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.
(We must issue a warning, though. This video is not for the faint of heart, particularly when Elephant Graveyard brings up Tony Hinchcliffe, whose mere mention is a vibe killer.)
Like Curtis, whose latest docuseries, Shifty, would make for an excellent pairing with “Comedy Jonestown,” Elephant Graveyard creates a hypnotic narrative that transcends its form. Both hilarious and atmospheric, “Jonestown” connects the dots from the first organisms to exit the sea to Rogan’s hypernormalized world, where his employees are his best friends who populate a microeconomy in which they are simultaneously outsiders, victims, and heroes, all while never telling a joke. Looking at human migration patterns and where we retreat to when there’s nowhere else to go, Elephant Graveyard returns to the most vital questions of our time: “How did comedy get so shit? Was it ever good?”
Elephant Graveyard has long been on the Rogan beat, helping to popularize the theory that Rogan stole his idea for a DIY comedy empire from Tom Green. But Elephant Graveyard’s work in the fields of Jerry Seinfeld and Tony Hinchcliffe are just as disturbing. At its core, though, their videos offer excellent and entertaining cultural analysis that, like Curtis, help make sense of a world where fucking Joe Rogan is the center of comedy.
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