Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein Promote AIDS Denialism to an Audience of Millions
Weinstein repeated discredited theories to Rogan about HIV not being the cause of AIDS, alarming and infuriating public health experts.
Bret Weinstein, the evolutionary biology professor turned podcaster and ivermectin guy, repeated a series of discredited pseudo-theories about AIDS in a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Weinstein, a frequent guest, told Rogan that he found the theory that party drugs like poppers cause AIDS to be “surprisingly compelling.” (It is not.) Weinstein also told Rogan he came to these ideas by reading a recent book by anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, creating a sort of unholy turducken of misinformation passed onto an audience of millions.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg543y/joe-rogan-and-bret-weinstein-promote-aids-denialism-to-an-audience-of-millionsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world517
Comments96
Fuck Rogan.
Dumb person’s smart person
So succinct, yet so damn accurate. Well said!
He's considered smart somewhere?
By dumb people, hence the comment you're responding to.
He wishes he was a Krogan
I fucking hate Rogan so much. Maybe it's unfair of me, but I always think less of a person if I hear them say the words "I heard on Joe Rogan..."
No, that’s also my instinctive reaction. Right up there with Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.
He gives a platform to misinformation, and sits there like an ape, listening to his guests spew bullshit, while he nods and goes "that's good point" and legitimizes their lies. He does this on purpose but claims he's just an idiot asking questions, when he's clearly pushing an agenda
Same here. My otherwise progressive'ish mother-in-law listens to him because she enjoys the interviews. I love her to death but it's hard to keep my mouth shut whenever she tells us the latest bullshit Rogan has shat out.
I feel the same way. The moment someone speaks positively of them, I have suddenly lost respect.
If you're paying for spotify premium you're funding this.
Time to start a free market movement.
I don't think there's any alternative to Spotify that works for me.
OK.
If you're paying for spotify premium you're funding this.
YouTube Music, part of YouTube Premium, has a much wider selection than Spotify and you get the added benefit of no commercials. Which is great considering YouTube also has a ton of movies and TV shows. I got rid of most of my other streaming services, signed up for that, couldn't be happier.
I use revanced. I never gave YT premium a chance
What makes the difference?
PSA: this is a troll account above.
Either way their point is totally valid.
That's fine, just making sure people know what they're signing up for should they engage in debate.
What does he mean with this? Is he claiming that AIDS isn't caused by the HIV virus, or is he claiming that poppers (the chemical amyl nitrate) when consumed by a human causes the spontaneous creation of the HIV virus inside the person?
Neither of those makes sense.
How does he explain heterosexuals dying of AIDS?
They caught "the gay"
Splash damage.
Gay agenda obviously. Or they were secretly trans. Something like that anyway.
Yeah, Weinstein is Jewish. Doesn't need to be a NAZI to be a bigoted idiot.
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/237420/phenomenon-left-right/
I think he's saying that last time he got high off poppers he had unprotected butt sex with a known infected partner.
It's the only logical conclusion.
The most generous interpretation is he's saying drugs suppress the immune system so drug use causes AIDS. This would be fairly falsifiable if we had data showing non drug users also develop AIDS and... Oh wait we have fuck loads of evidence showing that and Weinstein proves himself an idiot. Again.
Please, can you point to a single person that's ever got aids without doing poppers?
Ha see I knew you couldn't, that's literally hundreds of millions of people you're pointing at and I said a single person, I win again lefty!!!
Haven't listened. Haven't read.
AIDS is the Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome.
The most charitable take is he's saying HIV isn't the only way to acquire it.
Personally, I gave a lot of charity to rogan between 2014 & 2020. I don't have any charity left for either of those racist xenophobic cucks
My people didn’t lose a generation for this bullshit.
Also AIDS is preventable, AIDS is treatable, and if you’re sexually active outside of monogamy you’re potentially being exposed to HIV regardless of the kind of sex you have. Straight people having PIV can spread HIV, oral can spread it with any genitals. If you’re sexually active get tested regularly. If it’s caught early you can avoid negative consequences. And if you have reason to believe you’ve been exposed go to an emergency room immediately and tell them. There’s basically a morning after pill for HIV (there’s also an equivalent to birth control called PrEP)
I thought I was exposed one time (turned out it was all good) and went to the ER to tell them and they told me they didn't have that medication and that it was extremely expensive. Good old Texas.
Yeah that’s terrible. When AIDS breaks out it is always a governmental failure. I’d’ve given the first time a pass but holy fucking shit did the government fail then too. If a hospital lacks PEP and if government and insurance don’t make it worth taking just in case they’re risking citizens lives
Who the f**k take this 2 clowns serious? And Joe Rogan, that dude ..is a gold mine for this shit and stupid topics.
I dunno. The guy got a bunch of radio equipment from when he worked at WNYX, started a pirate radio station then moved on to podcasts…
It’s all there in his Wikipedia
“ He also espouses various conspiracy theories, particularly with regard to the government's suppression of information about extraterrestrial life.”
Love it.
The conspiracy/alien stuff was good times. They ended years before spotify.
Far too many people, sadly.
Visit the south or youtube and you will be amazed at the dumbassery
Unholy turducken of misinformation should be the new name for the GOP.
Joe Rogan realized he could cast a dragnet across the nation for the most ignorant, gullible viewers and, like Alex Jones, sell them bullshit. This bullshit being pushed to the audience is paid for by the highest bidder that Rogan then injects into his dialogue.
Then again, I wonder if he's just a stoner wholeheartedly embracing the Dunning-Kruger Effect, thinking he's got it allllll figured out.
Do you think he's aware of the false equivalence fallacy he props up when he would bring on, say, an anti-vaxxer person and then 1 pro-vaxx person but not recognize that there's probably 999 pro-vaxx infectious disease experts, doctors, scientists for every one anti-vaxxer? What if he interviewed with proportionality?
he got 100 Million Dollars from Spotify. Of course he thinks he's highly intelligent.
Rogan flips like a pancake. One day he'll have Tyson on then the next this baked potato who got his info from a guy who wrote a book using the baked potatoes info.... it's a feedback loop of idiots. Rogan just likes money.
The Joe Rogan sort of show used to be relegated to midnight on AM radio. Coast-to-Coast Art Bell/George Noory stuff. Except at least Bell and Noory weren't meathead assholes.
I’ve never listened or even watched one of his podcasts. I don’t even know the guy outside of that, so that makes me wonder why you consider him a meathead asshole lol.
Listening or watching one of his podcasts would give you a clue.
Any suggestions where I won’t have to swallow shit for minutes before I realize what a dickhead he is? I’m not really interested in his topics or guests, so any suggestions will help a lot.
https://futurism.com/joe-rogan-yelling-scientist
Appreciated the link.
I mean, he's rich well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The guy has never been dumb, per say. He's just made a career of playing a dummy on TV.
Dude knows what he's doing (or, he did at one point, perhaps before he fried his brain with DMT).
I don't think he particularly cares. He's had pro-vax guys on his show. He's had anti-vax guys. The dude is a Carney and his show is a three-ring circus. You can always find something to scratch your libidinal itch in there somewhere.
Idk about that statistic. There's certainly a healthy amount of denialism and conspiracy theory in mass media. Probably give you 10:1 on a good day.
But even if it was 1 pro-vax doctor in 100 antis, the numbers don't really matter. What matters is the spectacle of two people arguing a point the audience will never have the education to verify one way or another.
This is, at its heart, infotainment. It isn't about who is right and who is wrong. Its about putting people in a ring together and have them duke it out with words. Then cutting to another ring where MMA guys duke it out with fists.
His show is about fighting. That's all he wants.
Having money does not prove someone is intelligent
Some would argue it is one way to measure a type of intelligence. Money gives the freedom to explore our deepest desires. Which is a freedom most don't have. And it's a freedom most want. In that way, he is intelligent.
I don't follow. Getting what you want -> you are intelligent? I don't think it works that way
You skipped every sentence and made shortcuts. There is a reason I included the sentences I did.
Right, I'm not saying this is what you meant, I am saying I do not understand, explaining how far I got in guessing what you might have meant, and requesting further clarification, because your logic is hard to follow.
If a person works for their life to pursue their passions it is a self awareness. I respect that. I think most people do. He isn't selling his soul. He just asks questions and is stupid about most stuff. He is a comedian. Has he said shocking things? Sure. Eminem has. Howard Stern has. Elvis has. So many artists have done what they needed to do to pursue their passions. And if that makes him deplorable, sure.
My point is that he earned his money to chase his passions and their is nothing wrong with having the freedom to do so. And planning for that for your own fulfillment is admirable. It is intelligent to be aware of yourself and your surroundings to work to achieve that.
That confers access, which relates to knowledge. Knowledge is not intelligence.
Donald Trump got $412 million from his daddy. This in no way shape or form makes him intelligent.
This is a straw man. I in no way compared a trust fund to someone that earned with their own work. Granted I am not a Rogan fan. But I can't blame him for being a host and entertaining people. He is a circus. And I don't like that circus. But I understand others can like it.
Having freedom does not grant intelligence. Having money is NOT an accurate measurement of intelligence, especially in our current system. We can tell you enjoyed "Atlas Shrugged" which is a great measure of YOUR intelligence, which is none.
Some may argue that. I would argue those same people are morons.
Having the freedom to explore our deepest desires doesn't mean one does so. You are romanticized the wealthy.
I suspect you fit inside the group sometimes referred to as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" -- i also suspect you disagree. I also suspect you think yourself more intelligent than you actually are.
I also suspect that you feel me pointing this out indicates a fault in my personality rather than you being able to see it as a service to you. Polite society prevents the bottom half of the intellectual spectrum from being told they are in that bottom half.
Just to let you know, the expression is written 'per se':
Borrowed from Latin per sē (“by itself”), from per (“by, through”) and sē (“itself, himself, herself, themselves”). Wiktionary source
Bret Weinstein: a perfect example of how you can be educated and still be a complete fucking moron.
Or
Educated, possibly intelligent, and a soulless grifter taking advantage of complete fucking morons.
Either way he's a goddamn turd in a turd suit.
I guess kids in africa are having poppers in uterus.
Why is an evolutionary biologist qualified to even talk about this, he's not exactly a medical expert.
I mean, are there many people who can talk about gravity?
I mean, he made an idiotic comment that goes against the entirety of what we know about hiv and aids. Biologist or not, he's using an appeal to authority to spread misinformation.
And I stand by that comment. An evolutionary biologist has no business commenting on something he's not an expert in.
Do you hold multiple PhDs in computer science? No? Log off.
Actually, I don't know it. I haven't studied medicine or aids.
I doubt that most of the other people here have either.
We're just repeating what we hear.
You can literally google it.
That would be the "repeating what we hear" to which I referred
I actually took classes from Bret Weinstein, and knew him semi-personally outside the unversity.
He is a pompous ass who really feels he has the keys to understanding and analyzing all topics.
It was good for facilitating evolutionary biology discussons and seminars. It was terrible for everything else.
I recommended he needed a sabbatical after my classes, and in 2 years he was chased off campus with baseball bats.
My dad was a professor (in the humanities). So many of his colleagues thought that they knew everything about everything because they got a PhD on 13th century Lithuanian poetry or whatever. It really turned me off of academia growing up and seeing them all act like that.
Oh Bret had a whole rant about the humanities without a single drip of irony. I remember he handwaved the entire study of ecology in a seminar as "postmodernism."
He was my last class at TESC and he made me feel far more over it than I needed to be.
Biologist or not I want to know why a stupid person is qualified to talk about this. Fuck all these woowoo magic-thinking lunatic assholes.
fucking lol
Damnit Bret, I want you to personally refund the tuiton I spent in college taking your classes.
Joe Rogan is a one-man human centipede.
I used to like Rogan in the Man Show/Fear Factor days, and I still respect what he's done for comedians in Austin.
Other than that? He's a fucking meathead who sold whatever integrity he may have had to Satan Musk for a joint.
I actually think Rogan is a really great interviewer, and he's sometimes able to get surprisingly candid moments out of his guests. The problem is he's also dumb as shit, so he'll wind up platforming people that have batshit crazy ideas and he has no ability to evaluate or push back on what they're saying. He'll have guys like Stephen Molyneux come on and go on a racist tirade about ethnic IQ or whatever, and instead of doing research beforehand so he can challenge his bullshit he'll just go, "wow, that's crazy man."
Bret Weinstein is kind of a moron. I've been saying this for years.
Edit: I listened to Bret, even though I still think he's a moron the article completely misrepresents what he said. The article:
My understanding from the snippet is that party drugs trigger AIDS, not spread it. Honestly this is a perfectly reasonable take, loading your body with drugs, poor sleep, poor diet can easily lead to a compromised immune system. I'm guessing the hypothesis is that HIV runs rampant in this state and destroys the immune system leading to AIDS more easily than if you weren't taking drugs. Not pushing your body, specially when you already have HIV, is generally a good idea.
kind oftotallyYeah, his whole crusade against the mouse model is so fucking stupid. I worked drug discovery, my brother worked in clinical. There are so many reasons his takes are stupid. Bret likes to think he's smart like "I'm not like other
girlsscientists"Very much the kind of thing all crackpot conspiracy theorists think about themselves.
He can always publish a paper if he has some research that supports his theories or disproves others. But I'm guessing that hasn't happened and never will...
Did anyone else’s brain see the “m” and fill in the last word with “morons”?
Oh, he's completely full of shit then. Unless he's saying the argument is surprisingly compelling, given that it isn't true? Conspiracy theories can be a bit like that.
This is worse than yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
If anyone is interested, I've tried so damn hard to block all Joe Rogan content on YouTube. It's impossible. You block one thing and another comes out.
You're stuck in an algorithm somehow. I don't see any joe Rogan on YouTube.
Are we in the dark timeline?
Getting harder and harder to trust experts in their field, when lead poisoning is a thing. Then they use their prior achievements to say the stupidest things
Accreditation and other such authority gimmicks are essentially useless. You gotta see the portfolio.