This Article is Not About Joe Rogan

Dispatches from the Internet Proxy Wars

Joe Rogan is under attack, stabbed in the back by a thousand knives he painstakingly forged over 12 years of shooting the shit with some of the worst people on the planet. There’s the compilation video of Rogan saying the n-word repeatedly. The video of Rogan laughing with guest Joey Diaz about coercing woman comics into sex. Comparing a Black neighborhood to Planet of the Apes. The clip where Rogan’s guest talks about how Black people have a gene that predisposes them to violence because “If you think about like white European Asian ancestors as we kind of moved out of Africa, like aggression and violence was less necessary because we were like farmers and stuff.”

*laughs in WWII*

But this article is not about Joe Rogan. Not really. It might be the only thing on the Internet right now that isn’t.

Let me tell you another story.

It is Portland, Oregon in the fall of 2020. The feds have gone home but the Portland police sure haven’t and protesters are still lighting dumpsters on fire and otherwise hitting the streets in the name of abolition. News outlets are still paying money for pictures and footage but there’s a lot less available cash than there used to be.

One photographer is becoming increasingly angry that her footage is not getting more play. There are…