Joe Rogan - The Problem with Social Media & Alex Jones

This is a new thing. This is a new thing. So because it's a new thing. It's human nature. I feel like for some reason it's the exact same thing. It is human nature, but I don't understand what your point is. Well, I guess what I'm asking here is in the way of the... I just feel like the Russian bot thing was... All of that. I feel like the Russian bots is a term for people who don't understand computers in a way and they've just kind of thrown that out there as a political device. Sometimes. I think that Russia, China, Korea, like every other fucking country that is enabled in a way in which they're so far ahead technologically was involved in all kinds of fuckery and they're still involved in it. They will still do that during the election. It was fucking a hundred times. For sure. But it's hard for me, back circling around to the Alex Jones thing. All of this new technology, all of the people who are awake, woke on Facebook. Can't say wake. They're woke on Facebook. If you're awake, they know you're an agent. Yeah, you're woke on Facebook. I'm so awake. It's like I felt bad for fucking Childish Gambino that he had a song that had Stay Woke in it because immediately that song... That was what an amazing song and that term became dumb immediately. But I just feel like all of this that's happening, all of this talk, all of him getting banned, all this stuff, it's all this kind of effect of the world. Instead of being out in the world, everyone has gone to this point where it's these groups, these really rich groups, Google and Facebook and Twitter and all this. Everyone has gone to this central point and now they're lynching people. Whether or not you agree with Alex Jones, whether or not you like him, whether or not I think he's being lynched in this situation. I lost you right there. I lost you right there. So I get that there's all these people that are doing all these different nefarious things. This has been going on forever and now they're using new systems to do that. They're using the internet and all these open pipes and these connections that they can make do. But the trick is that the public is there. They've gotten them to go to this one arena. That is my problem with it. Because as much of a nerd and a technology person I am, I hate that people have, instead of really ... I mean, I'm sure they have their own lives, but the fact that we have become so centralized to these small groups of internet companies like social media and things. And then now, look, it's on both sides, man. I mean, Alex Jones is getting lynched, Harvey Weinstein, whatever. I know he's ... That's a very different thing. He's doing horrible things. But everyone ... He's doing a very, very, very, very different thing. I'm not defending him. But I don't understand how you made that behavior. What's the connection? The connection is the fact ... You know, the connection is people are just attacking him, defining a place to attack. Because the minute ... Look, those people could have suits against Harvey Weinstein. We can know about it. Of course, we knew about it because of The Wall Street Journal or whoever New York Times who ran that thing. Was it New Yorker? Yeah, it was the New Yorker. Shout out to Warren Farrow. My point is ... Leave me alone. You know, I mean, I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I just feel like that the centralization of society into social media is resulting in a lot of things that are very ugly. And I think that the Russian bot thing, the Chinese hackers thing, the Alex Jones issue, the Me Too movement, all that stuff, which I'm behind all the people that were hurt. I'm not ... I'm behind the Sandy Hooks people. I'm behind the people who had the bad experiences of Hollywood. All that. So what are you proposing? What are you saying? I'm just saying that I think that it's unhealthy. I think the social media thing has become too centralized. There needs to be a decentralized source. How's it centralized? Because there's only a few groups like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I mean, it's 100% centralized. I mean, it's owned by a group. It's several groups. It's several ... Everyone's kind of going to McDonald's to have these conversations, as opposed to it being something that is a little more healthy. I just think that people ... I think Alex Jones should have always been able to be crazy in his world, and he was always nice to me. And like you said, he's your friend. You know what's the problem with Alex is? He needs someone sitting right next to him. Someone like me. When he talks and he says something crazy, he goes, wait a minute. How do you know that? He goes, well, we have the documents. Well, show me the documents. Well, the documents don't say that. Well, the problem is, Joe, that they are definitely trying to influence. And he go, yeah, they probably are. But if you leave them alone, if you leave them alone and just let them rant ... By the way, he's doing six hours, eight hours of radio a fucking day, and he definitely likes to drink. So he's doing six hours of radio a day. At least three of them are drunk. And he's fucking filling time and screaming, and no one can say anything to him. And he's the fucking man over there. That's also part of the problem. He's got a bunch of these other people that are around him all the time, and they're conspiracy theorists as well, but they're 28, and then they're hanging out with Alex Jones, and he goes on his rants, and no one interrupts him. It's a broad argument with all of it, because I agree. But he was always transmitting. He was always like, hey, show me where the Satanists are going to worship. It took to send Christ's children. That's fine. But I get it. I think what happened is, now the idea is that he's influencing people politically, the whole Podesta pizza gate, all that stuff would scare the shit out of people when that guy showed up at that pizza place and fired off around, and then they wound up arresting them, and they really thought there was a dungeon in the basement when they were keeping kids. Again, centralizing in social media is the cause for a lot of these reactions. But is that centralizing in social media, or is that people exciting people to go and take action against something that may or may not even be real? If you are allowed to yell out fire in a crowded theater, right? This is ultimately the problem. It's not whether or not he believes in Bohemian Grove, which is real, and he proved it on video back when they had VHS tapes, and I watched it. I've known Alex since 99, or 98, I think, maybe. I've known him for a long ass time. And this is a very big difference between then and what's happening now as far as the reach and influence. And I think people are sort of panicking about reach and influence and what it means and how to mitigate it, how to change people, how to stop people from going into pizza places and shooting them up because they think that something that they heard online is true. There's a lot of stuff that people hear online that is just not true. The lizard's underground, or the fucking earthbeater flat. There's a lot of stuff that's just nonsense. So it's hard to separate. Here's what I think. I think we are going through an adolescent stage as a being, as an evolving being. And I think our bodies and our minds and our consciousness are becoming synchronized with technology. And along the way, like right now, we are in this chaotic, screaming, sweating, crying, pissing, shitting state of chaos. And we are looking to figure out how to stop the bleeding. We're looking to shove thumbs into dykes. Dykes meaning like dams. And we are looking to try to figure out a way to stop the bleeding. We're trying to put patches and band-aids on things. We're trying to manage the chaos. We're trying to figure out what. And this is a stage that we're going through. Because this is a new thing. This is a new thing for human beings. The ability to communicate widespread over millions and millions of people instantaneously is a new thing. So people have say that never had say before. They have influence. They never had influence before. They have their ability to contribute. And they might not have thought these things through. And these things catch fire. And they run through dry forests like a goddamn tornado of flames that you see on CNN when the Mendocino fire up in Northern California. This is what happens with ideas. Because there's no way to contain them. And they don't know what's right or what's wrong. I think that what we're going through from the period of 1994 to the period of 2018 is like a crazy fire in the middle of a hurricane. It's like everything is nuts. No one knows how to stop it. And no one knows what to do. And what do we do? We get together in shelters. And we fucking give people water. We try to stop the fire and take away everyone's lighters. That's what we're doing right now. We're trying to take away lighters. We're trying to stop people who start fires. And this is what's happening with Alex. And it's not that Alex is a bad guy. It's that he's by himself. Irresponsibility. It's irresponsible to say that you know for sure a fact that these parents from Sandy Hooker, crisis actors and their kids never died. It's irresponsible. And he didn't think it was irresponsible when he was doing it because he was probably caught up in what he does. And he's caught up in the wave of ad-libbing. Just like you and I are ad-libbing. We didn't even talk about what the fuck we were going to talk about, right? No, you just turned on and we went. We just turned on and went. We had a couple of drinks. That's very right. What you're saying there is very right. I don't mean to cut you off. It's okay. But what you're saying there is very smart because to me, you know, it's, you're right. He has always been doing this. And at this point in time, his reach has grown. Right. Now there's a wind behind him. He used to be in Seattle. It was raining every day. And he had a little patch of dry newspaper. He'd light that shit on fire and everybody go, Alex is crazy. Yeah, no, I agree. I think, I think, I think what I'm trying to articulate and I'm not doing as well as I wanted to, but I think what my problem is, is the synchronization of consciousness is what I'm not into. I think that I think, you know, just like you have a rut of people who believe that, you know, now believe that the Sandy Hook thing is fake and they're calling the families because of this conversation. This is where that lawsuit is really coming from because the other people, but then you also have another side of it and it could be as, you know, back in the day when they said that Paul McCartney was dead, but they got harassed, but it was on such a small level because there was no way to just email Paul McCartney and say, or email and say, you're not the real Paul McCartney. You're fucking dead. Not just that. There's no way to exchange these ideas among people constantly in real time on Facebook all day long. Which is the centralization that creates these rivers and these ruts that people who don't know what to do and they fall into one rut or another and they kind of become this, this, this kind of streamlined thing. So I think the way you just described it is, is very articulate. This is a new thing, man. It is. This is a new thing. We are in a really exciting time. I don't think it's healthy though. But why, why say that? Because they used to say that about the printing press. They used to worry about that with the written word. They used to worry about that with everything. The distribution of information is not, it's not whether or not it's healthy. It's just a part of what this being does. What this being does is constantly search for innovation and novelty. That's what the human being does. But like the, the, I guess. Right? I guess, yes. But look at your phone over there, man. You got a fucking iPhone. Don't you think you could go to the people making iPhones and go, hey bro, we're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is it. This is fine. Stop right there. But it's not, we're not good. These motherfuckers are ready to come out with an iPhone 11. They're not going to stop. The guy invented the web was invented hyperlinks. And the idea was that if someone wanted to. You got to get high, dude. This is just too stupid. Oh, I'm in. I'm in. So like the guy invented the web. We're going to wear a stoner to talk care of it. I don't know his name. I should know his name. Al Gore, motherfucker. No, right. What, wasn't? That's funny. You think he lies. Shit. All he wanted to do was make it basically with like medical documents where you would, where you would say like, you know, this guy had a brain transplant and then brain transplant would be underlined and you clicked on that and it would take you to a link that explained brain transplants and that would be worldwide. So the internet is decentralized and the web is decentralized to some degree. Okay. Now Google coming in with search engines, like that's focusing points. What scares me is those people being the like Facebook being the avenue and whichever be talks like I, I would scare you. Is that weed? I just handed you. Holy shit. I took two hits and I'm not even here anymore. I'm in a neighborhood. I am very high. That's a blunt. That's legit. I took two hits. I like the little glass. I'm very, I'm very, oh yeah. You don't fuck around here in California, son. But you know what I mean? Like I just have a problem with the centralization of the companies owning the avenues in which people talk. I'm right. I'm right with you on that. I think we need more YouTubes. I think we need more venues for people to distribute and distribute information. But I also think we need more love. This is more compassion. There's so much hate and anger towards each other. I feel like I'm going to get nailed here on this because I'm not, I am not. That's part of the nervousness about doing a live show, right? Yeah. But I would say this, well, I mean, I'm not very nervous right now. I have a fucking drink. I just have five hits. I'm very nervous. I would say that, oh, this is one of those ones where they, that's tobacco, tobacco and some shit that was grown on Mars. You know, Armstrong grew this week. Man, see, I, again, again, it was just like there was a point where you're trying to make sense right now. This is part of the problem, right? I know. This is why I wanted us to get it. And we're getting, we're getting super serious about topics that are very, that mean a lot to people. I don't really know enough about it. I just, I just feel like I just wish that there weren't like, again, I just, I feel like there's ruts that have people have to fall in to communicate. And there's a ruts that are owned by these companies that are very fucking rich and very expensive. Well, here's the thing too. These companies didn't see this coming like I'm libertarian. I'm not either way. And just in the sense, I'm not really that I don't even fucking know what that is. All I know is I don't believe in trusting anybody who, who says, Hey, I'll take care of you. Come this way. Just don't worry about a thing. And they're the ones making all the money. And it's like, that's how the internet has become. It used to be a wild west of information. Emails are fucking information. That is, that's me communicating with you and no one else seeing it. That's beautiful. And I think the idea of Twitter and Facebook and all that is fantastic when it first started. But at this point in time, it's gotten so big. If it doesn't break up into something where people figure out that they are in control of the internet, not these other people, that's what it bothers me. Okay. So what bothers you is that someone comes along and says the people aren't in control of the internet. So it's not like a free market. So it is a free market. It was a free market. It's a free market. A guy like Alex Jones, you say this guy's preposterous. I'm not listening to him anymore. When it's not a free market is when YouTube collab, I don't know if they collaborate or if they just all agree. I don't know if they all agree. But they just all decide. Everyone's going to take them off. Facebook's going to suspend them for 30 days. Twitter's going to suspend them for a period of time. YouTube's going to remove them. All these people are going to take Vimeo, jumped on ship, and they pulled them off too. So this becomes an issue. What is it that causes you to get removed? What is it? And should we be really clear on that or is this just a whim? Because this is a really important thing. If we really are fucking with free speech, we have to be very careful. And what we decide is a valid reason to pull people off of our airways. Because if you have stuff on your airways that's far more vile and you let that stay up because it doesn't have the same reach, like what is your criteria? It doesn't have the same influence. It doesn't have the same political ties to it. Like what is the reason why you're pulling one thing off and not another thing? Is it because of a popularity issue? Have you searched your trillions of fucking hours of footage for offensive speech, content, ideas, disinformation? What have you really done to mitigate this issue? Or are you acting on this because it's a social hotspot issue right now, which it most certainly is and most certainly should be? I really think that Alex needs a guy right next to him. He really ... I understand that. Alex and I did a show together. But Howard Stern? Meh, no. Not the same comparison. Because Howard's ... I listen to him every day. Sometimes I want to be like, dude, are you kidding me? That's also part of his charm. Part of his charm is he creates dissent and arguments and you want to get mad and you want to either ... he's opinionated. But Howard Stern's very responsible. He's a different guy. It's not the same thing. I'm not trying to compare Alex to him. I'm just saying that sometimes I feel the same way about him and other people. People feel that way about us right now. Yeah, people tell me, quit cutting fucking Giorgio Morata tribute records and do a country record and I do a country record right now and they're like, ah, it's kind of corny. No. No, I got a record coming by the way. I'm sure you do. Dude, I'm a ...