Ron Funches on Joe Rogan

Friend of the site Ron Funches made a guest appearance on Joe Rogan and revealed that he recently got married (amidst this pandemic even)! Congratulations duder! Overall, a fun and insightful conversation. Thought you duders should know!

Thanks for posting this. I’ll give it a lesson today at work!

Ron's great, but two hours with Joe Rogan is a challenge. Regardless, it could lead to some interesting discussions between the two.

An interview with Joe Rogan? Who’s Ron fighting in the Octagon?

@htr10: since it’s the Rogen show I assume a giant joint

I don't know of Joe but I vaguely know Ron, so I hope Ron had a good time.

Joe Rogan sometimes it gets a bad rep, but I really enjoy his podcast.

Say what you want, but at least it's not an echo chamber of the same ideas and ideologies over and over. I love getting a glimpse into how other people outside of my own world view thinks. Plus Joe is a great host. He knows when to just let his guests talk. He doesn't try to slip jokes in and make it about him. He seems to be a very middle-of-the-road guy makes it's easy for him to get all types of guest on the show.

I don't like Joe, I think he's kind of a problem all in all, but I do not begrudge Ron going on his show. Might get some good out of it.

@efesell: 100%

i can’t stand jo ro, but congrats to ron on the exposure i guess?

Joe Rogan is a nightmare conduit into the worst parts about society. He is that stoner friend who will listen to what anyone has to say without injecting his own thoughts into any of it, except on a platform as massive as his it's extremely problematic considering some of the terrible guests he has.

I also don't begrudge anyone for taking a spot on it. Again, massive platform.

Ending up in a potential echo chamber is kind of your own doing? It has never been more easy to find personalities across the whole political spectrum and they all have their own shows and internet content. No longer are you restricted to what TV decides to air. If you require Joe Rogan's booking to provide you with a wide array of different voices, why not go straight to the sources you are interested in instead? He's not the sole portal to diverse ideas. If i want to know how the Flat Earth community feels about that one Carl Sagan video i can go to their facebook group. They're all out there making their own internet content. Especially if the interviewer is not one to challenge the guests , it limits the additional value that this particular video can bring to the table to me.

But i get that it's super popular and that it's a no brainer for Ron to appear on it.

@zoofame: I've watched Joe out progressive other liberals on his show. Just because he doesn't shit on every right leaning person doesn't mean he's a far-right asshole and yeah he does push back, he got Ben Shapiro to admit that kneeling for the national anthem can be acceptable.

He can be a meathead/rich ass at times sure and I don't listen to every episode of his personally but there is a reason why he's the biggest podcaster in the world.

Also, don't insult Ron, he's a grown man with a growing career who is well aware of what he's doing, if anything he seemed a bit intimidated at times but he came across well and the bump he'll get from this is more valuable than appearing on anything short of a hollywood blockbuster and if he gets on again he'll have so many more doors open to him than anything he'll get on his own.

I think that's partly why I get very frustrated with Rogan because there are clear moments sometimes when he pushes back in a really meaningful way and if he did that more to some of his more out there guests then that would be helpful in a way.

But the approach of I just wanna hear interesting shit from whoever will tell it to me is fine until you are as big as he is and then it's real dicey and you need more care than I see from him.

I was gonna say "In before literal nazis" is thrown around, but oh well.

I mean, Gavin McInnes is the founder of the Proud Boys, which are more like Brown Shirts than full grown, jack booted Nazis. But they are true pieces of shit, so it doesn't really matter.

Rogan's "I'm just asking questions" bit was cute right up until this shit started to matter. But lets lets not just throw rocks at him, even the Gray Lady, the New York Times got caught up in running interviews like "White Supremacists also have fun past recipes and go to work every day." Everyone took their eye off the ball or didn't take this shit seriously. The problem with Rogan is that, from all appearances, he still doesn't take it seriously.

I feel like I could wordcloud this thread before it is ever written. Next time Rogan comes up on the site I'm all over it.

Joe Rogan can fall in a fucking hole and stay there.

I don't begrudge Ron for going on the Joe Rogan podcast

But fuck Joe Rogan. Hopefully my YouTube algorithms have realised I don't want to see or hear any of his shit.

@north6: in a shocking turn of events, people already formed opinions on a man who career is literally decades old. People forget that Joe Rogan hosted Fear Factor and did a bunch of other non-sense for a couple decades before become the podcast guy who is willing to interview a piece of shit like Alex Jones. He is like Howard Stearn, but for some reason people take him way more seriously than they should.

edit: I was unaware that Rogan was also one of these anti mask clowns. But not shocked, given his trash views on responsibility to others. He can get fucked just like every other anti mask asshole.

@plan6: Here you are! He is a silly clown. I too get 100% of my health advice from cage fighter commentators and comedians.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-stance-says-public-should-wear-masks

Literally a week before the uproar where Rogan joked about masks with Burr the WHO was saying masks provided no benefit. I'm glad the uproar is directed in the correct direction. Good stuff.

Not really sure where you are trying to go with this, but it kinda has big “The lady doth protest to much“ energy.

I really don't care much about what he thinks about masks, or his other political views. My concern is that he platforms outright dangerous people and at best lightly slaps back their ideas with kid gloves, and then usually allows them to still get the messages they want to get across to his audience.

And like.. call him a clown or just a meathead or whatever you want it doesn't matter. His reach is huge, audiences are impressionable. The world is on fire from all of the people who write off things as "just jokes!" or conspiracy theories.

Nice of Rogan to feel charitable enough to give someone as unfunny as Ron some exposure.

Don't always listen to Rogan but he has some good guests on every so often, like Ron. Was a good listen and got to know more about a friend of the site.

Started to watch him somewhat recently and ended up making the same conclusions. He does fine on pushing back on subjects he's informed on. But on everything else he mostly just lets his guests make there bad pitches and just takes them at their word. Mostly he just wants to here some cool shit, regardless of how accurate those stories may or may not be. Which given the kind of guests and subjects he deals with on the show made it hard watch for me. Ended up removing him from my recommendations. I don't begrudge Ron doing what is best for his career though, I would've done the same in his shoes.

Let me ramble a bit.

He discussed Japanese culture and how wearing masks curbed the spread of the virus there so I do not know whether he is really anti-mask. Although he had a guest on, an epidemiologist, who downplayed the importance of wearing masks so maybe he worked backwards from his conclusion there. It was funny when Bill Burr called him out on it though.

I do not know where he stands politically because he also had Cornel West (a self-admitted radical left) and Bernie Sanders on and he was receptive and agreeable with what they had to say. Tony Hawk was also on his show. My point is sometimes he has some good guests on and he lets them talk at length about anything they want so I guess it's fine. I rarely listen to his show myself but it's always welcome when he has guests who I recognize.

Maybe it just goes with the territory of growing your show by having diverse voices from every walks of life. I recognize that's VERY PROBLEMATIC because some people with harmful ideologies can get mainstream and may radicalize simple-minded folks.

On the other hand, there is also the factor of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves exposing their hideous beliefs to other people making them less appealing. Pushing back will only deter his guests to say what is really on their mind hindering the audience to judge for themselves the true nature or agenda of his guests. It is up to the audience to think critically and to push back if they detect BS. To counter myself, guests with agenda will use insidious language leading to disingenuous discussions about important matters so that's dangerous too. But again, critical thinking hell even basic thinking, is all you need to parse through the likes of Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens.

Anyway, I do not even know why I wrote this. I am aware of the problems with Joe Rogan and I am not defending him in any way. I am just confused when people put him in a box but I guess that's fine too. People can think whatever they want.

I'm definitely not a fan of Rogan, but I don't resent Ron for going on the show. It's a huge platform and great exposure for any comedian.

Regardless of what his intentions may be, Rogan's willingness to put a lot of potentially harmful ideas out there for the sake of "asking questions" or being "open-minded" really sucks.

@chaser324: idk. Some of his guests are problematic but also serve to test my opinions. They usually don't change my mind but it's good to have your beliefs tested if only to reinforce your belief in them or to encourage me to do some research to indeed prove to myself they are or aren't full of shit (or somewhere in between). And every now and then we get some quality guests (John Stewart being a recent one that comes to mind).

@frustratedlnc: Jesus, what's your beef with Ron, man? You made the time to comment that you skipped Episode 262 of the Beastcast because he was there. I am fascinated by your weird antagonism towards him.

The reason I pointed out him having Gavin McInnes was because he straight up advocates for violence. The Proud Boys are not shy about what they want and it isn’t “robust debate.” It goes a bit beyond “harmful ideas” to straight up harm. And Alex Jones’s obsession with the Sandy Hook has forced some of them to move due to harassment. It doesn’t take a lot of digging into Rogan’s most problematic guests to see that the harm people are warning about isn’t “potential” or abstract.

Nothing wrong with Joe Rogan, He gives every single one of his guests a corona test and he talks constantly about how he tests himself daily and has been social distancing with his family. Just because your opinion differs from his doesn’t make him a bad person.

A discussion on the merits of cancelling someone for talking to people who are bad news seems like as swift of a path as I can possibly imagine towards covering the earth in trinitite, so "You do you, enjoy your echo chamber, please keep it to yourself., etc."

@north6: funny that you mention cancelling. Rogan and his idw friends literally do that to Sam Seder at The Majority Report. They literally duck debating him and cry around when he criticizes their bs takes.

“Cancelling” is not a new thing. It’s been around for centuries but until recently it was solely relegated to marginalized people. It’s just that social media has made it possible for the powerful to be held to a certain degree of accountability.

To clarify, Rogan being criticized is not cancelling. And even if he got cancelled, as in his show being shutdown, he’s rich. He’ll be fine. Maybe focus on regular and marginalized people who’ve actually been cancelled.

We moved from “Rogan allows diverse opinions on his show” to “Having a strong negative opinion of Rogan is cancel culture and the path to a global echo chamber” at record speed.

I mean he’s no MadFlavor but Ron did a great job! I would love to see him on again!

@redcream: Ill preface this by saying, I'm trying my best not to be annoyed with or angry at people who dont matter - that is angry at anybody like an entertainer or public figure even if they are deserving of that anger (i.e. Trump). I do think Ron is annoying. He acted like a major ass at a comedy club in San Antonio a couple years back. Im not so thin skinned that I cant handle someone taking shots at my community or the city I live in. But he didnt give me a reason to like him after that either...not that it matters. People were laughing at his jokes during his set...maybe not enough people for his liking. He used that as an excuse to storm off in a huff. Not before he told everyone to go fuck themselves, trashed the city for being catholic, bragged about how much money he had and threatened to kick anyones ass who approached him. Aside from that, I find his voice to be nails on a chalkboard and I think he is Dane Cook / Carlos Mencia / Kevin Hart level hack.

@noobsauce:

It is a complicated topic. On the one hand, I am very much all for people getting an understanding of where "the other side" came from and actually made it a point to watch a decent number of flat earth documentaries and that anti-mask idiocy folk have been worshiping as an excuse to not smell their own gingivitis. Understanding alternative viewpoints is very important, if only to be able to detect folk who are "Just Asking Questions" and the like

But there is a big difference between me opening up an incognito window to watch a few shitty youtubes and people with giant platforms doing it for everyone else. Me doing it doesn't expose that content to a ridiculous number of people who may not be as capable of critical thought. And, even worse, it gives credit to their arguments and makes it a "both sides" issue when it REALLY should not be.

To stay on an ideological level: it is similar to the times Bill Nye ranted about not engaging with climate deniers at all. All that does is give credibility to their arguments and their arguments deserve absolutely no credibility at all.

And to go on a more "how the fuck did we end up here?" note: I, allegedly, downloaded like ten versions of the anarchist cookbook back in the day. I, allegedly, noticed that all ten were very different. I, allegedly, had enough of a basic understanding of chemistry (and common sense) to get a feel for which ones were intentionally made even more dangerous. Folk without that knowledge would basically be exposing gasoline fumes to an open flame.

I don't necessarily fault Ron or anyone else who goes on Rogan's platform. It is a lot of exposure to their target audience. I do think it speaks to the overall problematic "comedian culture" where toxic assholes and abusers get welcomed back with open arms and defended constantly in the name of "paying your dues", but that is a very different kind of complicated.

----

And on a COMPLETELY unrelated note: batting a thousand on the list of people not worth engaging with from the thinly veiled (and loudly proclaimed...) racism thread.

Despite his continued popularity I feel like Joe Rogan has become a relic of an old internet that a lot of people have become tried of. Historically these type of cultural evolutions tended to take generations to manifest but it feels like someone hit the fast forward button and ideas stick around for much much less time.

I recommend everyone give Rabbit Hole podcast a listen if you haven't. Talks about how Joe Rogans agnostic approach to guests (and more significantly YouTube's algorithms) can lead some incredibly warped perceptions.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/podcasts/the-daily/rabbit-hole.amp.html&ved=2ahUKEwi98qylyZ3rAhXVs54KHZ_CBJwQFjAAegQIBhAC&usg=AOvVaw22bEI9f02V4zbNNpeXw-fQ&ampcf=1

@frustratedlnc:

Thanks for sharing man. That's quite the experience. I thought you were hating for no reason and now I feel like an ass. Sorry dude. Never meet your heroes and all that.

@redcream: Well...there is a bit more to why Ron was perhaps a bit scathing to the SA crowd. Just search "Ron Funches San Antonio stormoff" and you will find a bit more color.

If I was a black man stopped by non-cops 6 times in 3 days, I'd feel pretty salty towards a town myself.

As some people here noted already, I disagree with Rogan a lot, but it is also fun to hear " the other side" of an argument without to much theatre. So I listen to his podcast every ones in a while.

But also, he can be kind of dangerous from time to time because he rarely corrects his message even knowing that it is being listened as gospel by many people, and not just for giggles.

Also good on Ron Funche. I don't know who you are, but this is GB forum, so I'm sure you're cool

I love Ron! :D but I definitely don't like Joe Rogan >_< he has pushed some really shitty transphobic views about trans athletes competing with cis athletes. I'm around a lot if transphobic folks in my daily life, I don't want them in my podcasts.

Like I said tho, I love Ron! ^_^

I'm not sure what Joe Rogan is really about. I stumbled across him doing a couple of interview with a favorite Physicist of mine, Brian Greene. Perhaps also Sean Carroll. I get the impression he is some sort of a head, that among other things. The commenters for his shows are pretty forward about his limitations without being assholes as you tube commenters often are.

And on top of that he might be the better sort of You Tube personalities, which still, except for a few people, I stay away from.

I watch Crime pays, but Botany doesn't, for an asshole that I do really like and personally mostly agree with.

Awesome, I fucking love Joe Rogan. Best podcast out there.

@chuckstank: best podcast... for neo nazis - fixed that for you

@steveurkel:

Only if we're redefining "neo-nazi" as people with nuanced opinions willing to actually have discussions.

This wasn't the first time Ron was on the JRE and I'm sure it won't be the last. Breaking news: Comedians are friends, more at 11.

Love Ron. Don't care for Joe Rogan. He's good at hosting and I like that he gives certain people a platform to speak from their perspectives, but also he comes off as a meathead with an immature, surface-level understanding about a lot of things. And it doesn't help that I'm now learning that he's a tough guy anti-masker. There's a good recent interview with Bill Burr where Bill shits on him good for it. But anyways, yeah get on Joe Rogan if you can, that's just amazing exposure. Good shit Ron!