CNN – “The word ‘retarded’ is back, and it’s one of the great culture victories,” Joe Rogan said with a laugh in the April 10 episode of his über-popular podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “Probably spurred on by podcasts.”
A few months earlier, on January 6, Elon Musk used the word in response to a Finnish researcher who called Musk the “largest spreader of disinformation in human history.”
Use of the [so-called] slur more than doubled on X, the platform Musk owns, in the two days after he made that January post, researchers from Montclair State University found. More than 312,000 subsequent posts made on X in that span contained the r-word, wrote co-author Bond Benton, a professor of communication at the New Jersey university.
The buck didn’t stop there, Benton said. Throughout 2025, influential public figures like Rogan, Musk and Kanye West have used the r-word on platforms where millions can see and hear them.
(West most recently used the term in March to refer to Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s twins, though those X posts are now deleted.)
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Since Musk’s January post, the online prevalence of the r-word is “absolutely getting worse,” Benton told CNN.
Rogan, Musk and West are likely using the word to get a rise out of people and draw more eyes to their content, Benton said.
But by using a term that has historically been used to disparage and diminish people with disabilities, they’re renormalizing the slur among followers and fans who interact with their posts, he said.
The resurgence of the r-word is symptomatic of a graver problem — the “apparent death of empathy,” said Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor at American University who has studied how the far-right uses tech to grow its influence.
“What you’re seeing now, people’s masks are off,” Massanari said. “This is not just misunderstanding but the mischaracterization and demonization of communities. The use of that kind of language is signaling a shift, a desire to sort of push the envelope.”
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