The root of the "podcast renaissance" and influencers like Joe Rogan lies in the very fabric of the contemporary culture in America that has little to do with podcasts: if getting out of school and straight into entepreurship is served to you daily as the best way to success in life while the public school system is financially on its knees, you can't blame kids for learning important life lessons from Joe Rogan. Teachers paychecks are an exercise in humiliation, they're forced to work two jobs for a living and can't afford a roof over their heads. No surprise higher education and campuses are treated as hubs of woke hypocrisy and brainwashing by Trump's supporters. Why would they bother anyway? The Ivy League has taught America the working class isn't entitled to good education. Don't even get me started on the role of (un)paid maternity leave or health insurance that-guess what-is also at the core without having anything to do with podcasting. It's painfully simple: underfunded schools create an underwhelming learning environment and underpaid teachers make for existentially desperate people drained of genuine passion for the imoortant work they're doing. This results in students drawn to social media influencers as role models who sell them biased social media as reality. That's why both Rogan and Trump and Bro culture aren't the real problem. They're just exacerbated symptoms of the bigger picture. If you want to put the blame for his election success or Capitol Hill riots into someone's hands, put them in yours. You're the one draining your brain on Facebook, spending more time discussing on Reddit instead at the table in real life, watching streaming at home instead of socialising in cinemas and putting cash into Apple's pockets by dishing out for new gadgets all the time. Look at the Black Friday frenzy and the epidemic of porn as a substitute for sex. It's all your fault because you're asking for it. Without customers willing to sacrifice their time and money, there'd be no market for Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson. This one's on you. They took you for a ride and you came back for more. So don't act surprised when a reality show host ends up in the Oval Office. It's called American dream for a reason.