A feud on Twitter highlights the perils of engaging on the platform and a growing tension among researchers and medical professionals.

    • Shiroa@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      tl;dr
      Joe Rogan hosted RFKjr on his show, vaccine researcher Peter Hotez replied to the post on Twitter with the old article titled “Spotify is no longer even trying to staunch the flow on Joe Rogans vaccine misinformation” while commenting that all Joe does is “spread nonsense”.

      This prompted Joe to offer Hotez a large sum of money donated to his charity of choice, as a reward for publicly debating RFKjr on Joe’s show, with no time limit. Hotez said he would go on the show, but that a debate with RFKjr would not be productive.

      A twitter argument followed involving Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and RFKjr on the topic of whether Hotez has an obligation or not to accept the debate with RFKjr.

      Why it’s a story: Things came to a head with Hotez being harassed outside of his home by Rogan fans. The individuals demanding that Hotez debate RFKjr recorded Hotez entering his home as they attempted to persuade him. Here’s a time stamped link to a news story that shows the video the harassment accused posted https://youtu.be/Okd-f-0yD58?t=18

      • Generic-Disposable@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Being a scientist and being a debater are different skill sets. In science debate is done via peer review and papers and in the case of medicine by doing trials.

        RJK and Rogan are fucking morons and the only way to debate them would be to continually call them evil stupid fucks because that’s what they are. Anything else is going to allow them to edit your comments to make them look like to their stupid evil audience.

      • admiralteal@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Jesus christ what an utterly toxic community JRE is. I always knew it, what with the way the guy enthusiastically platforms the likes of Peterson, but still, yuck.

        • Bucket_of_Truth@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          There’s definitely a divide in his fans. There are the old Opie & Anthony people who mostly just listened for comedy. The pandemic changed a lot, Rogan started with his vaccine stuff and that attracted a lot of MAGA types.

          Comedy in general has taken a right-wing shift. During the COVID lockdowns touring comedians could only perform in areas that didn’t have extreme restrictions, now comedians like Bill Burr and Tom Segura are incredibly popular with conservatives. I saw Bill a couple of years ago and he was making jokes about about conservatives and a large section of the crowd was unironically agreeing with his dumb caricatures.

    • wjrii@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Rogan had RFKjr on his show spouting anti-vax nonsense for three hours, they were called out by a scientist involved with developing COVID vaccines, and then they piled on when said scientist refused to “debate” RFKjr on the podcast.

      • Entropywins@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I loath the idea of debating conspiracy theorists, it give them a platform and lends legitimacy to their ideas. Daniel Dennett said it right that these people are playing tennis without the net. No logic or reasoning will matter nor proofs of any kind, they aren’t motivated by good faith discovery and discussions.

      • pizza_rolls@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        What’s funny is RFK jr admitted multiple times he didn’t understand fuckall about the conspiracies he was spouting, but for some reason they think it would be a good idea for him to debate ANYONE about vaccines lmao

        • DreamyDolphin@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          They think it would be a good idea because they aren’t interested in actual debate so much as performance and sound-bites to drive advertising revenue - to quote Sartre’s point that increasingly applies in so many situations these days:

          Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

        • proprioception@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          He’s a stunt, JFK’s generational legacy is a reminder that aristocracy has not gone away, it just pantomimes as a participant in democracy.