Why Joe Rogan Thinks TikTok Is China's Secret Weapon

That's triple-layered censorship that America has zero exposure to. Americans always wanted to make the silliest, easiest content and get the most amount of attention for it. I actually was cool with Trump banning TikTok. And growing up with Chinese parents is a little bit like growing up in China. Apparently, like NyQuil chicken, that's just how to win a war. Is TikTok secretly a Chinese weapon designed to dumb down the American youth? Or are these frivolous things just what we've become and we're looking for someone to blame? Yeah, Joe Rogan and other commentators, comedians, they've sort of embraced this theory that the Chinese government is telling ByteDance to use the algorithm on American TikTok to show people dumb, degenerate things, therefore making America weaker, right? Whereas on Chinese TikTok, aka Douyin, they're more showing like science projects, engineering projects, people just being good golden age human beings. These are some big accusations. We're about to break down if they're true, if they're false, what's right, what's wrong. Give our analysis. Let's roll the clips. The difference between like TikTok in America is like dances and people doing pranks and people doing things to try to get viral views. In China, it highlights scientific achievements, athletic achievements. It highlights like people doing things, accomplishing things. It's motivating people to do good things and improve themselves. If you're China and you wanted to disrupt another country, wouldn't you reward the dumbest possible shit on that app? Twerking, people doing stupid dances. You want the next level of youth to go, I can be famous doing something that's truly worthless to society. But if you want to destroy a nation, destroy a generation, you make them in their mind be rewarded with the dopamine for thinking stupid things are good, thinking that this is what you're supposed to grow up doing. Yo, Andrew, I'm not going to lie. The way they are talking about TikTok, you would think you were talking about the Matrix back in a brainstem plug straight like. Yeah, man, cut the military spending budget. You just need these apps to defeat a country. Man, this war is going to be over pretty quick. Yeah, first of all, we are going to invest in like, you know, the satellite lasers, you know, a space station. But apparently like NyQuil chicken, that's just how to win a war. As with anything, Andrew, there are some people that wholeheartedly agree. They're like, man, this is some art of war, Sun Tzu. Some people disagree. Listen, if you're dumb, the algorithm is just going to treat you like you're dumb because you're probably dumb and other people are neutral and suggesting even other crazy things that are going on. But we are here to break it down for you guys point by point. Andrew, how right or wrong was Joe Rogan? Like how different is the experience when a Chinese person logs into Douyin versus an American person logging on to TikTok? Well, first of all, let's give them some credit. This is true. The two apps are different. Now, they essentially do the same things, but they're organized and the user interface is a little bit different on Douyin. So Douyin actually has a lot more categories and they have categories for like, I think, mathematics and engineering and creativity, art, fashion, sports. So you can actually go and browse through them kind of like a Spotify playlist to kind of find what you want. This, I believe, is what Joe Rogan is referring to. Now, on the American international TikTok, yeah, they don't have categories yet. Apparently, Western people or the international market, they would say enjoys things that are a little bit more simpler. While Chinese apps, they do tend to be a little bit more jumbled and crammed with a lot of different words and tabs. Oh no, Chinese apps, by all means, are cluttered. It is not the Apple aesthetic of like fluid and organic UI. And these are all Chinese apps, by the way. A lot of them are cluttered, not just Douyin and TikTok. But anyways, so do they operate differently? Is the algorithm different within those categories? I'm not really sure. I'm pretty sure most algorithms are just trying to feed you more of what you asked for. Guys, if you go to a restaurant and you order cake and you start to feel sick from eating the cake and you're like, man, why am I feeling sick? It's like, yeah, because you ordered more cake. That's what happened. So there is some truthiness to what Joe Rogan is saying. Obviously, I do not think he ever came close to using the Douyin app. I don't even think Joe Rogan, to be honest, knows anybody from China or knows anybody who really knows anything about China, to be honest. But I will say this. The parent company of both TikTok and Douyin is ByteDance. ByteDance has two headquarters, right? One is in Beijing. One is in Culver City in LA. Obviously, the one that is like, I guess, scaring everybody or causing all the suspicion is probably the one in Beijing. Yeah, I think if you have any worries about TikTok and obviously it almost did get banned, I think it is the data issue mostly. I mean, that's the thing where I'm like, OK, China has your data. I understand if you really feel uneasy about that. That would make sense to me. But you know what's really funny, David, is that I can tell Joe Rogan wants to regulate the content on TikTok. What they're doing is like showing science experiments. They're showing innovation. They're showing kids accomplishing great athletic goals. And it's motivating people to do good things and improve themselves, which is totally possible here. But he's like, dude, you know, like China's doing all, you know, regulating that content. And like, you know, the content on TikTok is getting real weird. What if we regulated that? What if the government came down? Damn it. That's unconstitutional, infringes on our American rights. Not to mention that Joe Rogan himself is like a blue collar superstar that, you know, obviously not the biggest proponent of like STEM subjects, which theoretically is the backbone of any strong economy. Anyway, moving on, Andrew, what is false about what Joe Rogan's theory says? What's false is that Douyin only shows edifying educational material. That is false. Now, here's the thing. Douyin has a lot of silly, stupid videos, too. And actually, when Douyin started, because it was invented before TikTok, of course, some of the first videos, the most popular videos were just good looking women kind of dancing around, kind of like musically like that app, like in a music video way. And now I do believe the most popular tab probably is the fashion tab where it's a lot of good looking dudes and women just doing stupid, just, you know, just doing the TikTok F-boy stuff. It's the same stuff. Yeah, literally, guys, just because they have like maybe possibly government sanctioned tabs for more positive material. It does not mean that the kids have to click on it, nor do they want to. I still think the most popular Douyin videos in 2022 are people like slow motion looking good, like you said, like. Yeah, and believe me, guys, at the end of the day, China is a much more censored society, period. We know this. This is true, right? And so this is not news. But of course, just like anything, if somebody is making destructive content, if someone is like making pranking their teacher a lot, if they're messing with law authorities, if they're being extra wasteful in those mukbangs where they eat big octopus tentacles. Yes, guess what? China is going to either shut those accounts down, block them, or even worse, you know, let them know like, hey, guys, you're basically ruining society. So stop that or else we're going to like throw you in jail or something. Obviously, I'm not advocating that America be like China at all. I just think there are two completely different systems. But obviously, China is just like 5X to 6X more strict on just about like everything. You know what it is? Like maybe it's because, David, we grew up in a Chinese household and growing up with Chinese parents is a little bit a shred like growing up in China. No, it's a little bit like if our lives in our cul-de-sac versus our neighbors, Andrew, they were like living American TikTok. They was doing a NyQuil chicken, doing a blackout challenge, Andrew. You would say our house was probably more similar to Douyin. Dude, your family can help censor your life. So, yes, if you are worried, I get it how the algorithm might be supercharged, but it's really not like completely different than the other algorithms on Vine. It's not completely different than the algorithm on Instagram Reels. It's not even different than the algorithm for YouTube Shorts. These companies and these algorithms, these sites just want to feed you more of what you already like. But I think TikTok is just very easy to consume material. Yeah, what I would kind of compare it to is that Douyin is a little bit like a corporate food court, like a corporate food cafeteria, like a hospital or a big office building where they got, you know, your unhealthy options. They got some middle options and they got the salad bar. So they got the super healthy option. Obviously, it just depends on your choices, what you want to do. I would say that TikTok might be a little bit more like a mall food court, you know, a little bit more glamorous, more ratchet, but obviously probably less healthy choice options. However, that probably is market driven more than like a conspiracy to weaken the country. Oh, yeah. And on the claim that Douyin cuts it off from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for 14 year olds and younger. I that's believable. I bet that's true because they would do the same for gaming on the weekends. You can't you can't or during the week like young teenagers cannot game that much. I heard it is fairly easy to get around using parents accounts or, you know, people that you know and things like that. However, it is a restriction on your ID number. I will say this, Andrew. China is like so strict in a way. And that's why a lot of people would not want to be raised in a Chinese family in America and especially not in China underneath the Chinese government. But there is government censorship. There's self-censorship knowing what the society would or would not support. And then not only that, there's ancient cultural censorship from just growing up in a Confucian society. That's triple layered censorship that America has zero exposure to any of these layers. Wait, David, are you trying to say that throughout history there have been Jackass, Jerry Springer, MTV? I mean, Honey Boo Boo, Nelk Boys. I mean, the list goes on and on. Dude, America is like such a rich country that, yeah, obviously we have people do great things and invent these great companies and Bill Gates and he gets rich. But we also just got some degens that sold how degen they were, Jersey Shore, and got rich off that. And that's American culture. And in a lot of countries, they wouldn't allow that. And China happens to be one where you cannot become a millionaire advertising that you're bad baby, how degen you are. No, I mean, listen, China is such a different society that, David, there was like a rapper. And this is when rap music's getting big. And yes, his lyrics are explicit. He's talking about hoes. You're talking about PG-1 from Hong Hua Hui. Yeah. And guess what? At a certain point, the government is like, hey, guys, any rappers that are rapping about this type of stuff is banned from mainstream TV. You guys cannot do any big performances because we don't want that type of material to get popular. Yeah. And now I believe PG-1 is rapping like Mike Shinoda. You know, the 50% luck, 30% skill, 90% concentrated power of will. So he went from talking about hoes and stuff and now he's just like, follow your dreams and your aspirations and be a good person and, you know, for your nation. I don't know. It's probably not that nationalistic, by the way. I guess real quick, guys, I want to get into two things. One, I want to address people going, yeah, fun bros, y'all. Some CPC bots. Listen, guys, I actually was cool with Trump banning TikTok, even though I think that was a complete overreach of his powers. I was cool with it because I'm a YouTuber. Selfishly, I thought that was going to bring the watch times and the CPMs were going to back up because right now the whole game is dispersed right now. Number two, I will say this. If you want to criticize TikTok at all or ByteDance or whatever, I guess, Andrew, they're not like applying that strict Asian tiger mom mindset to the white kids in the neighborhood. You know how like our mom, Andrew, was like the strict tiger mom in our cul-de-sac? But then, you know, she gave the other non-Asian kids the option to go home or like do their homework with us and like be studious. I will say this. Ninety nine percent of the time, they chose to go back to their home where they were more free to do whatever they want. And to be honest, some of them did end up to be some degenerates. But well, you know what? Maybe I want my white kids to have a strict Chinese tiger mom. You know what? That would be nice if TikTok could be that. But, you know, if TikTok was that, then people would complain, too, because they'd be complaining about the categories that they got placed into from the governments to make sure that kids only see that kind of thing. But here in America, if you did that, like people just wouldn't use it. They'd be like, oh, well, I'm going to Instagram Reels or YouTube. Exactly. Basically, what I'm saying is once you really understand the ins and outs of like the UI, the categorization system, how different Chinese culture is than like just Western international culture is, it totally makes sense how things played out, how they do. However, Andrew, I guess, does TikTok deserve any blame for being that one Chinese restaurant serving orange chicken and not stopping like Americans coming in for like their like sixth serving of orange chicken? You mean like maybe maybe they put a little extra oil and MSG in the orange chicken, you know, to make it taste really good? I don't know. Is that what you? Yeah. Are the bite dance engineers in Haidian District, that's the tech district in Beijing, smiling when somebody like falls off a crate doing like the milk crate challenge or like spray some spray tan lotion into their nose? Guys, that content cannot be promoted if people don't make that content. Now, if you make the argument that TikTok is building this incentive for people to make that type of content, let me tell you this, that incentive and desire to make that stupid content always existed with Americans. Americans always wanted to make the silliest, easiest content and get the most amount of attention for it. It has been happening for decades in this country. Do not even try to play around that America really wants educational material. That's not how it works. Yes. Does TikTok play into it? Yes. Maybe is the algorithm hypercharged? Yes. But guess what? This is what America is about, man. We love pranksters. We love all this stupid content. That's that's what it is. We love it. We love the Paul brothers. Honestly, at the end of the day, it does kind of remind me of this quote, like you get the democracy that you deserve, because obviously it's about self-participation and all this stuff like that. And I mean, self-creating content with the algorithm feeding your dopamine and your serotonin and your endorphins. It sort of works the same way. Like, I mean, this is what the market wants. Let the crowd have what it wants. All right, everybody, let us know in the comments down below what you think. Is it really on the self-accountability of Americans? Or maybe is there something fishy going on with that algorithm that, you know, maybe the Chinese government told him like, hey, put a little bit more juice in that algo. Make sure they get their crazy material. Make sure they get the dumb material first. You let us know if there's any truth to it. I personally find it hard to believe, but maybe. You know what, I'll tell you this, Andrew. One, two percent. Andrew, if all Americans of all types do a petition to ByteDance and say, make our app like Douyin with the categories. We want the different categories and cluttered tabs like Douyin, but we can find more different types of content that way. I would sign it. I would sign it too, guys. I'm actually all for the tabs. All right, everybody, let us know if you'd like the tabs in TikTok. Please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of the HopHopBoys. And until next time, we're out. Peace.