How Twitch Streamers Could Shape the 2024 Elections
Leah Feiger
podcasts, wired politics lab podcast, politics, 2024 election, voting, joe biden, twitch
WIRED talked to political streamer Hasan Piker about Joe Biden, the youth vote, and his advocacy for Gaza.

Hasan Piker is one of the biggest political streamers on Twitch. With more than 2 million followers and streams that average eight hours a day, Hasan has become increasingly popular as more people are turning to the platform for news and political analysis. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we talked to Hasan about his impact and what this shift could mean for the upcoming election.

Leah Feiger is @LeahFeiger. Makena Kelly is @kellymakena. Write to us at politicslab@WIRED.com. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Leah Feiger: Welcome to WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. I'm Leah Feiger, the senior politics editor at WIRED. Today, we're talking to one of the biggest political streamers on Twitch, Hasan Piker. With over 2 million followers and streams that average eight hours a day, Hasan is proof that the platform is a lot bigger than just video games. In the case of Hasan and many other political streamers, the platform has basically filled the void of cable news for tons of people around the world. He's become increasingly popular as more and more people are turning to the platform for news and political analysis. Today, WIRED senior reporter Makena Kelly and I are going to look at how Twitch streamers and even Hasan himself could affect the 2024 election. Hasan, hello.

Hasan Piker: Hello.

Leah Feiger: I'm so glad that you're here. When Makena and I first started talking about this episode, we jokingly started referring to you as Gen Z's Walter Cronkite. How does that make you feel?

Hasan Piker: I mean, it's better than what I reference myself as, so I'll take it.

Makena Kelly: What's that?

Hasan Piker: I tell people, especially in mainstream media when they ask what I'm doing, I say I'm like, Rush Limbaugh without brain worms or opiate addiction.

Leah Feiger: Joe Rogan's leftist uncle?

Hasan Piker: Maybe. I mean, what I do is quite similar to radio broadcasts, especially in right-wing radio broadcasts. Those guys just sit there, six to eight hours every day just making your grandparents more racist by the moment.

Leah Feiger: And you're streaming on average eight hours a day doing the opposite, ostensibly?

Hasan Piker: Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to reach the younger generation so they can stop their grandparents from listening to Rush Limbaugh. Well, God stopped Rush Limbaugh, but …

Leah Feiger: Bad, bad.

Hasan Piker: But I don't know, am I allowed to say stuff like that on WIRED?

Leah Feiger: Absolutely, yes.

Hasan Piker: OK, OK, cool. Yeah, I hate Rush Limbaugh.

Leah Feiger: So I guess, what exactly would you call yourself? Are you a journalist? Are you a pundit?

Hasan Piker: I say I'm a political commentator. I don't really do a lot of journalism in the sense that I don't go out and do on-the-field reporting, or if I do, it's very rare. I went to the UCLA student encampments, and I guess that's technically under the confines of journalism.

Leah Feiger: You were on the ground?

Hasan Piker: Yeah, but beyond that, it's mostly just aggregating news from friends who are journalists who are breaking their stories, talking to investigative reporters, basically like if Jake Tapper knew how to work with the internet and instead of having producers and people that write his scripts and stuff, he was just kind of spitballing every day.

Leah Feiger: Scrolling through Twitter, library actions.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, and aggregating news from people in his audience.

Leah Feiger: Sure, sure.

Makena Kelly: That kind of gets into the question I wanted to bring up, which was, so you're not a journalist, you just mentioned that, but you do share information. So when breaking news is breaking, how do you make sure you're not spreading misinformation?

Hasan Piker: I think for the most part, I have certain boundaries, like when a mass shooting occurs and obviously it's daily, right?

Leah Feiger: Welcome to America.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, unfortunately. There are certain occurrences of developing news and breaking news where I have a couple markers that I won't touch immediately identifying the shooter, because at this point I've been doing this for 10 years and I know the telltale signs that misinformation is about to start spreading in a certain direction, unless right-wing commentators immediately start claiming falsely that the shooter is trans. I will usually just wait to verify from an official body of the government, whether it's the police department or whether it's mainstream reporting happening on it. Beyond that, I have trusted sources, obviously. Investigative reporters breaking their stories as it's happening, as it's developing, it's not necessarily simply just aggregating information from the ground, like an OSINT account, I'm not just doing open source intelligence aggregation. I'm actually waiting for reporters to break certain stories or actually give confirmations, state department spokespersons and whatnot. But beyond that, when that sort of stuff is actually materializing in real time, like global conflict. Things that are—

Leah Feiger: Yeah, I want to hear a real-life example here.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, there was the Israeli Embassy strike. Israel struck the Iranian Embassy compound, and then Iran was slated to retaliate, and when that retaliation was announced, there was a lot of misinformation happening. There were a lot of people that were like, Twitter actually had on that day I think, unleashed the GROK AI trending aggregation.

Leah Feiger: Yes, yes. It was, thank you Elon, for just making that day a mess.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, and on the trending tab, it literally was saying, Iran nukes Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv is on fire, and I was just like, this is so insane. So I obviously focused more so on that day, I focus more so on the misinformation. So it's always looking at everything that's going on and exercising a healthy amount of skepticism and trying to educate people on media literacy, critically analyzing what you see in front of your eyes. So when someone will send misinformation, I use that as a teachable moment. I pull it up and I say, this right here is from an account that is Freedom Lover 69, and this is a crypto bot account. Obviously, this person is not in Tel Aviv.

Leah Feiger: You mean they don't have the secrets of the JFK assassination right in front of you?

Hasan Piker: Yeah, they don't know what's going on. They don't know what's going on any better than you. And a lot of OSINT accounts do this too. They are are serial abusers of this kind of stuff.

Leah Feiger: It became wild. The OSINT accounts that have popped up in the last six months, there's a lot out there. I mean, it sounds like you have a system for sorting through all of that. What would you look for as your trusted places that you're going to for this info? I mean, you mentioned—

Hasan Piker: I'll give some names.

Leah Feiger: Police departments, which I am a little skeptical of.

Makena Kelly: Yeah, I was surprised about that too.

Hasan Piker: Oh, something I forgot to mention, like mainstream media and police departments and things of that nature, I always look at, I watch a lot of Fox News.

Leah Feiger: I mean, you got to see what they're saying.

Hasan Piker: Yes, exactly. I obviously have biases, and I will openly reveal my biases. I have no issue.

Makena Kelly: Stay tuned for five minutes from now.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, no, I have no issue saying what I believe, and I actually think that objective neutrality, even in reporting, can oftentimes be maybe used as a shield because it's like, no one is ever going to be fully neutral. You guys have worked in the media for quite some time, you know when you write a story and then maybe your editor, I'm not saying you do this, but maybe your editor massages the narrative a little bit and then slaps on a—

Leah Feiger: Makena, do I, do I?

Makena Kelly: Do you massage? No, you don't massage the narrative, you make my words better. Yeah, there it goes. And you make the structure actually very readable.

Leah Feiger: Guide. A plug for editors everywhere.

Hasan Piker: That's a good relationship, obviously, but what I'm talking about is when an editor is very obviously—

Leah Feiger: Totally.

Hasan Piker: Getting information from management to be like, let's hit this story in a different way. You did real reporting and then the outcome, especially because everybody only sees the title, the outcome and the title is entirely different. I'm not one of those like, “mainstream media is always lying to you.” That's why, subscribe to my blog. I'm not one of those dudes. I think it's—

Makena Kelly: Those are the guys on Twitter.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, I think it's incredibly important that real journalism is still happening, otherwise we have no way of understanding what the hell's going on.

Makena Kelly: I'm curious, has there been a time where you said something wrong on stream, because we would issue a correction if we did something wrong, right?

Leah Feiger: Right.

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Makena Kelly: What is it that you?

Hasan Piker: I issue a correction.

Makena Kelly: What does that look like, though?

Hasan Piker: It's exactly the same. First of all, the stream is in real time, right? So it's livestreamed, and then it's repackaged for YouTube consumption for a broader audience. So in that time frame, if there's any information, any new information that comes on because I'm doing breaking coverage sometimes, I will of course tell my editors like, don't put this in there, this part is wrong, or issue a correction on this, that sort of thing. There have been instances where I've gotten things wrong. I made wrong predictions. Very famously. I said Russia will never invade Ukraine.

Leah Feiger: You did not?

Hasan Piker: No, I did.

Makena Kelly: That's so bad.

Hasan Piker: Oh no, I did, I did. I said—

Makena Kelly: When was that?

Hasan Piker: That was literally a day before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Makena Kelly: I'm dying.

Hasan Piker: I said Russia will never invade Ukraine, because Putin is a bad person, but he's not a mad person. Going back to the rational actor theory, and that trying to invade and permanently annex a nation-state whose entire statehood mythos revolves around not being Russia with 44 million people, is impossible. This will be Afghanistan and Vietnam on steroids for Russia, this will be devastating for the Russian economy, Vladimir Putin would be insane to make such a psychopathic decision.

Leah Feiger: How did you pull that one back?

Hasan Piker: I apologized.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, sure.

Hasan Piker: I said I was wrong. My analysis, I still stand on it. I still think it's correct that it was an insane decision. It's an insane decision that genuinely, obviously hurt, not only just the Russian economy, but Russia in general. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, wounded, millions displaced in the process. It's absolute devastation, unimaginable cruelty from Vladimir Putin that I thought would be absolutely mad.

Leah Feiger: No, and it's interesting that you got into it on the platform. I want to get into the platform and politics a little bit here. You really first rose to prominence, at least on a larger scale, back in 2020 when you played a really popular video game called Among Us with AOC, and you did it again in 2023, right?

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Leah Feiger: Why Twitch, and why is that the right place for politics streaming right now in 2024?

Hasan Piker: I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say it's the right place for politics streaming in general. The original reason as to why I started on Twitch was because I play video games, and at the time I was at the Young Turks and I would write as extruder of the Huffington Post, and I saw the space, the gaming space specifically, and YouTube as a right-wing infested shit-hole, if I'm allowed to say that.

Makena Kelly: Yes.

Leah Feiger: Yep.

Hasan Piker: I don't know. What ends up happening is in 2018, I'm like, I play video games all the time, I should be maxing it out like a right-wing podcast. I was like, I got to be min-maxing, I got to be more efficient with my time. I'm playing Fortnite with my friends who are already journalists, commentators themselves like Felix Biederman or Colwyn. I'm already playing Fortnite with them, I might as well strap on a camera to my PlayStation and just broadcast these conversations on Twitch. So that's how I started, playing Fortnite and talking about Israel-Palestine. However, getting Victory Royales. I wanted to show that you can be a person who has fun and still be a leftist, still be a progressive, and it's not just being a progressive isn't about showing people how moral you are by the type of content that you consume, and I wanted to basically put that forward as a juxtaposition to what people oftentimes were seeing, and I use my privilege for good in that regard. And then 2020, as you said, Covid happened and also simultaneously the George Floyd protests were happening, and I had been an advocate for Black Lives Matter long before liberals had gotten on that train. So a lot of people were like, Oh, this guy has been saying this stuff for years, OK, maybe I'll tune into him. And that's when I started growing rapidly, because I went full time in 2020, and honestly, it just happened to be a perfect platform for me and my style of coverage. I never would've thought that it would get to the point that it got to in size. I literally just did it because I thought, better use of my time, I'm awful off-script, I would always script my videos at the time, and I didn't know how to speak uninterrupted for a long period of time. And now, as you guys can tell, I never shut the fuck up. So I guess it worked.

Leah Feiger: I mean, eight hours a day will do that. You are in high training for this.

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Makena Kelly: I am curious about Twitch and streaming as a platform, though. The fact that this is a long-form conversation where you're able to have a nuanced conversation about issues with your audience. I feel like that really is a boon to you and trying to spread your message and trying to bring people over.

Hasan Piker: It can be good, and it can be very bad at the same time. I think that this is an old Joe Rogan thing that he used to say that I think is kind of correct. He used to always talk about how a three-hour podcast uninterrupted is always going to have moments that are clippable that can make people feel like you're saying something that you're not actually intending to say, which for his case, for many other things that he believes, it's—

Leah Feiger: Yeah, hearing Joe Rogan for three hours straight, yes.

Hasan Piker: Well, I used to be a big fan of Joe Rogan, for the record, back in the day, and then I think it was a Milo Yiannopoulos interview where I was like, what? That's a Nazi that you brought onto your show.

Makena Kelly: You're like, what?

Hasan Piker: To be like, this guy's awesome.

Makena Kelly: They're just chilling.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, he played a big role in a lot of those guys' careers, which was crazy. Anyway, but he was technically right on that. If you have this uninterrupted, unmanicured, very real conversation for eight hours on an issue that's very divisive, on issues that are obviously polarizing, I think that that environment definitely lends itself to great conversations that are very educational for people that see what the talking points are, and it's a way, I guess, to kind of test your ideas a little bit. But it can also lead to people coming in with anonymous accounts, like a million different SOC accounts that they create specifically to antagonize over and over and over again, it's susceptible to hate raids and all of this stuff that people can just frustrate you and then clip a moment of your response when you're finally saying like, oh my God, please stop. And that can lead to unproductive conversations, lack of civility and such. So, it's a give and take.

Makena Kelly: Yeah, to talk about being brigaded and all of that. I am curious, you don't have to subscribe to your Twitch channel to use the chat.

Hasan Piker: No.

Makena Kelly: Is that a conscious decision that you made, inviting these people who may disagree with you into this conversation?

Hasan Piker: Yeah, yeah. I don't mind people who disagree with me being a part of the conversation at all, for two reasons. The first reason is because I had certain opinions that I've changed over time, I'm very open about it. I used to have relatively transphobic takes like 10 years ago, and I learned, I'm a massive advocate for trans people now. And I use that as an example as to how everyone can change. People can reflect on their prior conditioning. We're all susceptible, this is something that I try to teach definitely a lot of young leftists as well who are very early on and have the zealotry of a convert, of a recent convert where they're just like, oh, this person says something, it's a microaggression, fuck this person, this person is evil. And it's like we all understand that these systems that we exist under are white supremacist, transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, and therefore, obviously the outcome of such things is going to be that the people are learning implicit biases that they have to unlearn. So I want to foster discussion, especially when people are coming in charitably and asking questions to be like, I don't fully understand what's going on here. Can you explain it to me?

Leah Feiger: It feels a little bit like you're capitalizing on this moment of fragmented media as well. I mean, you're just talking about forming these deep connections with your followers and viewers, like parasocial relationships, as you will, that do hearken back. I know we're making fun of it, but the Walter Cronkite relationships of decades past.

Hasan Piker: Well, parasocial relationships is another thing where it's like I find it to be very unhealthy, which is precisely the reason why I also talk against that quite a bit as well. My goal always is to try and get people to see a different perspective of the world that they've never been initiated on, they've never seen. If I can get someone to relearn a certain bigotry, the certain bias that they might've had, and change their opinion on that, then that's it. That's my job, that's what I want to do. If I can then get people to be more active in community organizing and local organizing and union organizing, then that's phenomenal.

Leah Feiger: Listeners, we're going to take a quick break and be back with Hasan in just a moment.

[Break]

Leah Feiger: We're back with our conversation with Hasan Piker. So in terms of being active, do you have any more games planned with politicians this year?

Hasan Piker: I'd be down, probably. It's just that comes across like a highlight from the perspective of mainstream media because that's a notable political figure.

Leah Feiger: Sure, sure.

Hasan Piker: But I think that my impact is probably a little bit understated there and way more important when it comes to a Chipotle unionizing in Lansing, Michigan, or I went to the UCLA in Camden and all the SJP and JVP students that I met with were like, I'm here because I started watching you in 2020 and you really broadened my horizon. Now I'm in college and that's why I'm doing this activism.

Leah Feiger: I want to get to your advocacy work, but on the politician side of it all, your viewers love you and what you say could definitely impact their votes, don't you think?

Hasan Piker: Maybe, probably. I think so. I mean, I do always urge them to go and vote. I'm a big-time advocate for at least down-ballot voting. I think that local elections are very important. The way I see it is, the top of the ticket, although it gets—

Leah Feiger: Yeah, let's talk about the top of the ticket.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, although that gets the most attention, it is probably in your immediate interest, the least significant part of the conversation, I think. Primaries, in my opinion, are way more important than general elections for the most part. As things stand, even though we have even less voter participation in the primaries obviously, and that's a massive problem. I think local elections are very important.

Leah Feiger: For sure.

Hasan Piker: And genuinely have the capacity to like … It can mean life or death for a lot of people in marginalized communities when you have one democratic state legislator who will put their body on the line, sometimes directly.

Leah Feiger: For sure, and we've seen that over the last couple of years alone. I mean, when we're talking about reproductive rights, I mean, there's so many instances of that for sure.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, and also ballot measures. I think that they're also very important.

Leah Feiger: Absolutely. So are you supporting any candidates this year?

Hasan Piker: No, no, not at all. I've been a big advocate of the uncommitted voting campaign as well against Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries. I'm an advocate of full-blown pressure on every aspect. I think that you have to demonstrate in the streets, I think that you have to demand divestment from your college campuses, you have to boycott certain products. As long as it's organized and not like some TikTok stuff, but an organized boycott with a clear-cut demand. You have to do all of that, call your congresspersons. And then I think that the tip of that spear at the end of it is also to say, I am not going to vote for you unless you fix this.

Leah Feiger: Well, what you're talking about though is the primaries.

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Leah Feiger: The real one is real soon. Not that primaries aren't real, and obviously that's a super important way to communicate, but we're like five-ish months out from November right now.

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Leah Feiger: What are you feeling?

Hasan Piker: I'm feeling devastation, that's what I'm feeling. I urged and lent support to Joe Biden in the last election, and there were a lot of promises that he had made in the last election on domestic policy, codifying Roe v. Wade, protecting abortion rights, on immigration. He had the first 100 days of immigration where he said that he was going to figure out an amnesty plan, he was going to basically reverse everything that Donald Trump had done. And then he did none of that, and now—

Leah Feiger: He's done some. I will say that his team, team Biden, is impressively, particularly bad at (a) communicating on social media in general.

Hasan Piker: I agree.

Leah Feiger: But also (b) communicating their wins.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, no, I definitely agree with you on that. As someone who's an avid watcher, an avid follower of everything that the Biden team is doing, there are a lot of … Before Israel-Palestine, before October 7th, there were plenty of moments where I would tell my audience, a lot of the initiatives that the Biden White House has taken on had made this administration probably one of the most pro-labor administrations in contemporary American history, significantly more pro-labor than the Obama administration, mind you. I mean, we had an active sitting president participate in a picket. That is historic, right? When he went to the UAW strikes. And there are so many opportunities like that where he did unique things. The bar is very low for Democrats, there is no bar for the Republicans, it's already in hell, but the bar is very, very low for the Democrats, and he did clear it on certain occasions, but they did not communicate it at all, because they're so consistently fearful of the suburban voters that they are desperately trying to target. They're all plus-55 living in the suburbs, white.

Leah Feiger: Sure. I mean, it definitely feels like they've created the prototype of each voter, and I mean, even the TikTok account is very like, “Hello, fellow kids.” It's cringey, yeah.

Makena Kelly: Well, the thing is, the difference between the Biden and other social media stuff is that right now they are so curated and working with so many creators that are well known, and it feels very scripted. Whereas when you have AOC on your Twitch stream, she comes off a lot more authentic.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, but AOC also is not 800 years old. She plays League and stuff, she already has internet brain rot, and you got to have that to be able to organically communicate with a younger audience.

Makena Kelly: I want to bring it back to voting though. In this election. I completely understand why disaffected voters, young voters would feel like their only means of expressing their outrage, whether it's over the response to October 7th or something like that, would be to abstain their vote. But like Leah said, we're five months out. Is Trump better than Biden?

Hasan Piker: Absolutely not. I, once again, I'm always going to be honest. No, I don't think that Trump would be better on Israel-Palestine. Half the reason why October 7th happened, not even half, 75 percent of the reason why October 7th happened is the Trump Administration's genuine fuck-ups, in terms of moving the embassy to Jerusalem. The great march of return happened under Trump's watch while the embassy was literally being televised, and then he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian figure, an Iranian general. And all of that were severe escalations that turned this powder keg into the perfect opportunity for an explosion. I know that he will be worse than Biden, but Biden is pushing the limits of how much worse people can get, especially when it comes to American foreign policy. When you think about it, my point always is, I think that vote with your conscience, vote if you think that the lesser-evil voting is working for you, if it makes you feel better, go ahead, do that.

Leah Feiger: Does it make you feel better?

Hasan Piker: No.

Leah Feiger: So you're not going to be voting for Biden?

Hasan Piker: I don't know. I don't know if I'll be voting for Biden. I'll be honest, but I won't tell you not to. Do your thing. But the voting uncommitted campaign, I think, is a good way to openly stress the Democratic Party, to get them to listen. When you have marginal victories in key states by 20,000, 30,000—

Leah Feiger: The margins are teeny.

Hasan Piker: And you have that, and then in the primaries you have your most active base of support, because the real uncommitted voters are just not going to vote in the primaries. When you have your committed voters go out to the primaries to vote on nothing, to simply tell you, we are here, we would vote for you. You need to stop fucking this up. You need to stop aiding and abetting Israel in this way. When they say that, I think that any reasonable administration should look at that and go, we have to change, we have to change some stuff here.

Leah Feiger: There is actually, and we haven't brought this up yet, there is technically another option here beyond not voting.

Hasan Piker: Oh my God. Are you going to say RFK Junior?

Leah Feiger: I'm really curious how you feel about him. I mean, you have two and a half million followers, they're going to be talking about the election in the next little bit. You're going to be talking about the election in the next little bit. What's the RFK of it all, beyond the brain worms? I mean, I feel like we've done the brain worms.

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Makena Kelly: It's tired.

Hasan Piker: For me, I love the Democratic Party, and the one thing that was missing was a guy who believes that Covid is a conspiracy that Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese created together. I was like, how can I get—

Leah Feiger: I was personally responsible.

Hasan Piker: It's like, yeah, have you ever met an Ashkenazi Jewish person?

Leah Feiger: I don't know if those … I mean his anti-Covid conspiracy theories and rhetoric was just absolutely wild to watch. Obviously, culminating in 2022, comparing it to the Holocaust, vaccine mandates, nuts. And obviously he's moved away from a lot, from sharing a lot of these conspiracies in recent weeks, months, as he is trying to get on the ballot everywhere. Where do you fall on this? Where do your viewers fall on this?

Hasan Piker: I mean, like I said, RFK Jr. is literally, if you're like, “I love Biden's policies and I want someone who will have the identical policies except for insane conspiracy theories on top of that,” because he is … RFK. Jr. is a fascinating—

Leah Feiger: I don't know if it's the exact policies there, I'm going to push back on that.

Hasan Piker: He is so aligned, with the exception of the stuff that we're thinking of where he's very obviously very different, as far as health care, Covid, stuff like that. He's insane, but his former policy.

Leah Feiger: January 6th.

Hasan Piker: Oh, is he? I didn't even realize he was also an election denier, but I'm talking about the white paper stuff.

Leah Feiger: He's inching towards, for sure.

Hasan Piker: Oh, OK. That's just, he's just maneuvering to win votes from the Trump side, but we're talking about policy, white paper stuff. If you look at his communication when it comes to American foreign policy, his communication on how to deal with the renewable energy crisis that we're facing, how to deal with fossil fuels.

Leah Feiger: I mean, his environmental background is incredible, for sure.

Hasan Piker: That's what I was going to say. I think RFK is entertaining to a certain degree. He's just, not even actually, I think he's just more so a media project, I would say. He's picking up some votes from the Trump side and less votes from the Democratic Party side, I guess.

Leah Feiger: We don't actually know that.

Hasan Piker: Is what they originally were saying.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, I—

Makena Kelly: It flip-flops, it feels like.

Leah Feiger: It flip-flops all the time, and we did an episode on RFK, and my guess here is that he's actually going to end up taking more from the Biden side, because Trump voters love Trump. Biden voters like yourself and perhaps some of your viewers and the folks that we're talking about, are mad, are mad at some of the things that have been happening over the last few years.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, but I'm never going to tell someone to vote for Trump or RFK Jr. You know what I mean? I wouldn't tell someone to vote for someone I don't believe in. Right? I'm not going to tell them to vote for someone if I don't believe them.

Leah Feiger: But I think it gets us back to honestly how some of these presidential candidates, in addition to RFK, are going to be appealing to youth votes, which is again, where you come in here.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, I think the youth are, I mean, they're just not voting, and that's a byproduct of many different things. The electoral college, access to voting and lack of universal ballot registration in certain places, no mail-in voting. Voting is a complicated process by design to specifically stop young people, poor people, marginalized people from voting. The electoral college in and of itself is undemocratic, so that also causes a lot of people to not vote. We have some of the lowest voter participation out of any country, any OECD nation.

Leah Feiger: And I mean, every time that people have talked about the youth vote being so high in the past, Obama era, etc, I don't know if it ever went actually above 30 percent of eligible voters. That's still quite low.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, that is unimaginably low, and there are a multitude of different reasons for it, but I think one of the major reasons for it is because if I'm young, I don't see anyone right now that is captivating me, that is causing me to go out and vote. There was a guy, and even he was not able to get the young people to go out and vote, and I door-knocked for him.

Leah Feiger: Were you talking about Bernie?

Hasan Piker: Bernie Sanders.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, there we go.

Hasan Piker: I door-knocked for him, and I had conversations with people and I tried to get them to go out and vote in the primaries, especially the primary structure is just like it's impossible to get people to go out and vote for someone. They feel so discouraged by the system.

Makena Kelly: Moving on from electoral politics, it seems very clear that you don't think, in some ways, that's not where you should be spending most of your time. I am curious in your advocacy work in the fundraising, I noticed the Creators for Palestine thing that you're doing, is that where you think you have the most impact?

Hasan Piker: I think that's one of the places. I just feel very, it's easy to get very discouraged, especially when you're constantly covering death and destruction and atrocities, and I always want to obviously use my privilege for good, but also do whatever I can. And obviously I can't build the Iron Dome over Gaza, so this is the one thing that I can do, is to broaden people's awareness on this issue and to also fundraise directly by working with a lot of the charities on the ground, and that's precisely what I've been doing. My community raised $1.2 million immediately, early October, I think it was October 10th when I was like, we have to go and work with a lot of these charities on the ground. I worked with four of them specifically, and I knew that they could operate inside of the boundaries, the limited boundaries that Israel and the Western governments allow Palestinian charities to exist in, and now I'm back at it again with a bunch of other lovely content creators, and it's growing every day. I'm in the Discourse server, and there's new content creators joining every day. Ian from Smosh just joined recently, and it's great. These people desperately need help. We're working with new charities as well, new organizations as well, including Heal Palestine, so we're trying to look for charities on the ground, that are actively working on the ground right now.

Makena Kelly: Talking about other creators, there is a lot of drama on Twitch and—

Hasan Piker: Yes, always.

Makena Kelly: I'm curious, do you get stuck in it?

Hasan Piker: I will entertain drama from time to time, specifically because—

Leah Feiger: What a way to put it.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, I mean, specifically because I am human, after all, I am weak. And also because I think that that's what a lot of people in the margins, that's what they care about, they care about the drama, so I'll use that as a launching point, as a jump-off point to go back to more serious news coverage. So I bring in the eyeballs for playing video games, or I bring in the eyeballs of the collaboration, and then I try to refocus their interest on something that's genuinely important, and for every 3,000 people that come in just for the drama, if 500 stick around to hear my coverage on what's going on in Rafa. Right? And then that's great, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm always, the reason why I'm trying to grow always isn't necessarily because I'm on my Sigma Grindset shit, I'm always trying to fucking max out on my revenue, I'm rev maxing. No, it's also because I want to want bring awareness to certain causes and try to instill some charitability in a broader audience that will then listen to what I have to say on certain issues instead of going, “Oh, I hate that guy, that guy's like a socialist with a nice car, fuck that guy.”

Makena Kelly: So turning these dramatic moments and beefs with other creators into teaching moments for your audience.

Hasan Piker: I try to, yeah. Like the last round of this was so laughable to have this conversation with adults, but—

Makena Kelly: Are we bringing up Destiny? Is that what you—

Hasan Piker: Yeah, I was about to say.

Makena Kelly: I wasn't going to name names.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, no. There's a kind of creator who loves debating, doesn't really care about any of the things that he debates about, but he will assume ridiculous stances, ridiculous positions. He's relatively skilled in rhetoric, not necessarily very knowledgeable on the issues, but rhetoric goes a very long way in debates. But beyond that, this dude is very edgy, loves saying gamer words, the N-word specifically.

Leah Feiger: Recently, I feel like that happened recently.

Makena Kelly: Yeah, that was.

Hasan Piker: It happened two weeks ago, where he said the N-word on a podcast.

Leah Feiger: In 2024.

Makena Kelly: And we have people getting really upset about the word “cracker.”

Hasan Piker: Yes, which is really funny, because that is definitely a very reactionary aspect of the gaming space in general, unfortunately.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, I mean the power dynamics there, questionable at best.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, and it's been going on, it's been going on for the past five, six days now, where everyone is like, yeah, you can't, anti-white slurs are unacceptable. What do you mean you don't care about anti-white racism? And I use that as an opportunity to try to explain to people the etymology of the word and the power dynamics.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, frankly.

Hasan Piker: And the history of chattel slavery. So it's not just drama, per se. It's not just me being like, that guy says the N-word, you're listening to a guy who says the N-word, and I don't hear you criticizing him saying the N word. You left that shit off, but then you fucking spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about how dangerous it is to make anti-white racism permissible. I mean, all three of us are white in this room, it's laughable. It's a laughable thing to be like, someone called me a cracker, oh no.

Leah Feiger: I've been called so many worse things.

Hasan Piker: Exactly. Right? And it's so obvious what's going on, but I do think that a lot of people get duped, good-natured people that have some biases get duped into reactionary framing on that issue. It's like bullying, it's wrong. It's bad, sure, but it's like when you make that comparison, when you flatten it out and say this is all bigotry and it's all unacceptable, and the people saying that are literally also saying the N-word simultaneously. I'm like, well, you don't think that kind of bigotry is unacceptable at all? Kind of seems like you're making this a talking point because you want to expose hypocrisy where no such hypocrisy exists. So I try to use that as a teachable moment for other people who will listen.

Leah Feiger: Who are the other streamers focusing on politics coverage right now?

Makena Kelly: And doing it well.

Hasan Piker: There's a lot of great people. You have Sean the Black, Frogan, Caroline Kwan, Central Committee. There are a lot of Twitch streamers specifically that also do political coverage. Carter's another one, Gremloe. So there are definitely content creators that are doing this sort of thing. But beyond that, I would say in the YouTube space, there's a lot of essayists that are great, they write a lot of YouTube essays, they do a lot of YouTube commentary, they're great. There's a lot of great people overall, none of them engage in debates, which is great. I hate people—

Leah Feiger: Only for you.

Hasan Piker: No, I mean, I do debates from—

Makena Kelly: I actually spoke to you in 2021 about the Sam Sedar/Steven Crowder debate and how stupid it was.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, well, that's the thing. Debates are just purely for entertainment, I think. It can have an educational component to it for sure, but overall, it's not about who's facts are solid. It's more about who says them in a more solid way, and also it's the theatrics. It's a good way to maybe bring some people over to your side in the margins, but overall, it's not activism. It's not doing something meaningful, it's not even genuinely learning about an issue, it's more so learning the talking points.

Leah Feiger: Which honestly makes Twitch so interesting as a platform for all of this, because this was not what it was made to do.

Hasan Piker: Yeah.

Leah Feiger: Well, I feel like this is a good point to end our chat on. Thank you so much for talking about all of this with us, and let's take a quick moment and then come back for Conspiracy of the Week.

[Break]

Welcome back, we're here to do Conspiracy of the Week, where both our guests are going to bring me their favorite conspiracy they've come across this week, or that's just sort of on your minds, and I'm going to pick my favorite, and I don't know what they are already, so please tell me, dazzle me, basically. McKenna, go ahead.

Makena Kelly: I feel so bad because mine last week was really good.

Leah Feiger: It was really good.

Makena Kelly: But mine this week, I was surfing the conspiracy subreddit and I saw King Charles' royal portrait has been put out into the world.

Leah Feiger: That was a wild portrait.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, I don't know what happened there.

Leah Feiger: It feels almost like an ode to colonialism as it were.

Makena Kelly: Right.

Hasan Piker: It also looks like he's in hell.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Makena Kelly: Exactly, and so there's people who are taking the hell thing a bit too literally and making demonic assumptions that this man is possessed, he's part of this globalism thing, the globalist schemes.

Leah Feiger: Yes, the royals are globalist, conspiracy is well trodden, but always good.

Makena Kelly: Yeah. Haunted portrait.

Leah Feiger: Haunted portrait, OK, that's actually a really good one. I didn't even think about that one as related to conspiracies.

Hasan Piker: Yeah, it wasn't bad at all.

Leah Feiger: I like that one.

Hasan Piker: OK. I didn't realize it was supposed to be a current one. I mean, I got immediately, I'm in New York. The two things I thought about, especially being in One World Trade Center, was what happened on Tower Seven? How did Tower Seven fall? A question that is on my mind at all times. I'm not like a “jet fuel can't melt steel beams” kind of guy, but it's kind of odd that Tower Seven fell. Who knows?

Leah Feiger: You're edging into 9/11 truther territory.

Hasan Piker: That is the one, I'm not like, we did it deliberately and then so that we could do global war or whatever. I don't go to that length.

Leah Feiger: Yikes.

Hasan Piker: Or that it was like a fake or staged, or that we did it. We blew up the towers. For our listeners. Hasan does not believe that. Yeah, I don't believe that, but Tower Seven, kind of weird.

Makena Kelly: Allegedly. Very

Leah Feiger: Really Allegedly. Really, really hardcore allegedly.

Hasan Piker: Tower Seven, I don't know what happened. I will go out and investigate later.

Makena Kelly: Oh, good, now report your findings back.

Hasan Piker: When I leave.

Leah Feiger: I feel like we've gotten a little glimpse into the conspiracy corner of your mind here. I'm really sorry. I'm going to have to give the win this week to McKenna.

Makena Kelly: Wow.

Hasan Piker: At least this was a relevant one. It's a new one. Mine is an old one. An old but gold.

Leah Feiger: Hasan, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hasan Piker: Thank you for having me.

Makena Kelly: Yeah, this was great. This was great.

Hasan Piker: Thank you for having me. Yeah, this was great.

Makena Kelly: Where can all of our listeners find you besides Twitch?

Hasan Piker: Yeah. I'm live on Twitch every day at Twitch.tv/HasanAbi from 11:00 am Pacific time, all the way to like 8:00 pm, seven days a week, and beyond that, I'm Hasan D. Piker on TikTok and on Instagram and Hasan the Hun on Twitter.

Leah Feiger: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us, Hasan.

Hasan Piker: Thank you for having me.

Leah Feiger: Thanks for listening to WIRED Politics Lab. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow the show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. We also have a newsletter which Makena writes each week. The link to the newsletter and the WIRED reporting we mentioned today are in the show notes. If you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please write to politicslab@wired.com. That's politicslab@wired.com. We're so excited to hear from you. WIRED Politics Lab is produced by Jake Harper. Jake Lummus is our studio engineer, Amar Lal mixed this episode, Stephanie Karyuki is our executive producer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer of development, and Chris Bannon is the global head of audio at Condé Nast, and I'm your host, Leah Feiger. We'll be back in your feeds with a new episode next week. Thanks for listening.
WIRED talked to political streamer Hasan Piker about Joe Biden, the youth vote, and his advocacy for Gaza.
Hasan Piker is one of the biggest political streamers on Twitch. With more than 2 million followers and streams that average eight hours a day, Hasan has become increasingly popular as more people are turning to the platform for news and political analysis. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we talked to Hasan about his impact and what this shift could mean for the upcoming election. Leah Feiger is @LeahFeiger. Makena Kelly is @kellymakena. Write to us at politicslab@WIRED.com. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for WIRED Politics Lab. We’re on Spotify too. Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Leah Feiger: Welcome to WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. I'm Leah Feiger, the senior politics editor at WIRED. Today, we're talking to one of the biggest political streamers on Twitch, Hasan Piker. With over 2 million followers and streams that average eight hours a day, Hasan is proof that the platform is a lot bigger than just video games. In the case of Hasan and many other political streamers, the platform has basically filled the void of cable news for tons of people around the world. He's become increasingly popular as more and more people are turning to the platform for news and political analysis. Today, WIRED senior reporter Makena Kelly and I are going to look at how Twitch streamers and even Hasan himself could affect the 2024 election. Hasan, hello. Hasan Piker: Hello. Leah Feiger: I'm so glad that you're here. When Makena and I first started talking about this episode, we jokingly started referring to you as Gen Z's Walter Cronkite. How does that make you feel? Hasan Piker: I mean, it's better than what I reference myself as, so I'll take it. Makena Kelly: What's that? Hasan Piker: I tell people, especially in mainstream media when they ask what I'm doing, I say I'm like, Rush Limbaugh without brain worms or opiate addiction. Leah Feiger: Joe Rogan's leftist uncle? Hasan Piker: Maybe. I mean, what I do is quite similar to radio broadcasts, especially in right-wing radio broadcasts. Those guys just sit there, six to eight hours every day just making your grandparents more racist by the moment. Leah Feiger: And you're streaming on average eight hours a day doing the opposite, ostensibly? Hasan Piker: Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to reach the younger generation so they can stop their grandparents from listening to Rush Limbaugh. Well, God stopped Rush Limbaugh, but … Leah Feiger: Bad, bad. Hasan Piker: But I don't know, am I allowed to say stuff like that on WIRED? Leah Feiger: Absolutely, yes. Hasan Piker: OK, OK, cool. Yeah, I hate Rush Limbaugh. Leah Feiger: So I guess, what exactly would you call yourself? Are you a journalist? Are you a pundit? Hasan Piker: I say I'm a political commentator. I don't really do a lot of journalism in the sense that I don't go out and do on-the-field reporting, or if I do, it's very rare. I went to the UCLA student encampments, and I guess that's technically under the confines of journalism. Leah Feiger: You were on the ground? Hasan Piker: Yeah, but beyond that, it's mostly just aggregating news from friends who are journalists who are breaking their stories, talking to investigative reporters, basically like if Jake Tapper knew how to work with the internet and instead of having producers and people that write his scripts and stuff, he was just kind of spitballing every day. Leah Feiger: Scrolling through Twitter, library actions. Hasan Piker: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, and aggregating news from people in his audience. Leah Feiger: Sure, sure. Makena Kelly: That kind of gets into the question I wanted to bring up, which was, so you're not a journalist, you just mentioned that, but you do share information. So when breaking news is breaking, how do you make sure you're not spreading misinformation? Hasan Piker: I think for the most part, I have certain boundaries, like when a mass shooting occurs and obviously it's daily, right? Leah Feiger: Welcome to America. Hasan Piker: Yeah, unfortunately. There are certain occurrences of developing news and breaking news where I have a couple markers that I won't touch immediately identifying the shooter, because at this point I've been doing this for 10 years and I know the telltale signs that misinformation is about to start spreading in a certain direction, unless right-wing commentators immediately start claiming falsely that the shooter is trans. I will usually just wait to verify from an official body of the government, whether it's the police department or whether it's mainstream reporting happening on it. Beyond that, I have trusted sources, obviously. Investigative reporters breaking their stories as it's happening, as it's developing, it's not necessarily simply just aggregating information from the ground, like an OSINT account, I'm not just doing open source intelligence aggregation. I'm actually waiting for reporters to break certain stories or actually give confirmations, state department spokespersons and whatnot. But beyond that, when that sort of stuff is actually materializing in real time, like global conflict. Things that are— Leah Feiger: Yeah, I want to hear a real-life example here. Hasan Piker: Yeah, there was the Israeli Embassy strike. Israel struck the Iranian Embassy compound, and then Iran was slated to retaliate, and when that retaliation was announced, there was a lot of misinformation happening. There were a lot of people that were like, Twitter actually had on that day I think, unleashed the GROK AI trending aggregation. Leah Feiger: Yes, yes. It was, thank you Elon, for just making that day a mess. Hasan Piker: Yeah, and on the trending tab, it literally was saying, Iran nukes Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv is on fire, and I was just like, this is so insane. So I obviously focused more so on that day, I focus more so on the misinformation. So it's always looking at everything that's going on and exercising a healthy amount of skepticism and trying to educate people on media literacy, critically analyzing what you see in front of your eyes. So when someone will send misinformation, I use that as a teachable moment. I pull it up and I say, this right here is from an account that is Freedom Lover 69, and this is a crypto bot account. Obviously, this person is not in Tel Aviv. Leah Feiger: You mean they don't have the secrets of the JFK assassination right in front of you? Hasan Piker: Yeah, they don't know what's going on. They don't know what's going on any better than you. And a lot of OSINT accounts do this too. They are are serial abusers of this kind of stuff. Leah Feiger: It became wild. The OSINT accounts that have popped up in the last six months, there's a lot out there. I mean, it sounds like you have a system for sorting through all of that. What would you look for as your trusted places that you're going to for this info? I mean, you mentioned— Hasan Piker: I'll give some names. Leah Feiger: Police departments, which I am a little skeptical of. Makena Kelly: Yeah, I was surprised about that too. Hasan Piker: Oh, something I forgot to mention, like mainstream media and police departments and things of that nature, I always look at, I watch a lot of Fox News. Leah Feiger: I mean, you got to see what they're saying. Hasan Piker: Yes, exactly. I obviously have biases, and I will openly reveal my biases. I have no issue. Makena Kelly: Stay tuned for five minutes from now. Hasan Piker: Yeah, no, I have no issue saying what I believe, and I actually think that objective neutrality, even in reporting, can oftentimes be maybe used as a shield because it's like, no one is ever going to be fully neutral. You guys have worked in the media for quite some time, you know when you write a story and then maybe your editor, I'm not saying you do this, but maybe your editor massages the narrative a little bit and then slaps on a— Leah Feiger: Makena, do I, do I? Makena Kelly: Do you massage? No, you don't massage the narrative, you make my words better. Yeah, there it goes. And you make the structure actually very readable. Leah Feiger: Guide. A plug for editors everywhere. Hasan Piker: That's a good relationship, obviously, but what I'm talking about is when an editor is very obviously— Leah Feiger: Totally. Hasan Piker: Getting information from management to be like, let's hit this story in a different way. You did real reporting and then the outcome, especially because everybody only sees the title, the outcome and the title is entirely different. I'm not one of those like, “mainstream media is always lying to you.” That's why, subscribe to my blog. I'm not one of those dudes. I think it's— Makena Kelly: Those are the guys on Twitter. Hasan Piker: Yeah, I think it's incredibly important that real journalism is still happening, otherwise we have no way of understanding what the hell's going on. Makena Kelly: I'm curious, has there been a time where you said something wrong on stream, because we would issue a correction if we did something wrong, right? Leah Feiger: Right. Hasan Piker: Yeah. Makena Kelly: What is it that you? Hasan Piker: I issue a correction. Makena Kelly: What does that look like, though? Hasan Piker: It's exactly the same. First of all, the stream is in real time, right? So it's livestreamed, and then it's repackaged for YouTube consumption for a broader audience. So in that time frame, if there's any information, any new information that comes on because I'm doing breaking coverage sometimes, I will of course tell my editors like, don't put this in there, this part is wrong, or issue a correction on this, that sort of thing. There have been instances where I've gotten things wrong. I made wrong predictions. Very famously. I said Russia will never invade Ukraine. Leah Feiger: You did not? Hasan Piker: No, I did. Makena Kelly: That's so bad. Hasan Piker: Oh no, I did, I did. I said— Makena Kelly: When was that? Hasan Piker: That was literally a day before Russia invaded Ukraine. Makena Kelly: I'm dying. Hasan Piker: I said Russia will never invade Ukraine, because Putin is a bad person, but he's not a mad person. Going back to the rational actor theory, and that trying to invade and permanently annex a nation-state whose entire statehood mythos revolves around not being Russia with 44 million people, is impossible. This will be Afghanistan and Vietnam on steroids for Russia, this will be devastating for the Russian economy, Vladimir Putin would be insane to make such a psychopathic decision. Leah Feiger: How did you pull that one back? Hasan Piker: I apologized. Leah Feiger: Yeah, sure. Hasan Piker: I said I was wrong. My analysis, I still stand on it. I still think it's correct that it was an insane decision. It's an insane decision that genuinely, obviously hurt, not only just the Russian economy, but Russia in general. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, wounded, millions displaced in the process. It's absolute devastation, unimaginable cruelty from Vladimir Putin that I thought would be absolutely mad. Leah Feiger: No, and it's interesting that you got into it on the platform. I want to get into the platform and politics a little bit here. You really first rose to prominence, at least on a larger scale, back in 2020 when you played a really popular video game called Among Us with AOC, and you did it again in 2023, right? Hasan Piker: Yeah. Leah Feiger: Why Twitch, and why is that the right place for politics streaming right now in 2024? Hasan Piker: I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say it's the right place for politics streaming in general. The original reason as to why I started on Twitch was because I play video games, and at the time I was at the Young Turks and I would write as extruder of the Huffington Post, and I saw the space, the gaming space specifically, and YouTube as a right-wing infested shit-hole, if I'm allowed to say that. Makena Kelly: Yes. Leah Feiger: Yep. Hasan Piker: I don't know. What ends up happening is in 2018, I'm like, I play video games all the time, I should be maxing it out like a right-wing podcast. I was like, I got to be min-maxing, I got to be more efficient with my time. I'm playing Fortnite with my friends who are already journalists, commentators themselves like Felix Biederman or Colwyn. I'm already playing Fortnite with them, I might as well strap on a camera to my PlayStation and just broadcast these conversations on Twitch. So that's how I started, playing Fortnite and talking about Israel-Palestine. However, getting Victory Royales. I wanted to show that you can be a person who has fun and still be a leftist, still be a progressive, and it's not just being a progressive isn't about showing people how moral you are by the type of content that you consume, and I wanted to basically put that forward as a juxtaposition to what people oftentimes were seeing, and I use my privilege for good in that regard. And then 2020, as you said, Covid happened and also simultaneously the George Floyd protests were happening, and I had been an advocate for Black Lives Matter long before liberals had gotten on that train. So a lot of people were like, Oh, this guy has been saying this stuff for years, OK, maybe I'll tune into him. And that's when I started growing rapidly, because I went full time in 2020, and honestly, it just happened to be a perfect platform for me and my style of coverage. I never would've thought that it would get to the point that it got to in size. I literally just did it because I thought, better use of my time, I'm awful off-script, I would always script my videos at the time, and I didn't know how to speak uninterrupted for a long period of time. And now, as you guys can tell, I never shut the fuck up. So I guess it worked. Leah Feiger: I mean, eight hours a day will do that. You are in high training for this. Hasan Piker: Yeah. Makena Kelly: I am curious about Twitch and streaming as a platform, though. The fact that this is a long-form conversation where you're able to have a nuanced conversation about issues with your audience. I feel like that really is a boon to you and trying to spread your message and trying to bring people over. Hasan Piker: It can be good, and it can be very bad at the same time. I think that this is an old Joe Rogan thing that he used to say that I think is kind of correct. He used to always talk about how a three-hour podcast uninterrupted is always going to have moments that are clippable that can make people feel like you're saying something that you're not actually intending to say, which for his case, for many other things that he believes, it's— Leah Feiger: Yeah, hearing Joe Rogan for three hours straight, yes. Hasan Piker: Well, I used to be a big fan of Joe Rogan, for the record, back in the day, and then I think it was a Milo Yiannopoulos interview where I was like, what? That's a Nazi that you brought onto your show. Makena Kelly: You're like, what? Hasan Piker: To be like, this guy's awesome. Makena Kelly: They're just chilling. Hasan Piker: Yeah, he played a big role in a lot of those guys' careers, which was crazy. Anyway, but he was technically right on that. If you have this uninterrupted, unmanicured, very real conversation for eight hours on an issue that's very divisive, on issues that are obviously polarizing, I think that that environment definitely lends itself to great conversations that are very educational for people that see what the talking points are, and it's a way, I guess, to kind of test your ideas a little bit. But it can also lead to people coming in with anonymous accounts, like a million different SOC accounts that they create specifically to antagonize over and over and over again, it's susceptible to hate raids and all of this stuff that people can just frustrate you and then clip a moment of your response when you're finally saying like, oh my God, please stop. And that can lead to unproductive conversations, lack of civility and such. So, it's a give and take. Makena Kelly: Yeah, to talk about being brigaded and all of that. I am curious, you don't have to subscribe to your Twitch channel to use the chat. Hasan Piker: No. Makena Kelly: Is that a conscious decision that you made, inviting these people who may disagree with you into this conversation? Hasan Piker: Yeah, yeah. I don't mind people who disagree with me being a part of the conversation at all, for two reasons. The first reason is because I had certain opinions that I've changed over time, I'm very open about it. I used to have relatively transphobic takes like 10 years ago, and I learned, I'm a massive advocate for trans people now. And I use that as an example as to how everyone can change. People can reflect on their prior conditioning. We're all susceptible, this is something that I try to teach definitely a lot of young leftists as well who are very early on and have the zealotry of a convert, of a recent convert where they're just like, oh, this person says something, it's a microaggression, fuck this person, this person is evil. And it's like we all understand that these systems that we exist under are white supremacist, transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, and therefore, obviously the outcome of such things is going to be that the people are learning implicit biases that they have to unlearn. So I want to foster discussion, especially when people are coming in charitably and asking questions to be like, I don't fully understand what's going on here. Can you explain it to me? Leah Feiger: It feels a little bit like you're capitalizing on this moment of fragmented media as well. I mean, you're just talking about forming these deep connections with your followers and viewers, like parasocial relationships, as you will, that do hearken back. I know we're making fun of it, but the Walter Cronkite relationships of decades past. Hasan Piker: Well, parasocial relationships is another thing where it's like I find it to be very unhealthy, which is precisely the reason why I also talk against that quite a bit as well. My goal always is to try and get people to see a different perspective of the world that they've never been initiated on, they've never seen. If I can get someone to relearn a certain bigotry, the certain bias that they might've had, and change their opinion on that, then that's it. That's my job, that's what I want to do. If I can then get people to be more active in community organizing and local organizing and union organizing, then that's phenomenal. Leah Feiger: Listeners, we're going to take a quick break and be back with Hasan in just a moment. [Break] Leah Feiger: We're back with our conversation with Hasan Piker. So in terms of being active, do you have any more games planned with politicians this year? Hasan Piker: I'd be down, probably. It's just that comes across like a highlight from the perspective of mainstream media because that's a notable political figure. Leah Feiger: Sure, sure. Hasan Piker: But I think that my impact is probably a little bit understated there and way more important when it comes to a Chipotle unionizing in Lansing, Michigan, or I went to the UCLA in Camden and all the SJP and JVP students that I met with were like, I'm here because I started watching you in 2020 and you really broadened my horizon. Now I'm in college and that's why I'm doing this activism. Leah Feiger: I want to get to your advocacy work, but on the politician side of it all, your viewers love you and what you say could definitely impact their votes, don't you think? Hasan Piker: Maybe, probably. I think so. I mean, I do always urge them to go and vote. I'm a big-time advocate for at least down-ballot voting. I think that local elections are very important. The way I see it is, the top of the ticket, although it gets— Leah Feiger: Yeah, let's talk about the top of the ticket. Hasan Piker: Yeah, although that gets the most attention, it is probably in your immediate interest, the least significant part of the conversation, I think. Primaries, in my opinion, are way more important than general elections for the most part. As things stand, even though we have even less voter participation in the primaries obviously, and that's a massive problem. I think local elections are very important. Leah Feiger: For sure. Hasan Piker: And genuinely have the capacity to like … It can mean life or death for a lot of people in marginalized communities when you have one democratic state legislator who will put their body on the line, sometimes directly. Leah Feiger: For sure, and we've seen that over the last couple of years alone. I mean, when we're talking about reproductive rights, I mean, there's so many instances of that for sure. Hasan Piker: Yeah, and also ballot measures. I think that they're also very important. Leah Feiger: Absolutely. So are you supporting any candidates this year? Hasan Piker: No, no, not at all. I've been a big advocate of the uncommitted voting campaign as well against Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries. I'm an advocate of full-blown pressure on every aspect. I think that you have to demonstrate in the streets, I think that you have to demand divestment from your college campuses, you have to boycott certain products. As long as it's organized and not like some TikTok stuff, but an organized boycott with a clear-cut demand. You have to do all of that, call your congresspersons. And then I think that the tip of that spear at the end of it is also to say, I am not going to vote for you unless you fix this. Leah Feiger: Well, what you're talking about though is the primaries. Hasan Piker: Yeah. Leah Feiger: The real one is real soon. Not that primaries aren't real, and obviously that's a super important way to communicate, but we're like five-ish months out from November right now. Hasan Piker: Yeah. Leah Feiger: What are you feeling? Hasan Piker: I'm feeling devastation, that's what I'm feeling. I urged and lent support to Joe Biden in the last election, and there were a lot of promises that he had made in the last election on domestic policy, codifying Roe v. Wade, protecting abortion rights, on immigration. He had the first 100 days of immigration where he said that he was going to figure out an amnesty plan, he was going to basically reverse everything that Donald Trump had done. And then he did none of that, and now— Leah Feiger: He's done some. I will say that his team, team Biden, is impressively, particularly bad at (a) communicating on social media in general. Hasan Piker: I agree. Leah Feiger: But also (b) communicating their wins. Hasan Piker: Yeah, no, I definitely agree with you on that. As someone who's an avid watcher, an avid follower of everything that the Biden team is doing, there are a lot of … Before Israel-Palestine, before October 7th, there were plenty of moments where I would tell my audience, a lot of the initiatives that the Biden White House has taken on had made this administration probably one of the most pro-labor administrations in contemporary American history, significantly more pro-labor than the Obama administration, mind you. I mean, we had an active sitting president participate in a picket. That is historic, right? When he went to the UAW strikes. And there are so many opportunities like that where he did unique things. The bar is very low for Democrats, there is no bar for the Republicans, it's already in hell, but the bar is very, very low for the Democrats, and he did clear it on certain occasions, but they did not communicate it at all, because they're so consistently fearful of the suburban voters that they are desperately trying to target. They're all plus-55 living in the suburbs, white. Leah Feiger: Sure. I mean, it definitely feels like they've created the prototype of each voter, and I mean, even the TikTok account is very like, “Hello, fellow kids.” It's cringey, yeah. Makena Kelly: Well, the thing is, the difference between the Biden and other social media stuff is that right now they are so curated and working with so many creators that are well known, and it feels very scripted. Whereas when you have AOC on your Twitch stream, she comes off a lot more authentic. Hasan Piker: Yeah, but AOC also is not 800 years old. She plays League and stuff, she already has internet brain rot, and you got to have that to be able to organically communicate with a younger audience. Makena Kelly: I want to bring it back to voting though. In this election. I completely understand why disaffected voters, young voters would feel like their only means of expressing their outrage, whether it's over the response to October 7th or something like that, would be to abstain their vote. But like Leah said, we're five months out. Is Trump better than Biden? Hasan Piker: Absolutely not. I, once again, I'm always going to be honest. No, I don't think that Trump would be better on Israel-Palestine. Half the reason why October 7th happened, not even half, 75 percent of the reason why October 7th happened is the Trump Administration's genuine fuck-ups, in terms of moving the embassy to Jerusalem. The great march of return happened under Trump's watch while the embassy was literally being televised, and then he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian figure, an Iranian general. And all of that were severe escalations that turned this powder keg into the perfect opportunity for an explosion. I know that he will be worse than Biden, but Biden is pushing the limits of how much worse people can get, especially when it comes to American foreign policy. When you think about it, my point always is, I think that vote with your conscience, vote if you think that the lesser-evil voting is working for you, if it makes you feel better, go ahead, do that. Leah Feiger: Does it make you feel better? Hasan Piker: No. Leah Feiger: So you're not going to be voting for Biden? Hasan Piker: I don't know. I don't know if I'll be voting for Biden. I'll be honest, but I won't tell you not to. Do your thing. But the voting uncommitted campaign, I think, is a good way to openly stress the Democratic Party, to get them to listen. When you have marginal victories in key states by 20,000, 30,000— Leah Feiger: The margins are teeny. Hasan Piker: And you have that, and then in the primaries you have your most active base of support, because the real uncommitted voters are just not going to vote in the primaries. When you have your committed voters go out to the primaries to vote on nothing, to simply tell you, we are here, we would vote for you. You need to stop fucking this up. You need to stop aiding and abetting Israel in this way. When they say that, I think that any reasonable administration should look at that and go, we have to change, we have to change some stuff here. Leah Feiger: There is actually, and we haven't brought this up yet, there is technically another option here beyond not voting. Hasan Piker: Oh my God. Are you going to say RFK Junior? Leah Feiger: I'm really curious how you feel about him. I mean, you have two and a half million followers, they're going to be talking about the election in the next little bit. You're going to be talking about the election in the next little bit. What's the RFK of it all, beyond the brain worms? I mean, I feel like we've done the brain worms. Hasan Piker: Yeah. Makena Kelly: It's tired. Hasan Piker: For me, I love the Democratic Party, and the one thing that was missing was a guy who believes that Covid is a conspiracy that Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese created together. I was like, how can I get— Leah Feiger: I was personally responsible. Hasan Piker: It's like, yeah, have you ever met an Ashkenazi Jewish person? Leah Feiger: I don't know if those … I mean his anti-Covid conspiracy theories and rhetoric was just absolutely wild to watch. Obviously, culminating in 2022, comparing it to the Holocaust, vaccine mandates, nuts. And obviously he's moved away from a lot, from sharing a lot of these conspiracies in recent weeks, months, as he is trying to get on the ballot everywhere. Where do you fall on this? Where do your viewers fall on this? Hasan Piker: I mean, like I said, RFK Jr. is literally, if you're like, “I love Biden's policies and I want someone who will have the identical policies except for insane conspiracy theories on top of that,” because he is … RFK. Jr. is a fascinating— Leah Feiger: I don't know if it's the exact policies there, I'm going to push back on that. Hasan Piker: He is so aligned, with the exception of the stuff that we're thinking of where he's very obviously very different, as far as health care, Covid, stuff like that. He's insane, but his former policy. Leah Feiger: January 6th. Hasan Piker: Oh, is he? I didn't even realize he was also an election denier, but I'm talking about the white paper stuff. Leah Feiger: He's inching towards, for sure. Hasan Piker: Oh, OK. That's just, he's just maneuvering to win votes from the Trump side, but we're talking about policy, white paper stuff. If you look at his communication when it comes to American foreign policy, his communication on how to deal with the renewable energy crisis that we're facing, how to deal with fossil fuels. Leah Feiger: I mean, his environmental background is incredible, for sure. Hasan Piker: That's what I was going to say. I think RFK is entertaining to a certain degree. He's just, not even actually, I think he's just more so a media project, I would say. He's picking up some votes from the Trump side and less votes from the Democratic Party side, I guess. Leah Feiger: We don't actually know that. Hasan Piker: Is what they originally were saying. Leah Feiger: Yeah, I— Makena Kelly: It flip-flops, it feels like. Leah Feiger: It flip-flops all the time, and we did an episode on RFK, and my guess here is that he's actually going to end up taking more from the Biden side, because Trump voters love Trump. Biden voters like yourself and perhaps some of your viewers and the folks that we're talking about, are mad, are mad at some of the things that have been happening over the last few years. Hasan Piker: Yeah, but I'm never going to tell someone to vote for Trump or RFK Jr. You know what I mean? I wouldn't tell someone to vote for someone I don't believe in. Right? I'm not going to tell them to vote for someone if I don't believe them. Leah Feiger: But I think it gets us back to honestly how some of these presidential candidates, in addition to RFK, are going to be appealing to youth votes, which is again, where you come in here. Hasan Piker: Yeah, I think the youth are, I mean, they're just not voting, and that's a byproduct of many different things. The electoral college, access to voting and lack of universal ballot registration in certain places, no mail-in voting. Voting is a complicated process by design to specifically stop young people, poor people, marginalized people from voting. The electoral college in and of itself is undemocratic, so that also causes a lot of people to not vote. We have some of the lowest voter participation out of any country, any OECD nation. Leah Feiger: And I mean, every time that people have talked about the youth vote being so high in the past, Obama era, etc, I don't know if it ever went actually above 30 percent of eligible voters. That's still quite low. Hasan Piker: Yeah, that is unimaginably low, and there are a multitude of different reasons for it, but I think one of the major reasons for it is because if I'm young, I don't see anyone right now that is captivating me, that is causing me to go out and vote. There was a guy, and even he was not able to get the young people to go out and vote, and I door-knocked for him. Leah Feiger: Were you talking about Bernie? Hasan Piker: Bernie Sanders. Leah Feiger: Yeah, there we go. Hasan Piker: I door-knocked for him, and I had conversations with people and I tried to get them to go out and vote in the primaries, especially the primary structure is just like it's impossible to get people to go out and vote for someone. They feel so discouraged by the system. Makena Kelly: Moving on from electoral politics, it seems very clear that you don't think, in some ways, that's not where you should be spending most of your time. I am curious in your advocacy work in the fundraising, I noticed the Creators for Palestine thing that you're doing, is that where you think you have the most impact? Hasan Piker: I think that's one of the places. I just feel very, it's easy to get very discouraged, especially when you're constantly covering death and destruction and atrocities, and I always want to obviously use my privilege for good, but also do whatever I can. And obviously I can't build the Iron Dome over Gaza, so this is the one thing that I can do, is to broaden people's awareness on this issue and to also fundraise directly by working with a lot of the charities on the ground, and that's precisely what I've been doing. My community raised $1.2 million immediately, early October, I think it was October 10th when I was like, we have to go and work with a lot of these charities on the ground. I worked with four of them specifically, and I knew that they could operate inside of the boundaries, the limited boundaries that Israel and the Western governments allow Palestinian charities to exist in, and now I'm back at it again with a bunch of other lovely content creators, and it's growing every day. I'm in the Discourse server, and there's new content creators joining every day. Ian from Smosh just joined recently, and it's great. These people desperately need help. We're working with new charities as well, new organizations as well, including Heal Palestine, so we're trying to look for charities on the ground, that are actively working on the ground right now. Makena Kelly: Talking about other creators, there is a lot of drama on Twitch and— Hasan Piker: Yes, always. Makena Kelly: I'm curious, do you get stuck in it? Hasan Piker: I will entertain drama from time to time, specifically because— Leah Feiger: What a way to put it. Hasan Piker: Yeah, I mean, specifically because I am human, after all, I am weak. And also because I think that that's what a lot of people in the margins, that's what they care about, they care about the drama, so I'll use that as a launching point, as a jump-off point to go back to more serious news coverage. So I bring in the eyeballs for playing video games, or I bring in the eyeballs of the collaboration, and then I try to refocus their interest on something that's genuinely important, and for every 3,000 people that come in just for the drama, if 500 stick around to hear my coverage on what's going on in Rafa. Right? And then that's great, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm always, the reason why I'm trying to grow always isn't necessarily because I'm on my Sigma Grindset shit, I'm always trying to fucking max out on my revenue, I'm rev maxing. No, it's also because I want to want bring awareness to certain causes and try to instill some charitability in a broader audience that will then listen to what I have to say on certain issues instead of going, “Oh, I hate that guy, that guy's like a socialist with a nice car, fuck that guy.” Makena Kelly: So turning these dramatic moments and beefs with other creators into teaching moments for your audience. Hasan Piker: I try to, yeah. Like the last round of this was so laughable to have this conversation with adults, but— Makena Kelly: Are we bringing up Destiny? Is that what you— Hasan Piker: Yeah, I was about to say. Makena Kelly: I wasn't going to name names. Hasan Piker: Yeah, no. There's a kind of creator who loves debating, doesn't really care about any of the things that he debates about, but he will assume ridiculous stances, ridiculous positions. He's relatively skilled in rhetoric, not necessarily very knowledgeable on the issues, but rhetoric goes a very long way in debates. But beyond that, this dude is very edgy, loves saying gamer words, the N-word specifically. Leah Feiger: Recently, I feel like that happened recently. Makena Kelly: Yeah, that was. Hasan Piker: It happened two weeks ago, where he said the N-word on a podcast. Leah Feiger: In 2024. Makena Kelly: And we have people getting really upset about the word “cracker.” Hasan Piker: Yes, which is really funny, because that is definitely a very reactionary aspect of the gaming space in general, unfortunately. Leah Feiger: Yeah, I mean the power dynamics there, questionable at best. Hasan Piker: Yeah, and it's been going on, it's been going on for the past five, six days now, where everyone is like, yeah, you can't, anti-white slurs are unacceptable. What do you mean you don't care about anti-white racism? And I use that as an opportunity to try to explain to people the etymology of the word and the power dynamics. Leah Feiger: Yeah, frankly. Hasan Piker: And the history of chattel slavery. So it's not just drama, per se. It's not just me being like, that guy says the N-word, you're listening to a guy who says the N-word, and I don't hear you criticizing him saying the N word. You left that shit off, but then you fucking spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about how dangerous it is to make anti-white racism permissible. I mean, all three of us are white in this room, it's laughable. It's a laughable thing to be like, someone called me a cracker, oh no. Leah Feiger: I've been called so many worse things. Hasan Piker: Exactly. Right? And it's so obvious what's going on, but I do think that a lot of people get duped, good-natured people that have some biases get duped into reactionary framing on that issue. It's like bullying, it's wrong. It's bad, sure, but it's like when you make that comparison, when you flatten it out and say this is all bigotry and it's all unacceptable, and the people saying that are literally also saying the N-word simultaneously. I'm like, well, you don't think that kind of bigotry is unacceptable at all? Kind of seems like you're making this a talking point because you want to expose hypocrisy where no such hypocrisy exists. So I try to use that as a teachable moment for other people who will listen. Leah Feiger: Who are the other streamers focusing on politics coverage right now? Makena Kelly: And doing it well. Hasan Piker: There's a lot of great people. You have Sean the Black, Frogan, Caroline Kwan, Central Committee. There are a lot of Twitch streamers specifically that also do political coverage. Carter's another one, Gremloe. So there are definitely content creators that are doing this sort of thing. But beyond that, I would say in the YouTube space, there's a lot of essayists that are great, they write a lot of YouTube essays, they do a lot of YouTube commentary, they're great. There's a lot of great people overall, none of them engage in debates, which is great. I hate people— Leah Feiger: Only for you. Hasan Piker: No, I mean, I do debates from— Makena Kelly: I actually spoke to you in 2021 about the Sam Sedar/Steven Crowder debate and how stupid it was. Hasan Piker: Yeah, well, that's the thing. Debates are just purely for entertainment, I think. It can have an educational component to it for sure, but overall, it's not about who's facts are solid. It's more about who says them in a more solid way, and also it's the theatrics. It's a good way to maybe bring some people over to your side in the margins, but overall, it's not activism. It's not doing something meaningful, it's not even genuinely learning about an issue, it's more so learning the talking points. Leah Feiger: Which honestly makes Twitch so interesting as a platform for all of this, because this was not what it was made to do. Hasan Piker: Yeah. Leah Feiger: Well, I feel like this is a good point to end our chat on. Thank you so much for talking about all of this with us, and let's take a quick moment and then come back for Conspiracy of the Week. [Break] Welcome back, we're here to do Conspiracy of the Week, where both our guests are going to bring me their favorite conspiracy they've come across this week, or that's just sort of on your minds, and I'm going to pick my favorite, and I don't know what they are already, so please tell me, dazzle me, basically. McKenna, go ahead. Makena Kelly: I feel so bad because mine last week was really good. Leah Feiger: It was really good. Makena Kelly: But mine this week, I was surfing the conspiracy subreddit and I saw King Charles' royal portrait has been put out into the world. Leah Feiger: That was a wild portrait. Hasan Piker: Yeah, I don't know what happened there. Leah Feiger: It feels almost like an ode to colonialism as it were. Makena Kelly: Right. Hasan Piker: It also looks like he's in hell. Leah Feiger: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makena Kelly: Exactly, and so there's people who are taking the hell thing a bit too literally and making demonic assumptions that this man is possessed, he's part of this globalism thing, the globalist schemes. Leah Feiger: Yes, the royals are globalist, conspiracy is well trodden, but always good. Makena Kelly: Yeah. Haunted portrait. Leah Feiger: Haunted portrait, OK, that's actually a really good one. I didn't even think about that one as related to conspiracies. Hasan Piker: Yeah, it wasn't bad at all. Leah Feiger: I like that one. Hasan Piker: OK. I didn't realize it was supposed to be a current one. I mean, I got immediately, I'm in New York. The two things I thought about, especially being in One World Trade Center, was what happened on Tower Seven? How did Tower Seven fall? A question that is on my mind at all times. I'm not like a “jet fuel can't melt steel beams” kind of guy, but it's kind of odd that Tower Seven fell. Who knows? Leah Feiger: You're edging into 9/11 truther territory. Hasan Piker: That is the one, I'm not like, we did it deliberately and then so that we could do global war or whatever. I don't go to that length. Leah Feiger: Yikes. Hasan Piker: Or that it was like a fake or staged, or that we did it. We blew up the towers. For our listeners. Hasan does not believe that. Yeah, I don't believe that, but Tower Seven, kind of weird. Makena Kelly: Allegedly. Very Leah Feiger: Really Allegedly. Really, really hardcore allegedly. Hasan Piker: Tower Seven, I don't know what happened. I will go out and investigate later. Makena Kelly: Oh, good, now report your findings back. Hasan Piker: When I leave. Leah Feiger: I feel like we've gotten a little glimpse into the conspiracy corner of your mind here. I'm really sorry. I'm going to have to give the win this week to McKenna. Makena Kelly: Wow. Hasan Piker: At least this was a relevant one. It's a new one. Mine is an old one. An old but gold. Leah Feiger: Hasan, thank you so much for joining us today. Hasan Piker: Thank you for having me. Makena Kelly: Yeah, this was great. This was great. Hasan Piker: Thank you for having me. Yeah, this was great. Makena Kelly: Where can all of our listeners find you besides Twitch? Hasan Piker: Yeah. I'm live on Twitch every day at Twitch.tv/HasanAbi from 11:00 am Pacific time, all the way to like 8:00 pm, seven days a week, and beyond that, I'm Hasan D. Piker on TikTok and on Instagram and Hasan the Hun on Twitter. Leah Feiger: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us, Hasan. Hasan Piker: Thank you for having me. Leah Feiger: Thanks for listening to WIRED Politics Lab. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow the show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. We also have a newsletter which Makena writes each week. The link to the newsletter and the WIRED reporting we mentioned today are in the show notes. If you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please write to politicslab@wired.com. That's politicslab@wired.com. We're so excited to hear from you. WIRED Politics Lab is produced by Jake Harper. Jake Lummus is our studio engineer, Amar Lal mixed this episode, Stephanie Karyuki is our executive producer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer of development, and Chris Bannon is the global head of audio at Condé Nast, and I'm your host, Leah Feiger. We'll be back in your feeds with a new episode next week. Thanks for listening.
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