Watch This: YouTuber Elephant Graveyard applies HyperNormalisation to the Joe Rogan universe
With their latest video essay, YouTuber Elephant Graveyard examines how stand-up comedy has evolved into a death cult.
Credit: Tony Conrad
Have you ever noticed that Joe Rogan sounds a lot like Heaven’s Gate leader Marshall Applewhite? The YouTubers behind Elephant Graveyard have, and they’re making some compelling arguments. For the last three years, through a mix of sound collages and video essays, Elephant Graveyard has been producing some of the funniest, most entertaining, and insightful critiques of the manosphere—the UFC-influenced contingent of right-wing stand-up comics who have ascended from comedy clubs to the White House. Released two weeks ago, their latest video, “Comedy Jonestown,” applies documentarian Adam Curtis’ HyperNormalisation to the Rogan-verse, arguing that the comics in his orbit have abandoned reality and established a hyperreality within the confines of Rogan’s Comedy Mothership in Austin. Within their community, where there are only maybe (maybe) 50 real comedians in the world, Joe Rogan is the sun, moon, and stars.