L, Atlanta, October 1, 2025
A handful of years ago, probably around 2020, my dad began to watch Joe Rogan. He and my stepmom were always interested in counterculture, but this time it was less about edgy clothing and music, and more about edgy political beliefs.
It started with him listening as he cooked or whatever. Slowly, my dad started going down the Joe Rogan to alt-right pipeline.
He joined platforms like 4chan. He went from a loving father who told me stories about gnomes and fairies and drove me around listening to punk rock music and built motorcycles and dirt bikes, into someone me and my siblings didn’t recognize.
He became someone who only told me that I needed to change my outfit and could barely connect with me. He adopted racist and misogynistic beliefs.
He became negligent and turned a blind eye to the psychological abuse that my stepmom was inflicting upon us. He even became interested in eugenics and Nazi stuff.
He built a farm an hour away from my school and began to buy guns and drink raw milk. I enjoyed the food, but the incessant hate and lack of connection, paired with the stuff my stepmom said to me, started to make me vomit from stress every time I went to his house.
I struggled for years with the high stress and confusion and eventually mustered up the strength to tell him how hard it all was for me. I was 17 or so, and instead of trying to help me, my dad only talked to me less.
If I wanted to be at his house, I had to organize everything. Like I said, the drive was an hour, and I was always late to school.
It was just completely inconvenient and draining. At 16, my childhood best friend committed suicide.
This friend had basically been integrated into my dad’s family since I met her the summer before first grade. She was my first true friend, with whom I’d spent most of my formative years beside.
I went to my dad’s only two times after that. I went through the grief process at my mom’s.
I sounded like a dying animal, and time just froze then. I had no support from the very people who knew the most about my friend.
I mean, she spent the night at our house multiple times a week since we were six. My brother had left at age 16 in a similar way, which was five years prior.
He’d tried to talk to my dad about the abuses, but it didn’t go well. He went to my mom’s house, and my dad never contacted him again.
My stepmom promptly had a yard sale where she sold all of his belongings in front of me, including gifts I’d made for his recent 16th birthday. In the end, I was left with extreme psychological damage and CPTSD symptoms.
I lost so much muscle from the stress-induced eating disorder that I now struggle with back pain most days. They redeveloped a bit unevenly (working on it, lol).
Now I am 20. My dad hasn’t reached out or told me happy birthday in three years.
I’m not saying it's Joe Rogan’s fault at all, but I am saying that these extreme political views that include all of this hate instead of love—they ruin families. People get behind one opinion, and the intensity just continues to increase.
My dad has no connection to his kids, he lives isolated on a farm, he hasn’t written anything (he’s a professor) in years, he has no friends. He is completely isolated with my stepmom.
I think he ruined his life.