I think the rot really set in before the Spotify stuff. I’ve never used Spotify, so anything exclusive to that platform is something I miss. I occasionally listened to his stuff before the Spotify deal, but I’d stopped listening long enough before that change that it didn’t change anything for me.

What seemed to change for me is that originally he really was just asking questions. He admitted that he was uninformed and he asked his guests questions on what they claimed to be experts about. Often his guests were real experts, but sometimes it was a conspiracy theorist. When it was a conspiracy theorist, often they looked dumb when Rogan asked a pretty basic question and the answer was ridiculous.

But, over time he went from honestly asking questions to “just asking questions”. Like, he had his mind made up and was instead trying to push some kind of ideology.

What made it especially bad is that his Spotify Exclusivity deal started around the same time as the Pandemic, and if he’s not an anti-vax nutjob, he’s at least nutjob adjacent.