From Aliens to COVID to Cancel Culture: Every Joe Rogan Cliche Got Play in His Live Netflix Special

Imagine if someone gave you a Joe Rogan bingo card in advance of tonight’s live Netflix special, Burn the Boats. The card has all the usual topics you’d find in a month’s worth of Joe Rogan Experience podcasts — alien probes, Fear Factor, COVID vaccines, trans people, gay people, UFC, Fox News, Alex Jones, China, Elon Musk, the N-slur, the F-slur, the R-slur and whether or not Rogan is canceled. 

Congratulations, champ! Your card just won the game horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Over the course of his special tonight, Rogan played every one of those greatest hits. 

As I watched Burn the Boats, I was already predicting headlines like Variety’s “Joe Rogan Slams COVID Vaccines, Trans People.” And yep, Rogan provided plenty of individual lines to cherry-pick, supporting any argument anyone wants to make against him. But the special was way more toothless than you might think. Every time Rogan poked a sensitive subject, he backed away before viewers could accuse him of serious damage. 

Take COVID, for example. Did Rogan “slam” vaccines? He certainly asked, “Are we sure they were safe?” But he also went completely in the other direction. Did Rogan irresponsibly spread vaccine misinformation? “I might have!” he confesses with delight. “But here’s my take on that, sincerely: If you’re getting your vaccine advice from me, is that really my fault? That’s not my job, kids. I’m a professional shit-talker. Some of the things I say make sense. A lot of them don’t. It’s up to you to figure out what’s what. That’s the fun part.”

Rogan spewed his professional shit talk all night. He’s afraid of gay men the same way he’s afraid of mountain lions — but he loves gay men! “I don’t know if evolution is real” is followed by “I believe in evolution.” Rogan loves trans people because adults have the right to do what they want. Believe in love! Believe in freedom! But we need standards for bathrooms.

How does Rogan justify views that swing back and forth like a libertarian pendulum? “If you want equal love, you have to have equal jokes,” he said. “If we can’t joke about you, you’re too serious.” 

It’s a great comedy strategy. When Rogan dished out punchlines that were met with awkward silence, he had a ready-made retort. “They’re just just jokes, folks! No one’s getting hurt.” The problem wasn’t lame material, it was people who were too serious. But for the most part, this wasn’t a problem — the San Antonio crowd was in a whoop-it-up mood, roaring no matter which side of the fence Rogan straddled in any given moment. 

Rogan could be unintentionally funny as well, like when he talked about all the times he was canceled during COVID. Really, this again? Rogan, like fellow martyrs Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, is seriously confused about the difference between “criticized” and “canceled.”  

Sure, people knock Rogan for saying dumb stuff. But that didn’t stop Spotify from giving him $250 million. UFC still pays him the big bucks. And Netflix gave him one of its first live comedy specials. He’ll take the money as long as he doesn’t have to take the responsibility for his words. That’s not his job, kids — he’s just a professional shit-talker.