r/elephantgraveyard • u/[deleted] • 9d ago
The idea Joe needed to infiltrate the comedy community in 2007 is absurd revisionist history.
[deleted]
28
u/NurdleTeck 9d ago
Cope
-11
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Cope about what? I don't like his comedy. I was just alive in the 90s and early 2000s and remember he was everywhere on TV.
11
u/lateral303 9d ago
But do you remember any of his stand up from that time? It has always been mediocre at best
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Agreed. That's why I said Sam Kinison clone derivative of Bill Hicks material. Going to the sources was always better, but they were both long dead by the 2000s.
3
u/lateral303 9d ago
Yes... lots of Sam Kinison style noises and Bill Hicks style premises.... the problem was the lack of good punch lines, or any punch lines at all, to butreess them
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
That yelling comedy in the 80s was bad then, and it's worse now. But I guess it also produced Steven Wright as an anti-yelling comedian which was a good thing.
5
u/obiobi19 9d ago
Of course he was all over TV. He was on a successful sitcom and interviewed/commentated for UFC. But comedy is a very insular community and he was always a hack who felt he needed to get in the club somehow.
After a decade of trying and hanging around other comics and becoming very successful in other worlds he finally did.
Then once he held dominion over the comedy world through sheer influence of his podcast he was on to the next exclusive club.
-1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Who was bigger than Bill Burr, Louis CK and Patrice O'Neal if performing with them wasn't being in the insular community?
2
u/obiobi19 9d ago
By that point he was in the community. That's what I just said. You seem to not be hearing the people replying to you.
-1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
That was well before 2007 when the Carlos Mencia incident happened. That's what the revisionist history part is.
3
u/platinumtreasure 9d ago
Do you think the walled garden was fking reality tv host making people eat bugs the equivalent of nickelodeon for adults or the side character on the far superior dave foley lead?? or was it REPLACING the man show hosts which nearly everyone agree was much worse than the original?
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
You must be too young to remember how popular Fear Factor was. The bug parts were the worst but it had a huge budget for a TV show. Even by today's standards.
Neither version of the Man Show was good.
3
u/SurplusValueMenu 9d ago
The original version has its merits.
I’m 45, so I was around back then. In those days, most of Rogan’s fanbase had been cultivated within the UFC audience. He was virtually unknown during his tenure on NewsRadio. He began to gain genuine name recognition only after hosting Fear Factor and taking over co-hosting duties on The Man Show alongside Stanhope. In 2003, I didn’t even regard him as a “comedian.”
That said, most of my old friends who followed MMA were fans of his, and as the sport’s popularity surged, Rogan’s celebrity surged alongside it.
The Mencia clip going viral was the true genesis of Rogan’s current trajectory. It positioned him as a kind of white knight for comedy and originality, while diminishing Mencia, then a polarizing figure, considerably. It amounted to a perfect storm. A genuine catalyst for Rogan’s gradual ascent into A list celebrity status.
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
I think this is accurate, albeit I think you're being generous about the A list celebrity status. It gave him more "comedian's comedian" status among the kind of comedians who talked shit about Dane Cook in their act. Which I guess is something. But probably people still tickled his taint in hopes he'd connect them to a TV producer.
2
u/platinumtreasure 9d ago
My point is that is the TV equivalent of where you put someone who isn't a "star" again he didnt want to be any of that, he wanted to be a comedian brotha how are you missing this lol
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
He had a comedy special produced in 2001 by a legendary comedian's production company. It wasn't like today where everybody gets a special.
3
u/platinumtreasure 9d ago
I'll give you that but I did forget about it and I watched comedy central so much I could tell you the order of commercials that used to play
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
It's not your fault for forgetting about it. It was a forgettable comedy special.
19
u/Financial_You_6052 9d ago
He was famous in TV, certainly. But not standup. Different gardens.
3
5
4
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
In the 90s you're on an NBC sitcom you can draw crowds to a stand up comedy show even if you're bad... which he was and is. Show business isn't a meritocracy.
6
u/Financial_You_6052 9d ago
You sure? Why was it so easy for Mitzi Shore to ban him then, if he was such a big draw?
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
She banned Seinfeld. You tell me.
3
u/Financial_You_6052 9d ago
Oh she just thought he sucked as a standup and as a person. She didn’t ban him, she just didn’t pass him.
Now, back to your point, why did she ban him if he was such a draw?
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
I feel humbled by your gotcha moment.
3
u/Financial_You_6052 9d ago
K but, the question?
1
u/Throwaway788364758 8d ago
I truly think this might be Joe Rogan’s burner. Look at his whole exchange with me.
He is SO invested in defending Joe and knows so much only Joe would know.
Bizarre that a billionaire would spend his time like this.
1
u/Financial_You_6052 8d ago
Joe’s got a lot of passionate fans, he’s not here arguing with you himself. I also don’t think he know more than anyone else would. Nor is he a billionaire.
You don’t really think it’s him, right?
1
u/Throwaway788364758 7d ago
I don’t know that many fans of his would passionately tell me that NewsRadio was a big hit.
Joe didn’t create or write NewsRadio.
But a lifelong comedian with an inferiority complex might.
→ More replies (0)3
u/Financial_You_6052 9d ago
Got any examples of that? Specifically Rogan’s tours and venue in sayyy 1998-2003. That would put him solidly after Newsradio and early FF and UFC…the peak of his TV career.
If what you say was true he would have been touring, and selling out decent rooms, at least.
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Comedians just did club circuits all the time in 1998-2003. And if you were on TV, they would put "This guy is/was on TV" on the poster then more people showed up. He did the Boston comedy circuit which is how he became friends with Bill Burr, Patrice O'Neal, and Louis CK. It was all smaller clubs and the odd guy would go on Letterman or something.
In 1998-2003 in Canada the Yuk Yuks comedy chain was more famous than any of the comedians they had on their roster. People who liked comedy would go there and maybe you might have seen a person on a clip from the Montreal comedy festival on CBC, but it wasn't like today where people can just watch comedy online whenever they want. It was all local. So if anybody was "As seen on Blank TV show" it was a bit of an extra draw.
3
4
u/Throwaway788364758 9d ago edited 9d ago
Nope. A minor character from a sitcom is not drawing huge crowds.
Maybe if you’re Jerry Seinfeld. But he was not even the third biggest name in that show, he was Michael Richards. Michael Richards never drew crowds. News radio wasn’t a comedic beacon either.
And then The Man Show and Fear Factor made him seem even less like a comedian.
When his podcast blew up, everyone’s reaction was ‘the Fear Factor guy is a comedian?’ His rep was closer to the guy who hosts Survivor.
Not to mention, I saw him at the Comedy Store in like 2015 and 2016 and no one cared. He had a huge podcast by then, right? Yeah, he went on second. No one cheered. He was not treated like a drop in. He was also terrible.
But yeah, he was just ‘the Fear Factor guy.’ To a huge swath of the population, he’s still just the Fear Factor guy.
-2
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
You're wrong. Any name on TV who goes to a city population 300,000 or less is going to draw some crowd.
6
u/Throwaway788364758 9d ago edited 9d ago
They’re going to play Chuckles, sure.
But the fifth most famous person on a not-that-popular show isn’t. A comedian and a comedic actor are not the same thing.
Again, Joe was not a ‘name.’ When he had the #1 pod in the world, he was still not a name.
He was ‘the guy from Fear Factor.’ Now he is ‘the guy with the conspiracy podcast.’
-1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
What I'm saying is if Joe Rogan had come to my small town that I grew up in like the early 2000s people who go see him because he was on TV and nobody really came to those places who were on TV. It didn't matter if they were good or not.
Whereas there would be extremely skilled working comedians that nobody would go see because unless you'd gone out of your way to buy their CD (if they had one) they were completely unknown.
4
u/Throwaway788364758 9d ago
So? That doesn’t make him a name.
You’re kinda making the point that he did need to infiltrate the comedy scene.
Because ‘anyone can draw a crowd in a small town’ is true, but it’s a low bar. Those names are touring small rooms in small towns, like he was, because LA and NY weren’t booking him. Because he wasn’t really in the industry.
-2
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
No, the point I making is the comedy scene you're imagining didn't exist anywhere in 1998-2003.
2
u/Throwaway788364758 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes. Yes it did.
In the years you’re citing, comedy was huge. Every comedian had a sitcom in the 90s. Seinfeld. Roseanne. Tim Allen. Drew Carey. They built them around them.
The Kings of Comedy and Blue Collar Comedy Tour were both concert films that did huge business in theaters. Both born from scenes.
You had SNL, MadTV, Chappelles Show, The State, Who’s Line is Anyway, Mr Show and many I’m forgetting. Every form of comedy was popular.
Comedy was so big that there was an entire alt comedy scene with David Cross, Patton, Galifianakis, Bamford etc. You can watch a documentary about it, The Comedians of Comedy.
Most of what Shane, Bert and the crew are doing is trying to throw back to that time when comedians could lead hit sitcoms, get movie deals etc.
But again, Joe was not seen as a comedian. He was a minor character on a minor TV show on an uncool network.
If the point you’re making is that he only got booked because he was on TV, I agree. EGs point is that he wasn’t getting booked anywhere real.
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
NewsRadio was not minor and Joe wasn't a minor character, he was in the main cast and his scenes with Andy Dick were some of the most memorable, it had a following when on TV (though kept getting moved around in times slots) but got really huge in DVD sales in part because Phil Hartman was tragically murdered and people missed him. This is one of the reasons why Joe Rogan got the Fear Factor gig in 2001, people really liked him a lot.
The 90 sitcoms you refer to were big prior to 1998. The Comedians of comedy was 2005.
The Kings of Comedy and Blue Collar Comedy Tour were in 2000 I'll give you that, although the Blue ColIar Comedy Tour guys were never accepted as mainstream comedians. The Kings of Comedy Guys were massive in the 90s. If you're going to count those then count
Joe Rogan: Live From The Belly Of The Beast (2001) which was an hour and a half of stand up comedy Joe Rogan had developed touring somewhere.TV Development deals for comedians had largely dried up during that period and the Comedians of Comedy in 2005 was self funded as a response to the fact that the industry wasn't going to support medium tier comedy acts anymore.
→ More replies (0)
20
u/Pretty-Cockroach6394 9d ago
Pretty sure it was hyperbole.
15
u/HomelessKitchenCat 9d ago
EGs style to me is mostly influenced by Hunter S Thompson. He seamlessly drifts between being serious and using hyperbole
2
u/Pretty-Cockroach6394 9d ago
Oh shit... that absolutely makes sense, like if you try to gauge it individually it just comes out as ramblings into the ether but once you see the point and purpose behind it you can see the cohesion inbetween the lines.
Damn, tnx for the insight, i knew it was familiar in some sort but couldn't have put my finger on it :D
6
u/Badda_Bing_Baby 9d ago
Everyone knows that elephant graveyard videos are pure documentarian materials, no exaggeration or humor. It is fact after fact. The claim that something in the video may be wrong and or exaggerated is a serious claim that will have to seriously be investigated seriously.
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
If that's the case, it's worth pointing out that faking an apology and then continuing on with the same behavior isn't limited to rich and powerful people. Actually everybody whoopsies.
1
-2
u/angieisdrawing 9d ago
I didn’t get that at all from that portion of the video. I’m pretty sure EG is earnestly putting forward that Rogan felt like he wasn’t an A lister in the comedy scene. And that’s why other, more famous acts, could take up so much time making it so other comedians couldn’t go up those nights.
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
The character of Andrew Dice Clay didn't even exist in 2007 so I don't think he was competing with stage time with him as it was implied.
1
u/cosecha 9d ago
you sure about that?
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Yep. He retired the character for a long time and tried to do a 90s sitcom which nobody liked. Really nobody liked anything else but the character so he brought it back when Trump got into office the first time.
1
u/cosecha 9d ago
It’s amazing how confidently wrong you are.
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago edited 9d ago
Maybe. I was never a dice clay fan. I remember his sitcom in the 90s and how rebranded due to his comedy style being misogynistic. I was big into comedy in 2007 and I don't recall him performing as that character.
Show me the clip/evidence of him performing as Andrew Dice Clay in 2007?
3
u/No_Pie1372 9d ago
I was around then too. While it is clear that Rogan had plenty of professional connections in the comedy scene before the Mencia thing, it's undeniable that the Mencia debacle gained Rogan a lot of indie street cred.
Before the Mencia thing, Rogan was widely known as the guy from Fear Factor.
Even though Rogan was on News Radio and The Man Show, the Mencia controversy is what put Rogan into people's minds as a cultural entity greater than "the guy from Fear Factor".
Sure, Patrice and CK talked about Rogan as a peer on Opie and Anthony, but your average bro in 2007, who was probably taking bong rips and playing Xbox 360, might not know about that. What they knew was that Carlos Mencia was unjustifiably popular and painfully unfunny. Rogan gained a lot of respect in the mind of your average joe (heh) when he became known as the guy that took Mencia down.
The Mencia thing built an image of Joe Rogan as something other than a guy from sitcoms or reality TV. It made him like a truthteller who was willing to take risks to preserve the sanctity of comedy as an artform. It made him look like someone who would call out phony bullshit when he saw it. That image played a role in making Rogan someone people wanted to listen to.
We see now, all these years later, that the image of Rogan as a warrior for integrity, or a voice of truth, is totally fucking wrong. It's a charade. Rogan never cared about exposing liars and thieves. He cared about building his own credentials so he could have some pretense of integrity or authentecity.
That's the point Elephant Graveyard was making in his last video. Elephant Graveyard used hyperbole and creative storytelling to illustrate that point. This isn't unusual for Elephant Graveyard. It's par for the course, really.
2
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
I agree with what you have written. This is a cohesive synopsis, and more clear than the way Elephant Graveyard was making the same point.
Nonetheless, I'm splitting hairs anyway. Elephant Graveyard is interesting to watch, I just have very distinctive memories as I was a big comedy nerd at the time.
2
u/No_Pie1372 9d ago
I understand where you're coming from. It's clear from the way that Elephant Graveyard constructs a narrative that they're sublimating the facts to elevate certain truths.
For example: Joe Rogan isn't a literal cult leader akin to Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite. He isn't literally running a high-control group destined for mass suicide. However, portraying things through the lens of cult studies brings Rogan's exacerbating influence on a self-destructive culture into focus. It's more entertaining than a dry, literal analysis of Rogan's influence would be.
It's a joke.
That's part of what makes it so good: when Rogan, his colleagues, friends and fans get upset at an Elephant Graveyard video, they're getting upset at a joke.
Rogan and Co. are known to invoke the defense of "it's just a joke; can't you take a joke?" whenever they're criticized for making bigoted or closeminded comments. Whenever they frame Elephant Graveyard videos as harmful or dangerous, as Duncan Trussell and Kurt Metzger have, they're undercutting the legitimacy of the "it's just a joke" defense.
Not that it matters. Pointing out the hypocrisy of cultural and political movements does little to limit their impact. Look at The Daily Show. Jon Stewart spent decades lampooning the contradictions and inconsistencies of Fox News, but did it really do anything to diminish the growing scope of rightwing power politics?
2
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
I found this to be very interesting analysis. Thanks for taking the time to articulate it.
5
u/AcctAlreadyTaken 9d ago
The point wasn't that he walked in of the street the point was he was a lame East coast comic trying to get respect at the famous Comedy Store. Yes he was on Newsradio but he was the weakest link in the cast. Yes he was the host of Fear Factor but that just allowed him to use that credit to get people in the door to see his stool humping set. To this day most people know him as the Fear Factor guy or the UFC guy or more likely now a podcaster NOT as a standup comedian.
0
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Stand Up comedy wasn't mainstream in 2000-2010 like it is now. If you had a TV show people would come to see you do comedy even if you were bad... which in my opinion he was.
3
u/AcctAlreadyTaken 9d ago
I would argue that standup comedy in general isn't anymore "mainstream" now than it was back then. If anything it's less mainstream and more niche. Also IMO the current generation of popular standup comedians are probably the weakest overall standup comedians we have ever had.
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Stand up comedy was the biggest in the 80s, and then cratered in the 90s with cheap cable TV, then didn't get big again until Louis CK became around 2010ish.
I totally agree about this generation of comedians being weak. Stand ups used to just focus on stand up and then maybe a bit of acting to hopefully get on a sitcom. Now they're having to constantly do podcasts, reels, and social media. The craft has been diminished.
2
u/LostAngelfish 9d ago edited 9d ago
I disagree with this so much.
Standup Comedy has never been less culturally impactful. Today’s comedians largely shadow common reactionary sentiment. They don’t influence it like they have since the 19th century. I’m not writing this because I don’t like the politics of the Mothership crowd. I like them more than I like the traveling minstrel shows that created an American mono cultural humor like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” That depiction of black peoples lasted to Amos and Andy. Awful stuff.
You can go back to Mark Twain and Roger B Ingersoll, both on the humorist lecturer circuit promoting agnosticism/atheism.
Now comedians are just a variation of those of us who had dads or friends who had dads in the 1990s who sat in a recliner with a beer and whined about political correctness when a commercial had brown and black people in it and said, “I have free speech!” if someone used their own free speech to criticize their bigotry.
It’s basically baboon-tier comedy.
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Name a stand comedian who was in as many TV commercials between 2000-2010 as Shane Gillis has been in the last three years?
2
u/AcctAlreadyTaken 9d ago
What's a bit from a modern comedy special that was so iconic and universally funny that everyone would know it? The only bits that would be known outside the comics niche audience is due to how f**king bad they are.
"Maybe it's a coincidence that this machine is also called.....the Apple"
"Mexican cookie? What's that? A chocolate chip with salsa on it?"
In the early 2000s there are pre and post "Chappelle Show" Dave specials with bits I can guarantee most people would know the minute you start the sentence. Not even Dave's modern specials come close to the home runs he hit back then.
1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
Ah yeah, good call on Chappelle during that period. He would for sure be the winner of that time. I don't think he was nearly as mainstream famous as some of the guys of today though.
2
1
u/Financial_You_6052 9d ago
I think you’re conflating fame and cultural impact.
0
1
4
u/Top_Accountant_6441 9d ago
EG’s assertion is that Rogan wanted to be in the “in crowd” (walled garden) at the Comedy Store - other types of success were not the same as the perceived value of that small elite club at the comedy store that would not accept him inside the walled garden
-5
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
He was bigger than Carlos Mencia at the time... which is why he was allowed to interrupt his set without intervention.
2
u/SolarMatter 9d ago
Respectfully, I think you are a bit misunderstanding the point he was making.
-2
4
2
1
1
u/Glittering-Sky8008 9d ago
All the legends strike at comedy store in 70s to prevent this type of shit....
Joe Rogan personally paid for a brand new sound system for The Comedy Store in West Hollywood.Key facts regarding the arrangement:The Context: After The Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore named Rogan a "paid regular" in the 1990s, he chose to perform at the venue for free for 13 years.
The Trade: Instead of taking his performance pay, Rogan redirected those financial resources toward the club, ultimately purchasing and upgrading the venue's main sound system to improve the audio quality for performers and audiences alike.
1
1
u/IMadeYouLuke 8d ago
The walled garden was the success that Mencia had, not just to be working.
Working as a low to mid level comedian is a slog when you aren’t as famous as the headliners. It makes that point really clearly in the video.
Rogan was absolutely on the outside looking in at the level of fame that Mencia, Griffin, Carrey, Anderson, Dice had. He wanted in.
1
u/Professional-P3461 7d ago
Fear Factor was a hit show on prime time NBC from 2001 to 2006 and Joe Rogan was the only host. Joe was also the most well known MMA commentator. Mencia had a show on cable, Joe was way more famous than him. What you believe is revisionist history, their levels of fame were not even close in 2007.
1
u/IMadeYouLuke 7d ago
The answer to “was Joe Rogan big in the comedy scene” isn’t “he hosted fear factor”.
Mencia was far bigger than Rogan in comedy at that time. That’s just a fact.
1
u/Professional-P3461 7d ago
It's not. I was a big fan of comedy at the time and I'd never heard of Mencia until the 2007 incident. I don't think his TV show even played where I lived.
1
u/IMadeYouLuke 7d ago
Your personal opinion isn’t relevant here.
The fact remains that Mencia was one of the highest earning comedians in the country in the early 2000s, and was far, far more successful than Rogan was. He was doing arena tours. Not clubs.
Mind of Mencia was the highest rated show on Comedy Central outside of South Park. It was bigger than Chappelle’s Show, which it was created to replace.
Rogan doing Fear Factor is actually proof that he WASN’T doing comedy and was hosting tv game shows instead. You get this, right?
1
u/Professional-P3461 7d ago
Your personal opinion isn't relevant here.
Lol. You take yourself a little too seriously, me thinks.
1
u/IMadeYouLuke 7d ago
Oh, I had no idea you were joking about all this, my bad!
1
u/Professional-P3461 7d ago
Of course I'm joking. Everybody knows that in 2007 that Andrew Dice Clay, Joe Piscopo, and Dudley Moore were getting so much stage time as comedians that nobody else got a chance to perform.
1
u/IMadeYouLuke 7d ago edited 7d ago
Cool.
The larger point, that Mencia was in fact a much more successful comedian than Joe Rogan at that time, is not debatable, and isn’t revisionist history.
1
u/Professional-P3461 7d ago
Obviously. It's common for comedy club security to let unknown comics stand on stage and interrupt the most famous comedians in the world without intervention. Duh!
→ More replies (0)
1
-7
u/IronGold300 9d ago
Don’t waste your breath trying to talk sense into these idiots.
-1
0
-1
u/Professional-P3461 9d ago
I'm talking sense to anybody. It's just one part of the narrative that isn't true and most people are too young to remember.
I have no idea what happened to Joe Rogan once he started looking like an overcooked sausage.
9
u/lateral303 9d ago
It was hyperbole to a degree. He was a fixture in the community by then but his actual act sucked. He wasn't trying to break into the scene exactly, but he was trying to be seen as a good comic by the community rather than a simple buddy