Joe Rogan shared a photo late Sunday night of a sign that used to hang up for his early comedy shows in the 1990s.
The sign reads, “WARNING: JOE ROGAN’S COMEDY SHOW WILL CONTAIN THE STRONGEST LANGUAGE AND MATERIAL CONTENT IMAGINABLE. THIS SHOW IS FOR MATURE AUDIENCES.”
He wrote the following caption on the picture:
This is the sign that’s in my contract to be on display for all of my shows. I’ve had it in there since the 90’s. Back in the day before the internet there were a lot of people that wanted their comedy to be squeaky clean like you see on the Tonight Show. It was a big issue when I was starting out. The narrative back then was, you could either perform “dirty” and be as funny as you could be but be stuck working shitty bar gigs, or you could water yourself down and play it safe, and be “clean” to get on television. The idea of that was terrifying to me, because of whatever weird mental issues I have I’m terrified of compromise. I’m terrified of “working” and doing something I don’t really want to do, and the idea of being a “clean” comedian felt too much like “work.” I was scared I would be trapped pretending to be someone I wasn’t, talking about shit I really didn’t care about, just trying to make a living. It felt like in the pursuit of a dream, a safe option for a “job” came along tempting me.
It was a huge problem when I was trying to get work early on and I was legitimately worried that my pig-headedness on this issue would keep me from having a successful comedy career. Somewhere in the early 90’s I dug my heels in and decided I was going to just do whatever the fuck I wanted to do and that way if it didn’t work out at least I tried to do the kind of comedy that I liked. That was when I started putting these signs up at clubs because I didn’t want anyone complaining. I figured a sign saying “the strongest language and material content imaginable” didn’t leave any room for complaining.
This is such a breath of fresh air. Maybe we we should just have Joe Rogan run the country. That’s a guy who doesn’t care what anybody thinks, and just fires up the middle fingers when people try to tell him to tamper down.
Most people would have probably played it safe to score a television gig. Instead, Rogan did the exact opposite, and look where it got him. I have to agree with Rogan’s thinking here. Do what you love doing, do it well and everything else will work itself out.
Forget about playing the games that everybody else is worried about. That’s not what got Rogan to the top. He just did it his own way. I love everything about this.