Lot of unhelpful answers here. I’ll try my best.

In a nutshell, Joe was a UFC commentator who also avidly practices various martial arts. He’s also a successful stand-up comedian. Being personable and well connected, he started his podcast interviewing friends, comedians, and celebrities.

It should be fairly obvious how he appeals to people interested in masculine personalities. In particular teenagers, young men, and people who aren’t very secure in their masculinity tend to like him.

He had/has a rule of letting nearly anyone on the show so long as he felt he could have an interesting conversation with them. To massively simplify, this ultimately led to him having some questionable political provocateurs on the show, many right wingers. Combine this with Joe’s non-combative interview style, and his show ended up being a platform for some pretty out-there political theory. The way he talked about COVID struck many people as pretty irresponsible, for example.

Eventually, many who are left-of-center were scared of even associating with him. That’s a problem for your public image if you claim to be a centrist, as Joe does. Or at least he did, I haven’t kept up with him in a while.

TL;DR: if you listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast people might think you’re overly concerned with your masculinity or that you’re being indoctrinated into extreme right-wing politics.

The dude is a bit of a meathead who will listen to anyone he has interest in for better or worse. I enjoyed his show for a while because I generally enjoy hearing people share their thoughts on things, even if sometimes they end up seeming a little off. As it so happens, I was just as willing to hear out criticisms against his show as well when I started noticing those. Then I just kind of lost interest. It can be a fun show to listen to, but it’s kind of like a dude-bro celebrity magazine-turned-podcast for people who fantasize about being rich and smarter than everyone else. I like to call him “Joe Brogan” now because I think it fits.

Ask them their stance on apes. If they stay an ape could mess a dude up theyre probably just into martial arts. If they say something racial they are probably racist. And maybe you shouldn’t be friends with them.

To my knowledge the Rogan community is strong advocates of the idea that most other great apes can beat us up.

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Just Asking Questions

He is a right wing extremism gateway. Also an antivaxxer, but I repeat myself.

The connotations are that they aren’t too bright. Joe Rogan is a comedian turned political influencer of sorts, and this same dude once said, on set, “I am an idiot. I don’t know shit. Nobody should take anything I say seriously.”

Politics aside I would say the connotation here is that this person isn’t very intelligent. I don’t mean that as a statement on their intelligence but instead that Joe Rogan falls into the category of anti-intellectual, low bar entertainment. I’d consider Joe Rogan to be the equivalent of a tabloid paper but for people who listen to podcasts.

Bill Burr said it best: knuckle scrapper.

He’s a sophist.

Rogan has 2-3 hour interviews with people from every walk of life but got obsessed with COVID misinformation.

Rogan has explicitly supported gay rights/marriage, drug legalization, prison reform, and other leftist positions, but recently appears to have become swayed by right-wing talking points to the point that he is unnecessarily confrontational.

He has some amazing podcasts in the bank with amazing people, and has some newer podcasts that are garbage. He has like 1500 3-hour podcasts.

So look up some of the athletes, the biologists, the astronomers, geologists, a lot of interesting non-political podcasts before covid happened and you’ll probably learn a bunch of interesting things.

But anything remotely political in the past few years is pretty rough to the point that I haven’t listened to any of his podcasts since.

I used to like joe Rogan as a comedian. His entire set was basically the first thing my brain thinks of - an easy crack joke with some wit. But one cannot live one’s life according to the fastest, easiest joke you can conceive of. Deeper thought reveals most of these impulse thoughts as stupid, over simplified and with surface interpretation only. But he seems to just run with it, and has made that his public and political personality. My smart ass should not be making any meaningful decisions.

Joe Rogan is in the business of making reactionary content for people who respond (regardless of whether that response is good or bad) to reactionary content. A bit more advanced that YouTube videos of prank fake bank robberies or filling a car with cement. But still in the same vein. He says things about hot button issues that I don’t necessarily think he believes just to be controversial. He also tries to legitimise those opinions (even ones he doesn’t believe in), and his fans believe him and therefore hold him in high esteem.

There is the potential for the person you know to like him or his show because it’s absurdist in content. However it’s more likely that they like it because it feeds certain biases of theirs. A world view that they embrace that doesn’t necessarily match reality. The politics in your country may not be the same. But the politics in the US definitely have an effect on just about every other country in the world. Not all of Rogan’s takes are political. He spreads a lot of general misinformation. I wouldn’t be surprised if your acquaintance was just looking for validation in his content.

I’ll try to give an unbiased answer. Joe Rogan podcasts aren’t just political, but they do discuss political topics frequently in conversation. The connotation for a regular listener is that they are very likely to be misinformed, plain and simple as that. As many have already said, it’s likely that they are libertarian at best or into conspiracy theories and alt-right at worst. I’ll explain why:

He brings in a lot of different guests to his podcasts. These guests could be celebrities, athletes, book authors, researchers, actors, etc. Sometimes he would have politicians, from left and right. He would also bring in people who spread conspiracy theories, aka “qanon” types.

He never confronts any of his guests. Some people hate him for it, others listen to him precisely because of that.

Rogan gives a platform equally to all of his guests and presents and treats them all as if on the same level of legitimacy. This means, today he interviews a scientist who is an eminence in their field, with 30 years experience in research… and next week he brings in some influencer on the same topic, who doesn’t understand the science behind what they say. Both guests sound equally knowledgeable to the average listener.

The problem with this is that this spreads misinformation, and if you as a listener are not already well informed on the topic then you are likely to fall for it. Most people don’t question everything they hear, let alone understand in depth anything discussed superficially over a podcast. This is evident with science, but it gets really hairy when you add politics and personal values/morals to the mix.

I hope this helps you understand better.

A lot of the comments above are super creepy in how neutral they are on Rogan, who is well known to be a far right conspiracy crank who mostly platforms other cranks and super bigoted people and credulously spreads their claims as accurate.

He very rarely has actual decent people on and, frequently when he does so, tries to argue with them that they’re wrong. Especially if they’re scientists.