MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The problem is that this applies to news and information. People are listening to Joe Rogan, who doesn’t try to report the facts, not journalists.
MolecularCactus1324@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The problem is that this applies to news and information. People are listening to Joe Rogan, who doesn’t try to report the facts, not journalists.
krashmo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’m conflicted about Joe Rogan, or at least the concept he had at the start. Clearly he’s fallen down the right-wing rabbit hole but the original intent he had of letting people defend their weird positions is a good one imo. One could argue that the reason the right-wing funnel exists is because there isn’t really space to talk about some of those things on the left.
For example, it’s not crazy to ask questions about vaccines and how they work. However, when people do that those who are educated on the topic will largely assume ill intent by default and treat the people asking questions as if they’re stupid or malicious. There’s some good reasons for that but such an approach is pretty alienating for those who are genuinely seeking information. That leads at least a portion of those people to listen to more right leaning information because they feel like that is the only group taking them seriously.
We need to do better at meeting people where they are instead of assuming they are trying to spread misinformation. Yes it’s true that all the information you need to develop an informed opinion about the vast majority of topics is available on the internet, but finding and understanding that information does take skills and time that not everyone has. In order to understand why a statement or belief is incorrect or misinformed you have to create a space in which it can be discussed without fear and shame driving people away.
Based on the limited amount of his older podcasts that I’ve been exposed to, I do think that Joe genuinely tried to do that, he’s just not particularly well equipped to handle that kind of environment. Over time he fell victim to the same kind of radicalization that he was intending to subvert by letting people share their actual thoughts instead of assuming he already knew what they were going to say.
madjo@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
If people were meant to defend their weird positions, that would mean that Rogan was supposed to give pushback.
That was clearly never going to happen, because he’d need to seriously investigate his guests claims beforehand.
So instead we got a podcast that’s filled with obvious misinformation with hardly a critical note from Rogan. Dumbing down his audience with BS. Causing more distrust for experts, and anti-intellectualism.
krashmo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That’s fair. I suppose a better wording would have been “let people articulate their weird positions in their own words”. I think that’s a good thing in conceptual form. However, as you noted, it doesn’t really work if you aren’t equipped to push back and make them address the counter arguments. That’s where Joe is lacking. He’s good at getting people talking and asking layman’s questions but that’s as deep as he can go. He needs to book the guys who can give the rebuttals either on the same show or immediately after.
madjo@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
The big problem with that is potentially: you get one crank against one serious person, the crank can just gish-gallop and the serious person will need hours just to untangle the web of lies.