During a recent broadcast, MMA media personality Luke Thomas addressed the resurfaced clip of Joe Rogan discussing adult film actress Traci Lords and the culture surrounding media in the 1990s.
The topic came up after a viewer asked Thomas during the live chat: “Did you see the viral Rogan clip where he admits to watching Traci Lords do p*rn at 16? Birds of a feather explains the Epstein experience by Rogan.”
Thomas went on to frame the moment as part of a larger cultural environment from that era.
“If you’re wondering where woke came from, it came from the world responding to stuff like that,” Thomas said. “Like if you grew up in the 90s, people like, ‘Have you said slurs before?’ Are you kidding? I grew up in the 90s as a white kid listening to rap and you know like it wasn’t exactly like in South Georgia and when I was 14 this was exactly a particularly enlightened place on a number of issues like dude we used to say horrible stuff of course.”
Thomas then explained how entertainment and comedy operated differently during that period.
“And comedy coming out of it at that time was like this kind of like almost like sho ck jock comedy,” he said. “And some of it was good a lot of it was bad but you get the idea like dude, you could just say wild stuff relative to what you can say today.”
He continued by discussing what he believes sparked the cultural shift that followed.
“You can all talk about the excesses of woke and it was terrible and blah blah blah. Fine,” Thomas said. “I’m not even making an argument about where it ended up or what the excesses may or may not have been. My only point is where does it come from? And it comes from a world that was pedalling that all the time. Like that where that was like you’re saying stuff like that on network television and people are like I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
Thomas clarified that, in his view, the issue went beyond simply offending people.
“Not because oh it offends me but like I don’t think these are healthy ideas to promote,” he added.
