I like Joe Rogan, and I think there's a handful of reasons why people love him so much:
1. He has strong principles. This is evident when you look at his involvement in the downfall of Carlos Mencia, despite being a relatively unknown comedian at the time.
2. The only filter is himself. He's not a part of a network, and thanks to you "fuck you money" he made from Fear Factor he doesn't need to answer to anybody. That allows him a level of independence to have who he wants on his show, and to talk about what he wants.
3. Passion. I do BJJ, and a lot of people have got into BJJ through Joe Rogan talking about it on JRE. It's funny how much of an impact he's had, considering there is very little footage of him actually sparring. For reference, he's got two black belts - one under Jean Jacques Machado in BJJ, and one under Eddie Bravo in his 10th Planet style of BJJ. Both instructors are as legit as they come, and they don't just hand out belts, so Rogan earned those belts. His passion for BJJ and MMA earned him his spot with the UFC, and a UFC post-Rogan will be a much-worse place.
4. He naturally leans to the centre. It's funny how some people on the left call him right-ring, and some on the right call him liberal, when I'd say he has individual views on multiple sides. He'll have a civil chat with Bernie Sanders on one episode, and will praise Trump for playing a good campaign against the Democrats on another. It's refreshing to see someone open his airtime to multiple different views, when even the likes of the BBC cannot represent both sides of a debate without extreme government bias.
5. He knows what he doesn't know, and he won't convince himself of something without fact. That attitude in a sea of people that push opinion as fact is refreshing.
Rogan is refreshingly centrist in a country that is alarmingly polarized.
The extremes of both sides seem to genuinely hate him.
I do wish he'd taken a tougher stance on Alex Jones though. I get that they're "real life friends" but the Sandy Hook stuff alone should have been enough to 86 his access to Rogan's audience.
Your last sentence kills it. Alex Jones is yet another voice. People who know he's crazy can be entertained by him. People who don't will listen anyway. He says interesting things. Frogs are gay.
The frogs are gay or whatever is fine. Calling people who had their children murdered liars is not. His audience hounded those parents for years. Really disgusting stuff. Friends or no friends you gotta shut that stuff down.
I'm overall a fan of what Rogan does but I think you picked a poor example for #1. He destroyed Mencia but every time the well-documented joke theft of Amy Schumer has been brought up, he has refused to directly call it out.
While it's definitely something I wish he was harsher on, I remember him addressing it a few times and raising some good points and contrasts between the two - purely paraphrasing and probably not fully accurate:
* Rogan felt that he shouldn't be "the comedy police", and that his level of fame would make calling anyone out much more difficult. I remember him saying that one of the stolen bits was from Dave Chappelle, and that if Dave wasn't going to call her out for it, he doesn't feel he should.
* While it's hard to dispute that jokes were stolen, most of what she had stole had been from sketch comedy, which happens fairly frequently.
* Additionally, on many of her shows she's had a team of writers, so accusing Schumer of stealing jokes isn't factually accurate when it could've been a writer that stole from CollegeHumor or Dave Chappelle.
* In stances where one-liners were lifted, Rogan echoed the points of Marc Maron, who said that one-liners are largely fair-game, because no routine hangs off of a solid one-liner.
IMO, there are some weak arguments, and some that I agree with - and that's pretty much everything I like about JRE.
1. He has strong principles. This is evident when you look at his involvement in the downfall of Carlos Mencia, despite being a relatively unknown comedian at the time.
2. The only filter is himself. He's not a part of a network, and thanks to you "fuck you money" he made from Fear Factor he doesn't need to answer to anybody. That allows him a level of independence to have who he wants on his show, and to talk about what he wants.
3. Passion. I do BJJ, and a lot of people have got into BJJ through Joe Rogan talking about it on JRE. It's funny how much of an impact he's had, considering there is very little footage of him actually sparring. For reference, he's got two black belts - one under Jean Jacques Machado in BJJ, and one under Eddie Bravo in his 10th Planet style of BJJ. Both instructors are as legit as they come, and they don't just hand out belts, so Rogan earned those belts. His passion for BJJ and MMA earned him his spot with the UFC, and a UFC post-Rogan will be a much-worse place.
4. He naturally leans to the centre. It's funny how some people on the left call him right-ring, and some on the right call him liberal, when I'd say he has individual views on multiple sides. He'll have a civil chat with Bernie Sanders on one episode, and will praise Trump for playing a good campaign against the Democrats on another. It's refreshing to see someone open his airtime to multiple different views, when even the likes of the BBC cannot represent both sides of a debate without extreme government bias.
5. He knows what he doesn't know, and he won't convince himself of something without fact. That attitude in a sea of people that push opinion as fact is refreshing.