And curator, see after the jump.
From The Blind Spot, February 8:
Why Rogan is the media’s “inverted yield curve”
The TLDR: Rogan’s mass appeal — much larger than that of the legacy media — feels like a market breakdown. It simply shouldn’t be happening. It’s the inverted yield curve of the media industry. Or the snubbing of structured data in favour of the unstructured sort. Neither should make sense, so when they manifest it signals something significant: the market is favouring inefficiency over efficiency. The question is why?
I haven’t written publicly about the Joe Rogan affair yet. But I do want to address the growing debacle that it has become.
I personally had not heard about Joe Rogan or his podcast until Elon Musk went on the show in 2018 sparking an instant online furore for smoking a spliff live on air. Since then, it’s been on my radar, but I confess I have never actually made it to the end of a single episode. That’s not because I knee-jerk disagree with the content. But because I rarely have three hours spare in my day or weekend to dedicate to a podcast.
This is an important point (beyond the show’s core content) that I think is often overlooked in the discussion. The format’s nature is self-limiting.
I’m going to make some sweeping assumptions and argue it’s mostly young childless people, the retired, and those who don’t have to worry about making ends meet every minute of the day. There’s probably some middle-ground demographic somewhere too, like those of us who regularly take long car journeys or commute. Or maybe those who like to send rockets up to space. But bros* are clearly up there.
Does that mean I disagree with long, largely unedited, formats? No.
I think it’s fine to be long and rambling. (I am, after all.) You just have to appreciate the structure is self-limiting and prone to cultivating an audience bias. Are audience biases bad? No. Every publication in the world is structured to appeal to an audience category. Being everything to all people is nigh on impossible and would involve too many editing compromises or contentions (as the BBC is now discovering).
But long formats in professional media do make a lot of people nervous. This is because they’re as close as you can get to a true reflection of someone else’s unfiltered reality. This can open the door to unexpected realisations, some of which go against mainstream narrative assumptions. Well known villains can be humanised through the process, while much beloved celebrities can be exposed as being far from perfect. Usually this reality check doesn’t matter, because the time-limiting factor of the content keeps it on the fringe. Broad public opinion is unaffected.
But Rogan’s mass popularity is upsetting this balance. With it, the long-held assumption that “mainstream media value” resides in filtering, refining and editorialising information for the sake of sensemaking is also being tested.
To put it in market trading terms, Rogan’s mass appeal — much larger than that of the legacy media — feels like a market breakdown. It simply shouldn’t be happening. It’s the inverted yield curve of the media industry. Or the snubbing of structured data in favour of the unstructured sort. Neither should make sense, so when they’re happening it signals something significant: the market is favouring inefficiency over efficiency.
Inverted yield curves should be fleeting phenomena....
....MUCH MORE
Also at TBS:
