The Year In Twitch Pol Himbo King Hasan Piker

The year started off strong with two of Hasan’s favorite people to shit on joining forces in what may be the most asinine video ever uploaded on this cursed internet: Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Peterson, infamous for being a Kermit-voiced transphobe who teaches teenage boys to pick up their spunk socks off the floor, is in an absolute state during his time on The Joe Rogan Experience. In denying climate change, Peterson attempts to invoke bird biology, ants versus grasshoppers, farmers, economic uncertainty, the profit incentive, and a whole host of other straws he grasps at for an entire stream. “The most damaging work he has ever done,” Hasan wrote in the description for a YouTube compilation of his reacts to the podcast. Little did he know how wild this year would be…

Hasan Piker is rich, okay? He may espouse the benefits of democratic socialism and teach the kids about the horrors of late-stage capitalism, but he is also a pretty rich boy with expensive taste. Last year, when he bought an almost $3 million home in West Hollywood, California, the internet almost imploded with people calling him a hypocrite. “Everyone collectively needs to calm down,” Piker famously said on Twitter. Well guess what? They didn’t—especially not after Hasan bought a Porsche Taycan in February this year.

Maybe people were mad that he bought what was, ostensibly, the same car an old, white plastic surgeon would buy to zip around Hollywood Boulevard in. Maybe they were mad that he livestreamed himself buying the $200,000 whip, which seems especially egregious if you believe that a socialist streamer shouldn’t be rich. We could have this argument until we’re as blue as Hasan’s Porsche in the face—I’m just happy daddy got his dream car.

Hasan may spend most of his time streaming and screaming to thousands of people, but he’s not traditionally a speech-giver. That’s why it was surprising to see that he was going to speak at the Los Angeles March For Our Lives. When he walked up to the podium in his typically garish attire and struggled to adjust the mic to his gargantuan height I was, admittedly, a little worried. But he did a great job, spitting facts about gun control and comparing America’s obsession with guns to nerds’ obsession with collecting Funko Pops. “The problem is, Funko Pops don’t cause nearly 40,000 deaths a year. There’s no Funko Pop manufacturing business that’s pushing for a specific one that makes it easier to kill multiple people.” The Funko Pop quip got a “fuck yeah” from the crowd, and from me, too.

Don’t get it twisted, however. Hasan likes guns and is pretty loud about it—but unlike your average gun lover, he’s for gun control and responsible gun ownership.

Oh lord, he’s at it again. Hasan wore a Gucci Hawaiian t-shirt at the music festival/content creation hub Coachella and once again everyone got mad at him for being rich, as the shirt retailed at $1,150. Now, I’m a big Gucci fan, and this is a shirt from what has been one of my favorite runways of recent memory, so I can’t judge Hasan. If I had the money, I’d wear Gucci, too. Sorry guys, we live in late-stage capitalism, and dressing shitty won’t change that. If you want to cop Hasan’s fit, or ya know, buy me it, the controversial shirt is currently only $739 at End.

Hasan Piker knows his audience. He knows that, as a certified Big Boy™, he can use the power of his sex appeal for good. That’s why, back in May, he decided to raise money for abortion access after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. He promised all of us that if he raised $100,000, he would do the viral watermelon trick whereby people attempt to crush a watermelon with their thighs. After hitting $115,000 in donations, Hasan gave the sickos (myself included) what they wanted, and posted a TikTok of himself easily crushing the fruit between his tree trunks. My favorite comment on the video? “We must stay focused sisters, we must stay focused.”

Hasan and famous Canadian streamer Félix “xQc” Lengyel have a tumultuous relationship. The two often disagree and aren’t afraid to scream at each other about it, but xQc pissed Hasan off big time in June of this year. When xQc was tasked with ranking the best and worst streamers in a tier list on his stream, he placed Hasan in the B tier, noting his infrequent gaming streams as a lack of versatility. Hasan, who consistently ranks in the top Twitch streamers, wasn’t having that reasoning, however, and took to his alt Twitter account to call out xQc for hosting sponsored gambling streams.

“xQc probably ranked me a B list streamer because I won’t fucking have him on when a trending political thing is happening where he has to act like he cares to farm the last ounce of the Twitch directory before he goes back to promoting crypto gambling to teens for multiple millions,” Hasan wrote. Get him, daddy.

Before becoming a top Twitch streamer, Hasan was a member of the Young Turks, and was probably most well-known as the Woke Bae who debated everyone from the likes of Ann Coulter (hiss) to Larry Elder. Though he’s recently been more outspoken about the problems of debate culture, every real Hasnabi Head loves a classic Hasan debate sesh—and no one was more rocked up than me when he took on known piece of shit Andrew Tate.

When he jumped on a call with two Fortnite esports players and Tate himself, things got wild. Tate, who made a name for himself beaming typical misogynist bullshit straight to the soft, unformed minds of young men, had trouble keeping up with Hasan, who pointed out Tate’s historical usage of anecdotes that he portrays as facts. We only got about 17 minutes of Piker vs. Tate before the alleged tough guy demanded Hasan get kicked off the stream, but those 17 minutes sealed Tate’s fate. Within a few weeks, the man was kicked off every social media platform that matters, effectively robbing him of his soft-brained audience, and likely, his self-worth.

In case it wasn’t clear, Hasan is not a liberal—but that doesn’t mean he won’t acknowledge Dark Brandon (President Joe Biden) when he gets a rare dub. In August of this year, Biden announced that he was canceling $10,000 in student loan debt, or $20,000 for those who have received a Pell Grant. Not only did Hasan praise the president for finally delivering on a campaign promise (while pointing out that the relief should have come a long time ago and should be for a lot more money), but he made sure to show his viewers how to get that relief if they qualified.

Hasan even got into some of the more meaty, confusing details around debt repayment and relief, which he called “tremendous.” But he was “the most excited because now my fucking college educated people will have 10,000 extra dollars in their pocket so they can buy a $5 a month subscription or a free one in the form of a Twitch prime and then avoid the ads at the top of the fucking hour. Let’s go!” Our boy famously tries to bait viewers into hearing about the top-of-the-hour ad break by burying it in another sentence or teeing it up with what initially appears to be a political rant (the community now votes on how good his segue is), and this was a good one.

Her Majesty the Queen of England died this year, if you even believe she’s been alive for the last few rotations around the sun. Naturally Hasan, who hates the monarchy like any good brocialist, was waiting for the royal family to announce the old toad had finally croaked, and when she did, boy did we get some content.

Hasan, who was playing paintball at an event hosted by fellow Twitch streamer QTCinderella, was filmed hoping out loud that he’d be able to livestream his reaction to her death. “She’s a relic of the monarchy,” he says, defending his blatant dislike of her before cheering at confirmation that she died. “Get fucked, Queen,” he said. Shortly after the video went up, Hasan shared a screenshot on Twitter stating his account was banned. “First they came for Andrew Tate, now me smh.”

Hasan famously vets the hell out of who makes the clothing for his brand Ideologie. The merch brand, which he launched last year, exclusively features clothing made in the U.S. and by unionized manufacturers. They may not be the cheapest T-shirts in the world, but they’re at least ones you don’t have to feel bad about buying.

But perhaps the biggest Ideologie launch was Hasan’s Himbo Fitness line, which speaks to me as a self-identifying himbo and gym rat. The line features an absolutely shredded illustration of Hasan curling an impressive amount of weight or flexing like an anime character, and I would very much like the whole collection to wear to the gym, please.

In December 2021, Hasan was temporarily banned from Twitch for calling white people “cracker.” Twitch flagged it as hate speech (lol), and a few other streamers subsequently got the ban hammer for talking about Hasan’s ban and saying cracker on stream. It highlighted the absurdity of Twitch’s ability to protect PoC from actual hate speech, hate raids, follow-botting, and other harassment campaigns and it, of course, pissed Hasan off (he was banned for over a week).

Fast forward to nearly a year later, and Hasan gets a plaque in the mail from cracker company Wheat Thins that read “The Pass” with a picture of a few crackers emblazoned on it. “This is legit. I can say it,” Piker said on stream. “Twitch, I can fucking say it. I can call someone the C-word and you cannot ban me. Do you understand? I have the cracker pass.”

Hasan’s bread and butter is reactions. The majority of his stream is Hasan cuing up a ton of news clips, TikToks, Tweet threads, and the like and going through them one by one, adding context or explaining the more high-falutin concepts to his audience that is mostly dudes in their early twenties. So when he was banned in December 2022 after rebroadcasting an unhinged Kanye interview, it seemed particularly absurd. And it’s somehow even more absurd when you realize just how Hasan was banned: The CTO of Censored.TV, a company whose videos scream and squawk about free speech, took down Hasan’s video for copyright infringement.

Did they take it down because of copyright infringement, or because the video is pretty damning evidence of Proud Boys founder and notable stupid facial hair haver Gavin McInnes failing to stop Ye from “becoming an antisemetic [and] a Nazi,” which was supposedly McInnes’ goal? Woof.

Happily, Hasan was back from his ban early.

So that’s that, kids. The year in Hasan Piker, from expensive cars and Gucci shirts to jebaits and Twitch bans. It’s been a real one. But the real question is, will Hasan notice me now? 2023 awaits.