Joe Rogan is giving a lot of credit to the art of jiu-jitsu.
The self-defense martial art practice is described as a "combat sport based on grappling, ground fighting, and submission holds." Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta (the parent company that encompasses Facebook and Instagram), has been training in jiu-jitsu since 2020.
And he's taken it very seriously, calling upon Dave Camarillo, a black belt master who typically works with UFC champions (and Keanu Reeves), to train him. Through the intense training, Zuckerberg has somewhat traded his "nerdy" and "robotic" image for that of a very physically fit specimen.
Podcast host Joe Rogan thinks the martial arts have also changed how Mark Zuckerberg thinks fundamentally.
Why? Well in case you missed it, the founder of Facebook recently announced that his platform would embark on sweeping changes to their content moderation system. Zuckerberg insisted that they'd be doing away with fact checkers with political bias in an effort to allow for true, free speech on the social media site.
As he explained:
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.We have the opportunity to restore free expression, and I am excited to take it. It’ll take time to get this right, and these are complex systems that are never going to be perfect. There’s also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove.But the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focus primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing the stakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots on giving people a voice.”
Shortly after making that announcement, Zuckerberg joined Joe Rogan at his Austin, Texas studio for a long form interview on The Joe Rogan Experience. While he was a guest, he doubled down on those changes, and even made claims that the Joe Biden administration was calling Meta during the heightened times of COVID telling them to take certain things down.
Obviously, being screamed at by the government (allegedly) would probably be enough to make someone like Zuckerberg say, "Alright, I want to do things my way from now on." Some of the changes - mainly those pulling back on the censorship of Facebook - were definitely different and, at the very least, a partially unexpected shift from Zuckerberg and Meta.
After Joe Rogan spent time with him, the podcast host is willing to bet that jiu-jitsu had a role in Zuckerberg's turn towards prioritizing free speech:
"Mark Zuckerberg started doing jiu-jitsu and nothing turns you into a libertarian like jiu-jitsu. Nothing turns you into a person who values hard work, and discipline, and struggle like jiu-jitsu. Because of the exposure of character on a level that... there's nothing else like it.You expose character in a way that's almost impossible, even with other martial arts. Because with the other martial arts, you can only spar so much. Believe me, because I sparred too much. If you spar a lot, you get hurt. And if you get hurt, eventually you get dinged up to the point where your brain is just not firing so well anymore."
https://twitter.com/DefiantWorld/status/1878417896126157097
Of course, UFC President Dana White was also added to Meta's board of directors.
That clip above has gone viral, which I suppose you can say about anything that Joe Rogan says into a microphone lately.... but the man just might be right! That being said, I can think of a few things that might also require some serious levels of hard work, struggle and discipline.
This is one of them:
So does five months in U.S. Army Ranger School. 🤣🤣🤣
That excerpt is from the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, which featured comedian Theo Von as a guest. You can view the entire interview at the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G4jB0MMl1U
