#1710 - Cullen Hoback

Cullen Hoback (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

I'm good. You know, it's really excited to be here. There was this, right before we got rolling, I was mentioning, I tweeted back in April, would love to go on Joe Rogan's podcast at some point.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

Is that when the documentary series came out in April?

Cullen Hoback (0:32)

So it premiered in March, like end of March.

And then it was rolled out in two episode per weekend installments. So it took three weeks for the whole thing to release. And it was actually really exciting because it was, you had the audience reacting in real time. There'd be a week to see, okay, well, how is the community receiving this? How is the mainstream media?

Joe Rogan (0:58)

Did you say the Q-munity?

Cullen Hoback (0:59)

The Q-munity.

Joe Rogan (1:00)

You really said that? Yeah. Is that what they call themselves?

Cullen Hoback (1:02)

I mean, I have so much of this lexicon now that I can't avoid. It's just, I say it at the beginning of the series, like it seeps into your thoughts. It really does.

Joe Rogan (1:10)

Right. Clinton body count, right?

Cullen Hoback (1:12)

Clinton body count, 17 Can't see that without thinking Q.

Joe Rogan (1:15)

Right.

Cullen Hoback (1:16)

Impossible. Just a number.

Joe Rogan (1:19)

Well, it's really well done. I just want to say you did a fantastic job. It's really excellent.

Cullen Hoback (1:25)

Thank you.

Joe Rogan (1:26)

And it's such a compelling subject. And it opens up so many conversations on censorship, on what is the truth, and how important is it to know what's real and what's not real? It's such a complex and unusual conversation that we have to have today about misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and this whole Q thing, which is just like, it to me embodies the perfect example of what's like worst-case scenario if someone just started making up some wild shit, we assume making up wild shit, online and got an enormous group of people to go along with it, and then they wind up attacking Capitol.

I mean, when they attack the Capitol building, when they storm the Capitol building, and you realize like, oh my God, like this is literally like the wings of the butterfly create the storm, and then here it is like a thing that looked preposterous just a couple of years ago, when people are talking about all the Q drops and all those like the people that I knew that are in the QAnon. Jamie pointed out earlier that a lot of them were the same people that are in the flat earth. It's the same sort of folks like kind of without, you know, uncharitable terms, unsophisticated, gullible, and into secrets, into finding out secrets.

Cullen Hoback (3:08)

I mean, I would say that in my experience, there weren't too many QAnons who were also big flat earthers. Or maybe they had set that aside a little bit. But I mean, you see in episode one, Liz Croken, who is a big QTuber, big sort of celebrity in terms of analyzing Q drops and talking about the meaning, I bring that up to her. I'm like, well, what about flat earth? She's like, tell me anything. Nothing's too crazy, right?

And this is the thing about Q. It's like Q, and I think a lot of people were attracted to this premise because it feeds correctly into this notion that we should be skeptical of things was question everything. Question everything. Question whether or not the earth is flat. Question whether or not.

And in the beginning, that included question Q. And that faded away pretty quickly. A few months into QAnon, you could question anything as long as you didn't question Q. And you jumped right to January 6th. Sort of the finish line.

When I think of Jan 6th, I don't think it would have happened without QAnon. I also don't think it happened solely because of QAnon. There were a lot of forces that coalesced that day.

Joe Rogan (4:36)

Yeah, I would agree with you, 100%. I think it's such a strange time where people are learning how to use social media and then we're also aware that social media is heavily manipulated by foreign countries. I'm sure you're aware of the Internet Research Agency in Russia, this whole, essentially a troll farm that's designed to fuck with us.

And very successfully, and Renee DeResta's highlighted this really well, and it was really interesting to talk to her and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes with this stuff. And hundreds and hundreds of thousands of memes, often hilarious memes, that get shared on social media created by Russia.