Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe recently spent nearly three hours on Rogan’s podcast convincing themselves that everyone who criticizes them is jealous, miserable, or too dim to understand comedy.
Conspicuously absent from the entire conversation was any mention of Hinchcliffe’s Netflix special, Man of the People, which landed so badly that Tony himself copped to it on K*ll Tony, telling his audience: “I’m an artist that takes incredible risks. You can all suck my fat c**k.”
According to sources, the omission was not accidental. The podcast was recorded after the White House UFC card, which took place a week after the special dropped, so there was no reasonable excuse for skipping over it. Their silence on the topic says more than anything they actually discussed.
Instead, the two men spent the episode dismissing critics as mentally unwell, professionally unsuccessful, and chronically online.
Rogan said, “The comics that are doing it, almost all of them don’t have good careers. None of them have impressive careers, especially compared to their contemporaries that are doing well. And then on top of it, they’re all mentally ill. They’re all people that are filled up with pharmas and they’re going to therapy.”
The projection is difficult to miss. Rogan appeared to be aiming at comedians like Marc Maron, who has a comedy career far more accomplished than Rogan’s own, and who recently stepped away from podcasting for no other reason than to find some clarity and peace of mind. Rogan, meanwhile, keeps cycling through the same loop of rambling podcast rants while dismissing anyone who disagrees with him.
Hinchcliffe also attempted to score goodwill by revisiting the Kevin Hart roast, insisting that a joke about him performing in Saudi Arabia was completely fabricated and that he actually turned down the offer. After Man of the People left even his own fanbase underwhelmed, he appears to be reaching for any available credibility boost.
The pair also compared themselves to Louis CK, suggesting audiences have simply lost the ability to tell the difference between a joke and a genuine statement. That comparison falls apart quickly. Louis CK’s material has always featured clearly constructed setups with deliberate payoffs. What Rogan and Hinchcliffe offer is largely recycled stereotypes delivered into a microphone without any real craft behind them, followed by declarations of comedic genius.
