You're making me uncomfortable. I'm sorry. But at the same time, you know, I was in bed with my girlfriend actually when I wrote it and I showed it to her. And I was like, it's kind of funny, right? It's kind of stupid. And she laughed. She's an ER nurse and she works the overnight shift. So she was just getting in the bed as I was getting up. And she's like, yeah, that's funny. Then we didn't really think twice about it. I sent it. I got in the shower. I went about my day. And then when I got to work, I realized that it was a much bigger deal than I had thought. And then everything fell apart and then was rebuilt very quickly. Well, you resigned from the company that you worked for. Yeah, I founded it. I co-founded the company. And you resigned because of that. Yeah. Yeah. Other reasons, too. But I mean, that was definitely the straw that broke the camel's back for me. What in the fuck, man? Yeah, it was just I felt like... How is it possible that in this day and age, that simple tweet... By the way, if you reverse the sexes in that tweet, there's not a single man that would complain. And if he did, he's not a man. Yeah, I agree. And I say also that if a person that wasn't a self-described like moderate, conservative or libertarian sent that joke, it also wouldn't have gotten the firestorm. That's the thing, Joe. You don't think a liberal man wouldn't have gotten a rash of shit and been sort of kicked out of the community? Maybe in a different place, but not in the gaming industry, which is almost completely hyper-liberal. So I've had a target on my back for years. And that's, I think, kind of the point that's lost on some people, is that this was just an opportunity. No one was offended by this joke. No one was aghast. Like I said on Reuben, the second time I was on there, I said, like, no one was crying in their shower, losing sleep, tossing and turning over this joke. Any joke was. Well, I hope so, because we should find that person. Find that person and study them in a lab. But to me, I was like, no, this is, I mean, it was clear a few hours later when I finally realized what was happening. I'm like, this is, they're in for the kill now. This is, they found their way to get me. So why do you think they wanted to, quote unquote, get you? Because, you know, I live in San Francisco. I've lived there for 10 years. I was born and raised on Long Island, but I went to college in Boston and then I moved to San Francisco. And it is as cartoonishly liberal as everyone thinks it is. So it's, and the gaming industry is there. The gaming media, the people that write about games and cover them and do all that kind of stuff, they're largely there. And it's a huge echo chamber. They don't like when people penetrate the echo chamber. And I made a name for myself in the industry over years. I was the senior editor of the biggest gaming website in the world for years. What website is that? IGN.com. And I was the senior editor there. And I made a name for myself not only with criticism and with long form pieces, but basically, I was writing pieces about political correctness in 2011 and 2012. People going after game developers, people going after all these things, and me kind of standing up and saying, this isn't okay, this character assassination. A good example for everyone out there that doesn't know games, there's this game called Borderlands 2. One of the developers was giving an interview about it. He, and this was back in I think 2011, he said something to the nature of this mode, this particular mode in the game is accessible for everyone. It's like a girlfriend mode if you want your girlfriend to come play. This was like a, he said, he insinuated that women can't play games and don't know how to play games by using the term girlfriend mode. And people went after this guy and tried to get him. And I wrote this piece saying, what the hell is everyone doing? This guy just is trying to explain something, he's not a sexist, why do you make these assumptions based on this one thing about him, and why do you want to ruin someone? And that's the whole thing, they want to ruin people. So I was outspoken about this, and I was outspoken for my support of Mitt Romney, and I was outspoken about my support for Gary Johnson and my outspoken, so they don't like that. They don't like that stuff, and I think that's pretty clear now. So you feel like there's a sort of a reinforced type of thinking, like a very liberal, reinforced type of thinking that you must subscribe to if you want to be a part of this? Yes, it's an orthodoxy, it's a complete and utter orthodoxy. And what's so kind of nice about this, like the unintended consequence that I think is the silver lining of the dark cloud, is people from the outside now saw firsthand what I had been saying for a long time, which was like I was kind of on the fringe, I was kind of being pushed out. And I got literally thousands of people tweeting at me, and Facebook messaging me, and doing everything, being like, wow, this is fucking crazy, these people really are out to get you based on that. You know, you would think I said some horrible, just offensive, just truly awful thing. Do you think they're really out to get you, or do you think they're capitalizing on a moment where they feel like you have a target on you, and they're like kick him, he's down, we got him. But this reaction culture that we have, like this overreaction culture that we find ourself in today, it really does seem to foster that kind of behavior, that people really like it when someone gets caught doing something, or when someone says something inappropriate, when you can just point the finger and then everybody can pile on. Yeah, I think, well, let me put it a different way, because I think you're probably right in the sense that I never gained the benefit of the doubt with this group, let's put it that way, right? So it was one thing, it was just the one thing that Domino was tipped in, and they were down, as opposed to, that's why I brought up the example before of one of the people that they actually liked within that insular industry said the same thing, they might have been aghast, but they might have reached a handout or given that person a second chance. So I think that that all plays into the, you know, I have the Gadsden flag as my Twitter, I kind of had that first since 2009. I have, you know, I've not been shy. The Gadsden flag being, don't tread on any of the snake. Right, exactly. So there are just certain things that made me very different than other people in the industry, and I definitely think that that plays a huge role in it. Well, your Twitter name is No Taxation. Yep, which is a reference to the American Revolution, which I know you know, a lot of people think, you know, no taxes, I'm like, that's not what it means. I can't fit No Taxation without representation on Twitter, that's why it doesn't say that. Yeah, that would be a long-ass email. Yeah, and unnecessarily long. You'd have no room for tweets, but it would make you very economical with your words. Yes, that's what I love about Twitter, you probably feel the same way, I write something really long, sometimes then I have to parse it and figure out how to make it fit, and it feels so good. It's very good for joke writing, like for the skill of joke writing to make things more concise. Like I always tell people that I think the greatest joke writer or the greatest comedian is Joey Diaz, because he says he gives you the most amount of visuals and impact with the least amount of words. It's just bah bah bah bah bah bah. He knows how to like, sink it in really quickly. And Twitter is like a good tool for that, but not if, that's a little ridiculous. That's because you only, I don't know if that's the case how it is now, but, well, actually, it definitely is, right? If I write to you, if I reply to you, your name takes up a big chunk of what I tweet to you. But what you tweet doesn't take up, so it's like the 140 characters would be limiting people that respond to you, rather than you tweeting. Yeah, exactly, and the beauty is too, as you've probably noticed is that I think in the last year or whatever, images used to take up characters too, and videos and links, and I think the links are the only thing left that takes up the extra characters in addition to the name. It keeps everyone curt, but that doesn't stop people from tweeting 7,000 times in a row anyway. Oh, and put numbers on them. I've done it too. Yeah, I know. I did it just yesterday when I ran into some woman in San Francisco that I was walking my dog out of a Boston Terrier. She was like a little sicker. Her poop was a little wet, so I went and picked it up, and I left like some, you know, just like smear, you'd have to use your fingernails to get off the ground. Some woman came out of her apartment and started scolding me. Like she was waiting by the window to scold me for this, and I like, what the hell is going on? So I had to tweet out a few tweets about that just for posterity. Yeah, the Twitter thing is very weird, but here's something that I really don't like, and I'm glad I don't see much of it anymore, is that Twitlonger shit. Hey, that's a loophole. Yeah, we don't— Don't do that. Don't do that. Ralphie May used to do that shit all the time. He used to read his tweets. I'm like, what the fuck, Ralphie? Why are you writing paragraphs here? You know what's going on. Yeah, some people, you know, I've done it too, will like go in Photoshop and make a paragraph of a text and then make that the image. People do that on Instagram too. Yeah, I've done that before. I've drawn, written things down and then taken a photo. I said I was going to do that for a while, that I think that Twitter is just too impersonal. I'm going to write all my stuff out and then take a picture of it, but I was just fucking around. I think if that's the exception, I think it's totally fine. I don't want people ruining Twitter. I like the curtainess. Yeah, it's good. It's good format, but it also makes it extremely easy for people to do what happened to you. Yeah, exactly. Because their nuance is lost, right? Yeah. Nuance is lost. Well, it's always lost in text. I mean, in writing, it's very difficult. I mean, even if you're reading a book sometimes, you have to go over the previous paragraphs to figure out exactly how this guy was setting this up. What's happening, what you're saying, I see, there's two parts to me. One, the example that you gave before about the guy saying that it's like girlfriend mode. If he just said, it's like say if your girlfriend doesn't play video games and she wants a really easily accessible, you could do it that way. But people probably would attack him even for that. They would say, what are you implying that girls don't play video games? Well, that's the, it's always the implication, right? Like everyone's always out to assume the absolute worst. And now, so I was trying to write about him, like this guy is just trying to make an example. He's probably given 15 PR interviews today. He's probably exhausted. He's also a developer, so he doesn't have much PR training. He's trying to just get the point across. Why do you have to assume the man is a sexist and a misogynist because of this one thing? It's, I'm willing to die on that hill because I feel like people deserve the benefit of the doubt. People deserve to make a mistake or get a joke wrong or, you know, all those kinds of things. And I feel like, yes, people are allowed to exercise their free speech on the other end and be like, I don't like that joke or I don't like this or I don't like that. But it's, it doesn't stop there. With what's going on with Dave Chappelle this week, I thought it was really actually interesting with his two specials on Netflix. People are freaking out about, you know, his jokes, his jokes about gay people or transgender people or whatever. Well, it's comparing transgender people to black people and, you know, and saying that it's a ridiculous comparison. Right. Like, like I actually, after I saw all the stuff, I went and watched the first one and then I watched half of the second one and I was falling asleep. So I didn't want to watch it anymore. But I was like, this is funny. And Anthony Jeselnik or Daniel Tosh would make these people shit their pants compared to what's going on with this kind of stuff. And it's always this drama that that seeks to kind of it doesn't stop it saying like, I don't like it. It's often insinuated or outright spoken that they want to censor it or change it. That's like where I because I was reading a piece specifically about Chappelle where they're like, this calls up questions as to why, like, how far should comedy go? And I'm like, no, that doesn't that doesn't call. And that's when the free speech argument ends for me. That's what I'm like. You're actually now talking about changing it. Well, it doesn't work. It doesn't work with us with comics. It just doesn't work. We're not going to do it. It's too many people like it. I understand what they're trying to do because when they live in that world of cubicles and human resources and very restricted patterns of behavior that you have to follow. If you live in an office environment and work in an office environment or other, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are boxed into these terrible situations where you have to pretend to be this thing that you're not. And again, you don't have any personality. You don't you're not allowed to say anything ridiculous or silly. And when you have that kind of environment and you see someone who's free like Dave Chappelle, you want to stop it. And if you can, if you can point something out that can. Oh, look, he's saying something that's inappropriate. He's saying something I don't agree with. He's saying something. Let's get him. Let's go get him. And then also in defense of the writers that are writing these articles, look, they're in a bizarre environment where they have to fucking constantly defend like their position. They have to constantly get clicks. They have to constantly get hits. They can't just put an article out and nobody reads it. They'll lose their job. So they have to write about something that's inflammatory, write about something that's salacious, something that's not right. Salacious, something that's going to get people excited. I mean, that guy that wrote that thing about you for the International Business Times, I looked into that International Business Times. And one of the things about it is that there was a I think it was a Mother Jones article about that website where they were told that the people who write articles were given some ridiculous task. Like they have to get 10,000 hits per article they write. So that might have for people don't know. There was a guy who wrote an article about Colin where it said, Kinda Funnies Colin Moriarty was resigns after writing a racist joke that targeted women. It wasn't racist even remotely in the slightest. But when you take into account the environment that these people are forced to work in and you say, well, this guy literally is forced to write something that's more fucked up than it really is. You have to get people excited about this in a way that's going to get them to click on it and hopefully get him to his 10,000 hit quota. If that is true, I feel for him in a way, I feel – I mean, I think he's working for a shitty business. Right. But it's the same way I feel. I mean, I actually – I came from the editorial world where you have to get – I mean, we were getting – our expectations were way higher. Did you have those kind of requirements? No, not literally. I know some sites do, but – Some sites have like a quota? Like a quota or like you get bonuses if you get, you know, certain amount of hits or whatever. We didn't have that. We were a salary or whatever. But you would – you would be fired ultimately if you weren't writing things that people were reading. But I tried to stay out of my way for, you know, writing inflammatory things. Actually, there are a couple of examples where I wouldn't write a story because I felt like it wasn't pertinent to any information and it was specifically to assassinate someone's character. All right. Well, we found a problem here. You have fucking morals, dude. There's the door. Yeah. There's no room in this business. I had a high profile woman in the gaming industry tell me in an interview that was unrelated to what I was actually interviewing her that she never was once the victim of sexism in the industry, ever. And that was – and I was like, I could write this, but this isn't why I was there. You know, I wasn't interviewing her about this. And this is going to cause her problems. And that's not who I am. Why would that cause her problems? Because then people are going to – then people are going to, you know, jump on and be like, well, you know, I experienced this and I experienced this and you're diminishing. And it would just cause her drama. I'm like, why would I do that to her? See, this is where it drives me crazy. That's a beautiful example of people being cool. If she can say, hey, I've never experienced any sexism in this business, you'd be like, wow, the gaming industry must be really cool. And this woman has managed to get through the maze with a bunch of high fives and people appreciating her work. Wouldn't that be celebrated? Not in the gaming industry. But do you know what I'm saying? Like, why does that have to be in some ways a target? Like, why is that story a target? Like, wouldn't you assume that if there is a person who can reach a high level of prominence in this very complicated business, right? I mean, the gaming industry is incredibly complicated, especially how weighted everything is when it comes to male versus female stuff. That whole gamer gate shit exposed so much of that, which was really confusing to people on the outside, especially people like me who don't play games. I was like, what in the fuck is going on with these gamer people? Yeah, it's confusing to me, too. I mean – If you run into someone who is in any way involved in any sort of a dispute that makes that person appear to be a sexist, you're supposed to pile on. Yeah, and that's exactly what they did. And the thing that hurt me the most is that I didn't expect – I'm not close with a lot of these people, but people that know me, you know, there are people in this industry that are writing that are – that were piling on me or remaining silent that got freelance work because of me, that got maybe even got hired because I was on a hiring committee that pushed for them. All these kinds of things, and people used to take out to lunch when I was senior editor to see how they were doing, if there was anything I could do for them, stuff like that. And everyone's just like, no, I'm not going to say – I'm not going to come back and help him out now. And I tried to put that good energy out there. I'm not always full of good energy. Sometimes I say negative things or bad things. Sometimes I make mistakes. But when a person comes after your character and you damn well know that there are a bunch of people around you that know who you are, whether or not they agree with what you said or agree with what you do, but they know who you are and they know the severity of what people are saying. And they don't say anything, that really wounds a person. And that really fucking hurt. Do you think that what's going on in a lot of ways when people did not come to your defense is that what you're doing in many ways is making a very complicated and nuanced perspective from a person in your stance. You're taking this path outside of the ideology. And by doing so, you sort of challenge a lot of the ways these people have been behaving for a long time. And as soon as you do that, they have to kind of reconsider these ideological boundaries they've set up in their own behavior and thinking and communication. And they don't want to do that. They like to keep things rigid and simple. And they also want to continue to progress in their career. And in order to do that, you have to kind of have this predetermined pattern that you follow. I think simple is the key word that you use. Because, yes, there are people out there that cannot comprehend how a person who believes in small government, for instance, will use the same argument that says, the government can't touch my guns. That's consistent with saying the government can't tell a woman what to do with her body. That's consistent with the principle that says a government shouldn't even be involved in telling you who you can marry and a man should be able to marry a man and a woman should be able to marry a woman. And I would go as far as to say that even a polygamist totally on the up and up, everyone's in on a relationship, should not be the government's right. They cannot acknowledge that it's the lack of governmental power that gives you that right in my perspective when they feel like it's the wielding of government power that ensures those rights. That's not congruent with them. They don't understand how we came to the same exact conclusion by going just totally two different directions. And that really challenges them. And they don't have the philosophical bounding to figure out how that might be. It's always been a real fascinating part. So now that you've left your company, which was...what was it called? Kind of funny? Kind of funny, yeah. And what was kind of funny? Kind of funny was the four of us that founded the company were all at IGN in different respects. And we spun off to just start our own YouTube channel about games and nerd culture and stuff like that, do podcasts. And we found some good success, most of it crowdfunded on Patreon. And it was a lot of fun. And I enjoyed it. But I felt like I needed to leave because I felt like that was the best for everybody. Well, once that...I mean, how could you not if they turned on you over that stupid fucking joke? Yeah, I mean, it's like... Not that it's a stupid joke. No, it's a bad joke. I mean, it's not even that bad. No, I appreciate that. That means a lot coming from you. I just thought it's stupid, the reaction to it was so fucking stupid. It was stupid. And I felt like, you know, I wish that, you know, I wish that things went differently. I wish that, you know, we had a lot of fights behind the scenes. I won't get into all that. I don't think... Honestly, I think it's good. I think it's good, too. I don't, you know, I felt like I did what was right for them. And I felt like we would have just come to this impasse again. So I was like, let's just pull the band-aid off and get this over with. Are you going to do something that involves politics now? Because clearly you have a deep passion for this. Yeah, I started a new YouTube channel that the first video got April 3rd. It's called Collins Last Stand. Uh-oh. That sounds crazy. It's already funded on Patreon. $38,000 a month. Is this another hill worth dying for? Yeah. Well, people are... You love that expression. I do. Yeah. Because I think it's powerful. Like, there are things worth dying for. There are things worth risking. There it is. So I reached $39,000 a month now. Damn, son. And it's going to fall... $39,000 a month? It's going to fall. I'm sure it's going to fall. Holy shit, dude. People are talking. People are responding. Don't try to minimize this. Holy shit, that's a lot of fucking money. $39,000 a month? You're going to get $39,000 a month and you haven't even started it yet? Yeah, technically. But this is... It's going to fall back down to the teens, probably, because I want that, which is fine. Relax. Relax with your humility. Take it down, actually. Well, if you scroll here, you'll see on the left side, underneath the number, my only stretch goal was to reach $10,000. So my expectations were blown out of the water. And I really... What I read into this show is, you know, people are just sick of this bullshit. This is them speaking and being like, we need a conduit that's going to get into the history and get into the philosophy and the politics, but also that will stand up and say, like, I'm not sorry for a joke. People have the right to make mistakes. People have the right to express themselves. It goes back to the Confederate flag thing. I might disagree with a person that flies that flag, but I'm not going to go wrap it up on their door and pull it off and call them a racist. I'm just going to shake my head and walk, you know? Because there are other things to worry about. So it's people that want more liberty-focused, individual-focused kind of things. And that's just people speaking to me, you know?