I warn you this is an utterly pointless, annoying, fact-check effort post that I wrote and researched on my phone, whilst bored in a car waiting for someone to get home from a funeral. You are free to dunk on me and the effort I needlessly expelled on it.

After seeing the 20 millionth person on my timeline quote this figure for the official podcast of insufferable people at the gym I am forced to attend to do physical therapy, I began to wonder where this number was from and if anyone had actually checked it out - and it seems like no one had and everyone is just copying everyone else saying it. So I went looking for where its from.

Now previously I had taken a tweet that said the number was from a research firm and included double and triple counting as gospel - I even quoted it here - but that's abject nonsense and the person deleted said tweet because they clearly made that up and someone must have called them on it. This is what I get for listening to someone with a sock emoji in their twitter name. I'm a fucking idiot.

So where is this number actually from?

Most people are getting it from this chart made by someone called ChiefNerd who has now been suspended from twitter for hate speech according to people I could find whining about it (I suspect it was actually covid misinfo but they all said "hate speech" in their tweets so fuck it he's Nazi now and they can blame themselves for that characterisation). Which is a good sign for any account. But where did he get it from?

Using the wayback machine, I found that he said he got it from this newsweek article from November 2021 which, OK. But where did they get it from? That number can't have come from nowhere surely?

It seems that they likely got it from this Washington Post article from May 3rd 2021, which is the only earlier mention of this 11 million number I can find through Google. However, this article actually has a source for the number, which is this article from something called Supercast in May 2020, and they also list their source for the figure - an interview Joe Rogan did on Jordan Peterson's podcast in June 2019. So the source of this number is Joe Rogan himself, a man who has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to be a good source on anything, including his own career.

So now that I'm at the end of that particularly annoying game of telephone that I apparently just played and forced the rest of you to experience, is there any reason to doubt that figure, even if it is two years old at this point?

As it turns out, yes. The 11 million number is not only two years old but notably, it predates the Spotify deal. In August 2021, 6 months into the Spotify deal, the Verge published a report showing that Rogan's influence since going exclusive had more than halved and was trending downwards, basing this on the amount of attention his guests got in the period after a Rogan appearance, alongside social media mentioned and Google search numbers; In just six months the clout he wielded had almost halved. What is also perhaps noteworthy is that the only times Rogan's engagement numbers returned to pre-Spotify levels is when he was in the news for covid misinformation. What a strange coincidence that ramped up in the months following.

But that's actually not all, we have something way more concrete to suggest the number isn't as close to 11 million as presumed; A leaked internal Spotify newsletter showed JRE with 3 million global listeners an episode. Which, seems low but that's what the data says, and if accurate this suggests that 11 million is being really, really fucking generous.

TL;DR - Rogan doesn't get 11 million listeners an episode, I am really fucking bored, I don't know why I did this, this was an absolute waste of my time and effort but it did help fill an hour. You may now dunk on me for doing this.

  • inshallah2 [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    But where did he get it from?

    Reporters can be world-class morons or fools or unethical turds.

    People make stuff up and/or blatantly lie. Reporters then quote them. Also I think there are a lot of unethical reporters who skip the middle man and make things up themselves. Just one example...

    Stephen Glass

    Stephen Randall Glass (born September 15, 1972) is an American former journalist and paralegal. He worked for The New Republic from 1995 to 1998, until it was revealed that many of his published articles were fabrications. An internal investigation by The New Republic determined that the majority of stories he wrote either contained false information or were entirely fictional. Glass later acknowledged that he had repaid over $200,000 to The New Republic and other publications for his earlier fabrications.

    I believe he's an unrepentant asshole. His wife had early onset Alzheimer's disease and she died. And recently he's been trying to rehabilitate this reputation via that. That he's caring. That he's a changed man. That he's yada-yada-fucking-yada. Recently a moronic reporter named Bill Adair wrote a long pro-Glass article. Adair is the founder of PolitiFact and a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University.

    The founder of PolitiFact is an even bigger fool than I would have expected. And that's saying something.

    archive.today • Fraudulent Journalist Stephen Glass on His Biggest Lie - Air Mail.

    He said it was a difficult balancing act between her needs and his own discomfort about lying. “I think you have to weigh compassion. The only compassionate thing to do is not to tell the truth.” Unlike his visit four years earlier, when he seemed unsure of himself, the students this time were moved by his story, some with tears in their eyes.

    Glass told them he was “in a constant state of trying to work on improving my life and improving my relationships with other people.” He said Hilden helped him put his life back together. “She was an exceptionally forgiving and deep person who taught me a lot about what it means to love somebody—and what it means to be loved.

    “She saved my life.”