Joe Rogan is a Fucking Idiot

Maybe just maybe, people shouldn’t take medical advice from a guy who doesn’t know the difference between chicken pox and measles

There is a certain breed of American stupidity so virulent, so radioactive, it should come with a biohazard warning and its own CDC task force. I’m talking about the kind of star-spangled, skull-fucked, artisanal idiocy that can only be conjured by two men: Joe Rogan and RFK Jr.—the Abbott and Costello of anti-vax brain death, the Siegfried and Roy of weaponized wrongness, the twin pillars holding up the Temple of “Jesus Christ, how are you still alive?”

Rogan, for his part, is the podcasting equivalent of a gas-station urinal cake left to marinate in the scent of Funyuns, burnt clutch, and a jug of SunnyD abandoned to the laws of nature, sealed in the backseat of a 2006 Dodge Charger in August. His medical expertise is only rivaled by his knowledge of quantum physics—which is to say, he once heard a guy at the gym say “quantum” and thought it was a new pre-workout flavor.

Taking health guidance from a man whose main career achievements include competitive head trauma and yelling at people to eat moose testicles on cable TV is a special kind of Darwinian self-selection. He’s the sort who thinks epidemiology is optional and facts are just for funsies. Every time he opens his mouth, it’s like a haunted ball pit at a defunct Discovery Zone coughing up a sticky, sentient mascot head to sell you mushroom supplements.

The company he keeps is no less spectacular. RFK Jr., whose family tree is a national monument to hope and tragedy, seems hell-bent on spending his golden years huffing paint thinner and mainlining conspiracy theories until his neurons are as scrambled as a breakfast buffet at a roadside casino in Reno. Here’s a man who couldn’t even sustain a brain worm before the worm took its own life, who once bragged about decapitating a whale, dumping a dead bear, and swimming in sewage. If Rogan is the dumbbell, RFK Jr. is the rusty, tetanus-laced barbell you drop on your own foot. Together, they’re the reason measles is making a comeback like pubic lice at a swingers’ convention that somehow turned into a potluck.

It’s almost poetic that a deranged reality game-show host in obvious cognitive freefall has put that fucking moron in charge of national public health. You can’t make this shit up.

Meanwhile, Rogan, with the confidence of a man who’s consumed far more elk meat than books, recently claimed that when he was a kid, everybody got measles—no big deal, you got sick for a few days, then you were immune for life. Except here’s the thing: this self-fellating, fact-vacuumed, protein-farting ignoramus doesn’t even know the difference between measles and chickenpox.

Pro tip: don’t take your medical advice from a man who can’t tell the difference between a viral chainsaw massacre and a viral pillow fight—or who thinks measles and chickenpox are just two flavors of the same popsicle.

He’s a little older than me, and yeah, we all got chickenpox because there wasn’t a vaccine yet. My sister still has a crater-sized scar on her forehead, like she lost a knife fight with a cheese grater. I had mine in the summer, and let me tell you, nothing says childhood trauma like being covered in oozing, itchy blisters while your friends are out riding bikes and you’re inside marinating in Calamine lotion and existential dread. I do not—ten out of ten—do not recommend. It sucked harder than a mosquito at a nudist colony.

But that wasn’t fucking measles.

There was a vaccine for measles.

None of us got measles.

This is medical advice from someone whose idea of a balanced diet is a fistful of psilocybin, a shot of bone broth, and a protein shake made with the tears of science teachers and a total disregard for cause and effect. Measles isn’t just a childhood rite of passage—it’s a viral John Wick, a microscopic assassin that will fuck you up and then come back for your neighbors. But in Rogan’s world, facts are about as useful to his disciples—and RFK Jr.’s disciples—as a toothbrush, a thesaurus, and a cousin-less dating pool. That doesn’t change the simple truth: facts still exist, no matter how many times you try to drown them in broth made from the bones of common sense.

Listening to these two is like letting Jeffrey Dahmer cater your vegan brunch or getting home-security tips from the Wet Bandits. You wouldn’t ask Gwyneth Paltrow for gynecological advice unless you want to steam your vagina with a $900 jade egg and a side of salmonella, so why the hell would you trust Rogan or RFK Jr. with your immune system? These are men who think “peer-reviewed” means “my cousin agreed with me on Telegram.” Their idea of scientific consensus is a group chat with Alex Jones and a pile of expired GNC receipts.

Rogan’s brain is like the lost-and-found bin at a Greyhound bus station—dangerous, poorly lit, and full of people arguing with their own shoes. His takes aren’t hot; they’re a series of electrical and drug-induced misfires loosely masquerading as thoughts. RFK Jr.’s logic is like a Rube Goldberg machine built out of wet cardboard and old AOL discs—confusing, full of missing pieces, and guaranteed to leave you with a busted finger and a sudden urge to pour bleach in your ears. If you combined their IQs, you’d have enough brainpower to maybe, just maybe, operate a Slap Chop.

Their fans? The kind of people who think “doing your own research” means watching a YouTube video filmed in a parked El Camino, narrated by a guy named Big Randy who’s wearing a towel and a gas-station Bluetooth headset, eating pickled eggs in a 160-degree sauna at a strip-mall gym in Tulsa, and whose only credential is a neck tattoo that says “No Ragrets” in Gothic script.

These are the people who think the CDC is just a bunch of nerds trying to keep them from their God-given right to raw milk and brain rot, but will take horse dewormer because a guy in a back-office wellness suite told them it cured his cousin’s COVID. They’re not just drinking the Kool-Aid; they’re snorting the powder off a bathroom floor at a Sheetz and chasing it with a shot of colloidal silver.

So here we are, in the golden age of preventable diseases and weaponized ignorance, watching two men who couldn’t pass a high-school biology test if you spotted them the mitochondria lead a parade of lost souls straight into the arms of viruses we’d already beaten. If there’s any justice left in the universe, it’s that someday, somewhere, a measles virus will overhear a Joe Rogan podcast and decide it’s just not worth the fucking effort.

I’ll close with this PSA:

Dear Ma & Pa MAHA,

Look, I know this isn’t your first rodeo in the flaming dumpster corral of courting death. You’ve spent years perfecting the art of staring down common sense and saying, “Nah, I’ll take my chances.” But for the love of whatever god you pray to when you’re microwaving raw chicken, please—please—don’t take your medical advice from a man who uses “falconing” as a verb and thinks pickled squirrel tails pair well with expired gummy vitamins and ayahuasca tea brewed in a Crock-Pot.

And as for Joe Rogan: his greatest contributions to society are getting kicked in the head for money, commentating on people getting kicked in the head for money, and convincing millions that licking a bowling shoe in a roller-rink bathroom is the same thing as reading a book.

He’s a fucking idiot. He’s the kind of guy who thinks “peer review” means texting his barber for a thumbs-up before eating drywall.

If you’re taking health advice from someone whose only medical degree is a framed coupon for half-off jalapeño poppers at Chili’s, you might as well let a possum with vertigo perform your next colonoscopy.

So I beg you, before you decide to skip a vaccine or get your medical info from a guy who thinks “herd immunity” is something you catch at a petting zoo, please fire up whatever brain cell survived that time you superglued your hand to a can of Miller Lite at the demolition derby. Let it spark, just for a second, and ask yourself:

Should I really trust a man whose idea of a vaccination schedule is whatever he overheard while pissing next to a guy in a foam finger at a minor-league hockey game?

Because we don’t have to make measles great again.

We really don’t.

We really fucking don’t.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!

JPC

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

Stay safe, stay strong, and stay the fuck away from Joe Rogan’s “medical advice.”

As this f’d up year comes to a close, I just want to say thank you—truly—to every single one of you. This community means more to me than I can ever put into words, and I don’t take your support for granted for even a second.

I’ll be posting again before New Year’s, but I didn’t want to let this moment pass without saying how deeply grateful I am. The work I do here is how I take care of my little family, and because of you, I get to keep showing up, keep writing, and keep going. Your support doesn’t just matter—it sustains us. It’s felt every day, in very real ways.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading, sharing, laughing, crying, and standing with me. I love this community more than you know.

💙 Jo