Joe Has Relinquished His Reign as the Sovereign of Podcast Dominion
Following the 2024 Presidential election, it seemed like there was an unexpected winner in the podcast world: MeidasTouch. This anti-Trump podcast, hosted by the Meiselas brothers, managed to claim the number one spot on the charts, leaving the Joe Rogan Experience in its dust. And boy, did Joe Rogan take it hard.
Taking to Twitter, Rogan sent out a not-so-subtle "Who?" in response to the news. It was the type of tweet that spoke volumes about his feelings, even if he was trying to hide them. According to The Daily Beast, citing data from Podscribe, MeidasTouch had racked up an impressive 56 million downloads and views across all platforms by February, beating out Rogan's combined 48.6 million downloads and views during the same time period. And the audience for MeidasTouch had grown an impressive 101% in the past month, while Rogan's viewership had taken a nose dive, dropping nearly one-third.
Diehard Rogan fans online were quick to dismiss the growth of MeidasTouch as inauthentic, but there had been some signs that Rogan might be rubbing some of his audience the wrong way. Politico recently published a story about fans who had grown disillusioned with Rogan's obsession with Elon Musk, whom he had been reffering to as a "super genius." According to Politico, there was a growing contingent of Rogan subscribers on the r/JoeRogan subreddit who were beginning to question just how anti-establishment the guy who was so cozy with a billionaire could really be.
It's true that Rogan had leaned heavily into being a Trump Train guy in recent years. The decision had seemed to pay off, landing him an invite to the inauguration and plenty of access to Trump orbiters. But Rogan just kept inviting guests from Musk's circles, and those guys tended to reveal themselves as know-nothings when they talked at length about just about anything. A recent clip from a Rogan episode went viral where Marc Andreessen, a tech investor and prior guest, claimed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was "debanking" tech founders — a claim that was easily debunked.
It was understandable, in a way, that Rogan would lean into this world. After all, it had helped him skyrocket to unprecedented success and influence after a shaky period during the covid lockdowns where it seemed like he might face consequences and backlash for hosting anti-science cranks all the time. But Rogan may have gotten a little too high on the technofascist supply, at least for some portion of his audience.
Now, to be fair to Rogan, the Meiselas brothers behind MeidasTouch were hardly household names. You'd probably recognize their Twitter account, where they racked up views on clips and shared anti-Trump news with slightly sensationalized headlines. But Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas — the actual people behind the account and the hosts of the podcast — were three guys you'd never heard of before.
But they caught fire during the 2020 presidential election, running some evocative and well-produced attack ads against Trump and his Republican allies. The ads were successful enough that the brothers were able to rack up funding and expand their operation. And while they'd been on Rogan's radar before, it was likely thanks to a MeidasTouch affiliate, PatriotTakes, who had surfaced some old clips of Rogan saying the n-word back in 2022.
If you'd been invested in the "left needs its own Joe Rogan" story, the Meiselas brothers were probably not the ideal people to fill the role. They'd managed to fill a role in the left-of-center media ecosystem, making sure right-wing lunacy got lots of exposure. But their content was extremely #TheResistance coded, and a cynical view of their operation might see them more as marketers than as genuine activists.
As for what the brothers would do with their newfound success, that was anyone's guess. But one thing was clear: Joe Rogan had some serious catching up to do.
- Rogan might consider jettisoning his reliance on tech figures and their opinions, considering the backlash from his audience and the impressive growth of MeidasTouch.
- As a podcaster, Rogan could learn a thing or two from the Meiselas brothers about tapping into the public's desire for authentic anti-establishment content, instead of focusing solely on tech elites.
- In the future, the Joe Rogan Experience may face competition from MeidasTouch, which has shown that it can appeal to a large audience with its unique perspective on politics.
- Probably, the tech industry will observe the success of MeidasTouch and consider how they can adapt their strategies to attract and engage larger audiences, much like what Joe Rogan has done with his podcast.
