I think it was his move to spotify that was the inflection point. I used to watch a handful of his podcasts on youtube each year, whenever I saw that he had interesting guests on (and not just his unfunny comedian friends or MMA fighters...) But since he moved to spotify I haven't seen a single one of his interviews. I'm not installing some dumb app to watch a dump ape a few times a year.

I don't think him moving to Texas had anything to do with it.

I do think he became deeply unpopular in many circles because of the anti COVID takes though. He went from a bro-y, kinda douchey guy who seemed harmless to a spokesperson for antivaxers. Lots of folks in the middle who didn't have much of an opinion, or care too much about him, that ended up writing him off completely.

TBH his podcast just got boring before then. I had pretty much stopped listening because I got bored with Joe interrupting the guest to talk about apes or something like that. He didn't really seem to make an effort to understand his guests a lot, especially when it was something he might be politically against. It just became uninteresting. I forgot who it was that he had on, but they were talking about how in another world where team sports were gender-mixed instead of what they are now, we'd value different things in teams (like the different qualities brought by the different types of players, or their ability to work together to succeed, not just worship at individual superstar athletes as is common now) and Joe was just like "but guys are the best, I don't understand". Like, it wasn't really a hard concept to grasp, even if you don't think sports teams should be gender-mixed.

The covid thing is interesting because there are people who will flock TO someone for being so against it. In the basketball world saw the same thing with Kyrie Irving. Is it enough to offset all the people who see that and nope out? No clue but there is at least a vocal minority who are so incredibly anti-vaccine now.