The wo(man) behind the curtain…

Joe Rogan is being targeted and it’s not random. It’s a takedown. Today we go behind the curtain of who owns (and controls) who

While waiting for my son to emerge from the locker room after their second loss this weekend to a team that in 6 years of playing has never beaten him, I took to scrolling GETTR prior to our hour drive back to Denver. The losses are a story for another day, we have a different exploration for today: who’s behind the clear and targeted attempt to discredit and professionally eliminate Joe Rogan, and importantly, why.

When LinkedIn started heavily censoring posts, including mine, including outright deleting one about Aaron Rodgers with no notice of violation and then banning me from the platform when I questioned their decision, I set out on a quest to break out of the matrix. In a world devoid of debate and discussion, how do we move forward? Joe Rogan knows the answer. Long form conversation and letting listeners decide for themselves. Alas, not everyone agrees.

LinkedIn’s response to my appeal was less than encouraging for the future: “Misinformation might come in the form of false or misleading information presented as fact, such as "false news," misleading or deceptive media, or denials of well documented historical events and includes content that directly contradicts guidance from leading global health organizations and public health authorities.” But Maddow said… but Fauci said …. No matter. Like Joe Rogan, discussion and counter narrative will not be permitted in this form of the matrix.

There is a curated, approved and repeated narrative, and everything else is dangerous. The people must be saved! They must be protected! We are from the government and we’re here to help. I took the red pill long ago, and in my own hopeful and naive way, I hoped GETTR was the start of a new chapter of open discourse.

Grabs phone and opens GETTR.

Scroll. “The election was stolen.”

Scroll. “Support the truckers.”

Scroll. “Cancel gofundme.”

As you can tell from my half hearted scrolling, I’ve not been thrilled with the content on GETTR. I follow the usual suspects but the good stuff is mostly reposted from Twitter or from people who were banned over there. As much as I hate to say this, it lacks the depth of intelligence and thought from Twitter, because most everyone is still over there precisely because the content is better. The reality is when you go to a football, a full stadium is more fun, and social media is no different.

For GETTR, the platform itself is in it’s infancy. It’s a bit extreme and reactive, the content isn’t nearly as clever or thoughtful, and presently, all their members are on “the right” which lends itself to be an echo chamber. Rogan famously moved over in early January, and 500,000 people joined within 2 days. From his activity, I think he has been equally underwhelmed. I feel I have to fact check everything I read there, which I suppose it what a platform looks like when the overlords at Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter aren’t picking and choosing the material they support, so perhaps I have been made weak and I’m not used to seeing such wild and extreme material. I’m not convinced it will compete with over Twitter because in social media, the platform with the most people is who wins. Example? MySpace got crushed by Facebook. To expand the offerings in adjacent services, they bought WhatsApp (chat) and Instagram (pictures) to own the dominant social media position in the world, to this point anyway.

Enter Twitter, who hasn’t been without it’s own controversy. @Jack, who lives half the year on a different continent, stepped away from the company he founded in November of 2021 to focus on his fintech company Square. Under his leadership, he knew Twitter wasn’t Facebook and that THAT was it’s charm. There were less characters to play with so users got create with memes. And, of course, there was Trump, who became President because of an intense hatred of Hillary on “the right” and his appeal to the Everyman. It was, of course, his undoing in 2020 when the hatred for him matched Hillary’s in 2016 and voters hit the “anyone but” button.

Nonetheless, Twitter allowed him to side step mainstream media narrative but surprisingly, it wasn’t Trump who first the term “fake news” to the media. Reeling from negative media (which is hard to imagine now), in December 2016 Hillary Clinton spoke of the “epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year.” Continuing. “It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences. This isn't about politics or partisanship. Lives are at risk… lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities."

Trump didn’t really embrace the phrase until January 2017 in response to a question from Jim Acosta of CNN the week before taking office he said “You’re fake news” and later, tweeted:

But Twitter benefited from more than just the President’s active thumbs. Facebook’s role in the election and the Cambridge Analytica, and with Trump using Twitter to threaten dictators in North Korea with the size of his button, Twitter grew in influence but even in design, it was never supposed to compete with FB, just as LinkedIn doesn’t compete with Twitter, and now TikTok doesn’t really compete with either of those. Each of these platforms dominates the “one thing” it was designed for. And while some users may have responded to my posts with “this isn’t what LinkedIn is for”, broadly they have won their own social media spheres.

You know my mind is busy when all of that is what was thinking about about while scrolling through GETTR waiting for my son….

Scroll. Finally, something I can think about!

What now? First, Spotify adds a warning to Joe Rogan podcasts that talk about COVID and now they (with Rogan’s “permission”, which is like saying Zucker or I “resigned”) are deleting old episodes. What’s going on?

Opens Duck Duck Go. Searches:

Scans NYPost article as a conservative “right” paper. 100+ episodes were deleted including a lot of his more controversial right wing guests. Ok…

Goes to CNN. Searches the same thing.

Well, that escalated quickly.

Let’s introduce Scott Galloway, who I credit for this post. I was first introduced to him when I read his brilliant piece on WeWork entitled WeWTF. I viewed Scott as an independent author, journalist, podcaster, professor, who had made money on one of his entrepreneurial ventures, and so was me … 10 years in the future. Write enough good stuff, publish some books, the world will find you. Oh, how naïve!

But I was hooked on his writing. I didn’t really follow the tech world and through his thoughtful and well written pieces, his cynicism resonated with me. I never followed the whole Jack Dorsey saga but I do remember this piece about Twitter.

As the years have gone by, like me, Scott has evolved. He has moved way left. Cool. I get it. We change. But it was his piece this week, combined with the CNN spin on the Rogan/Spotify situation and in concert with Galloway removing his podcast from Spotify that made me smell the rat. Here was the paragraph.

So wait… what? Galloway is close with CNN and Jeff Zucker? They are important business partners? CNN. The one that just called Rogan racist…. And you removed your podcast… wait just one second!

Isn’t AT&T the owner of WarnerMedia, CNN, HBO and they are spinning the company off and merging with Discovery?

Searches “WarnerMedia” and this is a graphic from their homepage.

Create a system? Google Neil Young’s music. Produced by Reprise Records with the licensing rights by Warner Music, a subsidiary of WarnerMedia.

“Before I told my friends at Warner Bros about my desire to leave the Spotify platform, I was reminded by my own legal forces that contractually I did not have the control of my music to do that,” Young wrote on his official websiteWednesday. “I want to thank my truly great and supportive record company Warner Brothers – Reprise Records, for standing with me in my decision to pull all my music from Spotify. Thank You!”

Told, or was told? Searches Joni Mitchell.

Also distributed by Warner Records.

Searches Crosby, Stills and Nash? Atlantic Records who is owned by…. Warner.

What in the actual F@&K?

Not to be left in the cold, Brene Brown joined the trio of musicians and said she was removing her podcast from Spotify. Her book publisher? Simon and Schuster, which is owned by CBSViacom, a massive media conglomerate. And the “N” word compilation was put out by India.Arie (who I’ve never heard of before) and her producer is Universal Music Group, the $60 billion company that went public September 2021. They must not like their deal with Spotify, either? Good news, I can find her along with all the other artists on Apple’s music service. Remember that article I referenced that I wrote about Parler and how Apple was involved taking the app off the App Store? And remember how Facebook stock fell 25% this week because growth would only be 3-11% because Apple changed their privacy laws which will cost Facebook an estimated $10 billion a year because of the new feature that allows users to opt into advertisers ability to track and target them. Anyway, Apple is big into music…

If you want to win, “create the system….”

So, here’s the deal. Joe Rogan draws 11 million listeners per episode, which is 18x more than CNNs top anchors. First, he’s targeted and music is removed, and then a piece is conveniently prepared that shows he used the “N” word 20 times between 2009 and 2018 and someone has spliced that together, and Spotify has removed 70 Episodes (out of 1771) from Catelog AFTER paying him $100 mm for the exclusive rights to his show precisely because of those first 1532 episodes, including the guests and the words.

I know I’ve said some things that taken out of the context of my hour “edutainer” speeches and weaponized to a 15 second clip would make me look very bad. I made fun of Greta for being autistic and now that she’s 18 was begging on behalf of the world to get laid and stop being so grumpy…. I mean, I’ve said a lot. But when did one sentence make an entire person? Especially if that sentence doesn’t have any direct tie to other acts he’s taken? It’s simply insane, but it’s the playbook to “create the system.”

So CNN and Joe Rogan are in a bar and they are both talking to the most beautiful wo(man) in the world. S(he) clearly likes Joe Rogan better and she’s about to go home with him. He excused himself to go to the bathroom and clean up his man parts, and CNN says: “That guy is a (wo)manizing, racist, misogynist with STDs.” I’m sure CNN means well and is just being your “trusted source for news.”

Which brings me back to Scott Galloway. Knowing that he is friends with Zucker and supports CNN puts his latest piece on Twitter in context: he is proposing for big tech companies to acquire CNN. He’s write, after all WarnerMedia suggested, create the system you want.

The enemy of my enemy, is my friend.

• Gabriel Manigault

Joe Rogan is the single largest threat to Discovery and CBSViacom. Spotify is a big threat to Universal Music Group, WarnerMedia and Apple’s music distribution and streaming services. And in the backdrop, Jeff Zucker gets punted from CNN and the media (and CNN and MSNBC) makes no qualms about of playing favorites. After all, it was Jim Acosta’s interaction with Donald Trump that spawned the common use of the phrase “fake news” Zucker (and Gollust) were heavily involved including helping groom the next presidential candidate for the American public, until an unfortunate sexual harassment and nursing home scandal derailed that choice.

So who’s behind the curtain?

If corporate and political narratives are replaced with individual personalities who cannot be controlled while streaming and content is competitive and therefore less expensive, it spells trouble for lot of organizations that depend on having “created the system(TM).”And the (wo)man behind the curtain most definitely doesn’t want that. Et tu, Brute?

#hottakeoftheday

If you enjoy this, or other pieces of writing, do me a favor and hit the like button, subscribe and share it with friends. I get asked a lot… how do you come up with this stuff? I just described the process. Intellectually curious and highly skeptical of coincidence, so I spelunk down rabbit holes while drinking coffee or waiting on kids.

The only way to counter the narrative is to have counter narrative. Which is why you don’t have to agree with anything I write, I hope it makes you check your premises, re-evaluate your data and either double down on your existing position or change. I love all the emails and comments, and I know that as a society, if we don’t chat about these and the many other topics openly and without a financial incentive to do so, how do we know what is the right/best answer?

Love and hugs,

DRW