Neil Young is currently enjoying more attention than he’s gotten in years. Too bad it’s for behaving like a child.
And for what? His mission to get Spotify to kick Joe Rogan off their platform wound up backfiring pretty swiftly and spectacularly.
“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators… We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back…" https://t.co/gaN1dS0iZ3
— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) January 26, 2022
Womp-womp.
We can only hope that Neil can take at least some comfort in knowing that actor Eric Roberts thinks he did the right thing:
The decision #NeilYoung made was actually to do his part in making sure that people looking for life-saving scientific facts are not instead influenced to make life-ending decisions based on things that are as wrong as the delusions that are the basis for all terrorist campaigns https://t.co/Q6PoZJViCd
— Eric Roberts (@EricRoberts) January 27, 2022
Because that's what's happening We're being terrorized by dangerous lies that have been proven to harm our children our elderly & everyone in between. So all the interfaces that are in development to do basically what Spotify does, time to fast track & invite & promote #NeilYoung https://t.co/ZVj57kF7nL
— Eric Roberts (@EricRoberts) January 27, 2022
Spotify subscribers are free to ignore Joe Rogan if they don’t like what he says. What Rogan says about COVID is certainly not gospel.
But as long as so many people want to hear from Rogan, Spotify will keep him around. He’s good for business. Much better for business than Neil Young. Spotify’s decision wasn’t a moral one, though we can still appreciate their refusal to cave to Young and the Outrage Mob.
Roberts likening Rogan to a terrorist is pretty disgusting. It’s also what we’d expect from a liberal celebrity who’s woefully out of touch with regular Americans who are just sick and tired of it all.
What should have happened is that a bunch of caring artists should have joined #NeilYoung in trying to insure that twisted harmful thinking doesn't have a forum. Courage only fades if we don't support it @kenolin1 @richardmarx @MarkRuffalo https://t.co/chH0HTNCBJ
— Eric Roberts (@EricRoberts) January 27, 2022
What’s so courageous about trying to get Joe Rogan deplatformed instead of offering thoughtful rebuttals to his “twisted harmful thinking”? Actually seems like Roberts is for going the cowardly route. Just like Howard Stern.
Really stickin’ it to The Man.
