Who's Afraid of Hasan Piker? - Slate [View all]

[justaprogressive]

It is Jan. 19—the last day of Joe Biden’s presidency, and the eve of a new one no one can quite fathom yet—and Hasan Piker is preparing for the end of the world.

As he almost always is, Piker is live on Twitch. He is at home in West Hollywood, in a secondary bedroom he has turned into a broadcasting booth. The boiling overhead studio lights illuminate the scene. Piker is in the center of the frame, his peripheral vision swallowed up by three chunky computer monitors. Behind him is a clutter of socialist potpourri: Cuban and Gazan flags draped over a minifridge packed with Dr Pepper Zero Sugar, a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders blocking sunlight from a window, and a plastic purple skull capped with a furry Soviet ushanka.

There is not much left to be said at the dawn of the second Trump administration, so Piker ends his stream in relative silence, watching highlights from the weekend’s Saturday Night Live. The thousands of viewers in his chat, off to the screen on his right, pump out more messages than anyone could possibly read. A few moments later, Piker bids them good night.

“I’ll be suited up and booted up to cover the Trump inauguration, the first day of the apocalypse,” Piker says. “I love you all. And I’ll see you tomorrow.

For nearly a decade now, Piker, who streams under the name HasanAbi, has been one of the most famous political commentators in America. If you’re a certain type of mainstream liberal—or a not-very-online moderate or conservative, for that matter—you may not have heard of him. His precise class of celebrity is difficult to describe, but in some respects, he has inherited the role of the agenda-setting television pundit for a generation that ditched the traditional medium long ago, if it ever knew it at all. Piker streams every day, weekends and holidays included. Outside of a few bathroom breaks, he’s typically on-camera, by himself, for eight hours uninterrupted. Tens of thousands, sometimes many more, follow along.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/hasan-piker-donald-trump-news-elon-musk-jd-vance.html