Joe Rogan’s podcast is a psychological warfare engine, it is specifically designed to create the fact-free, confusing, frustrating miasma that defines the American information space especially for 18-29 males. It is popular with them not because it offers a productive way to grapple with disappointments or overcome them, but because it serves to validate their anger and confirm their lack of agency in a hostile and unnavigable world.
In healthy information space, it is immediately apparent that the ravings of RFK Jr. are not worthy of the same consideration as the thoughts of a renowned astrophysicist, but the cumulative effect of being a Rogan listener is to come away with a very different feeling. Not that RFK Jr. is wrong and the physicist right, or even that they have equally valid claims, but instead that it is impossible and pointless to try to adjudicate.
Rogan had clearly been driving the boat more often into the specifically right-wing fever swamp, although the common thread of his show is to elevate the dark and conspiratorial on par with rational and even interesting discourse. He’s been wildly successful, and his audience has been conditioned to do the opposite of critical thinking. It’s all just vibes and via a form of reflexive control they will adopt the vibes Rogan is feeling which was always going to be Trumpy this cycle. He has independently invented and created a medium that closely follows Soviet information warfare doctrine, which is really effective.
At best a standard and mainstream actor like Kamala gains nothing tactically, and at worst it’s harmful among the target audience because they have all been conditioned to reject and distrust anything that appears mainstream. Strategically, any form of liberal democracy depends on educating future generations to reflexively reject media like Rogan’s.