Comedy group ‘The Chaser’ tricked thousands of Spotify listeners with a fake version of Joe Rogan’s podcast that actually promotes vaccines.
Over the weekend, Joe Rogan fans were met with an unexpected surprise as they tuned in to his latest podcast episode: A vaccine-endorsing message, supposedly from the renowned COVID-misinformer himself. “I’m just a shoot-from-the-hip moron in his 50s who’s balding and an idiot, I can do what I like,” proclaimed ‘Joe Rogan’ to thousands of Spotify listeners.
Though the fellas claimed the protection of misinformation was what kept their pod online, we haven’t heard any lies yet.
After Spotify’s refusal to axe Rogan’s podcast, despite his dangerous spread of COVID-19 misinformation to 11 million listeners per episode, an Aussie comedy group decided to take matters into their own hands.
By simply changing their podcast’s name and profile picture to be the same as Joe’s, they managed to momentarily overtake Rogan’s top ranking on the platform and reach thousands of listeners. According to The Chaser’s Charles Firth, “We figured most of Rogan’s audience is so gullible it’d be easier if we just pretended to be Joe for a day and declare that vaccines are safe.” Well said, Charles.
Last week, rock legend Neil Young made headlines after criticising Spotify’s firm stance with Rogan’s “right to free speech”, and subsequently chose to remove his music from the platform, saying: “Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.”
“People like Neil Young have been pulling their music to get back at Spotify, which is very noble but probably isn’t going to convince many people to get jabbed,” explained Firth.
That’s why The Chaser made their next legendary move… purchasing the domain name JoeRogan.com.au, which now redirects users to the Australian government’s vaccine booking site: “Knowing how quickly his fans fall for most scams, we expect they’ll all be fully vaccinated within the next six to eight hours.” Fucking brilliant!
@chaser you got me good. Woke up and saw I had subscribed to Joe Rogan podcast and thought how tired was I last night that I decided to subscribe to this shit. Bastards. 😁
— Sasha George (@bks8472) January 31, 2022
As far as any repercussions are concerned, members of the ‘The Chaser’ aren’t that worried. “At first we thought Spotify might be upset with us pretending to be their star podcaster and pull our show as a result. But then we remembered they don’t have any problem with misinformation being spread on their platform, so I think we’re good.”
It is pretty encouraging to see some change has occurred after all of this.
Spotify announced they plan to add a ‘content advisory’ warning to any podcasts that feature a discussion about COVID-19.
The CEO of the platform, Faniel EK wrote: “there are plenty of individuals and views on Spotify that I disagree with strongly… it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor.”
That’s all well and good but it’s definitely not as funny as the way The Chaser went about enacting change.
