@HasanAbi is in the house. Hasan Piker streams eight hours a day… every single day… to combat the flood of alt-right and conservative media online. No weekends off. In this episode of South Beach Sessions, Hasan explores how his nigh-obsessive output comes from a place of both impressive motivation and a deep passion to make the world a better place. Together, Hasan and Dan explore the trenches of insecurity, addiction, and self-improvement. Hasan also opens up about his body dysmorphia and about what it was like to be bullied for his appearance. Follow and subscribe to Hasan’s Twitch and YouTube channels @HasanAbi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Hasan Piker and what does he do?
Kings Network. Hello and welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm excited about this one. I want to see how this mind works. This is an interesting story right here. You don't see a lot like it. Hasan Piker is one of the strongest progressive voices you will find in an increasingly conservative online world. You can follow him YouTube and Twitch, Hasan ABI. Thank you for being on with us, sir.
Thank you for having me. This is very exciting. Yes, you don't know anything about sports. No, I don't. Self-admittedly, my interest in sports begins and ends and exclusively revolves around LeBron James and defending LeBron James' honor and talking about LeBron James in general.
Same. Same, really.
But I am open and unashamed about the fact that I very rarely watch even basketball. I play basketball all the time. I play it weekly, but I don't watch professional sports at all.
Weekly W-E-E-K-L-Y, not W-E-A-K-L-Y, right? I imagine in the post you're tall. I imagine you're physical.
Yeah, no, I don't play in a weak way, no. I mean, I do have, like, people call me the Turkish Jokic, but...
They call you the Turkish Jokic.
Because I'm slow. And also have a weird shot, but it goes in. And that's what matters, I think.
I imagine you would need to blow off some steam. I don't understand how you live or how you work. It seems like it would be exhausting and it also seems like you love it. Are both of those things true?
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Chapter 2: Why does Hasan Piker stream for eight hours every day?
Yes, for sure. I mean, it's definitely exhausting. I stream every single day from 11 a.m. Pacific time to usually around 7, 8 p.m. Pacific time, and that's seven days a week. So it's certainly exhausting, especially because I'm doing talk radio for eight hours. I'm trying to entertain people for eight hours. I yap a lot.
But it is very fulfilling, which is precisely the reason why I don't take it for granted. I talk about how privileged I am all the time, and I don't mind doing it because at the end of the day, I have this freedom. If I didn't want to do this, I wouldn't have to. I was just talking about this with my dad who's visiting from Turkey, staying with me.
this morning where I was like, I don't have to wake up at 7 a.m. every day. I do because I want to, but the freedom of not having to do that is tremendous. It's really important.
I would imagine though that there's an addictive quality to what it is too. If it's eight hours a day and seven days a week, you don't have to do it like that. Absolutely.
Um, there's definitely an addictive quality to it. Was that mine or yours?
That was yours. That's a $5 fine. You're going to have to put it on the table.
No, my dad is, right as I was talking, my dad has just been like aggressively calling me and I don't know why. And I don't know why it's ringing. This has never happened in my entire life. I don't know what the hell's going on.
It's important that you should take that.
No, no, it's fine. It's a FaceTime, family FaceTime. It's just annoying because I got a new phone. And I think the new phone does not... Do you need a minute? No, no, I'm good. I put it on do not disturb. My family loves having family talk. They love calling every morning and then having like a big FaceTime discussion.
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Chapter 3: How did Hasan Piker start his career in media?
um so i came out here i i worked for the young turks for years and in that process they initially started off on the sales side they didn't have any sort of like internal sales division so i basically built that i built the the client list i did the cold calling i did all of our advertisement operations at the time at the young turks um but the
But the whole time I was like, I want to do on camera stuff. So I would just like slot myself in wherever I could. And it's a startup. So that was there was an allowance there for me to be able to do so. And yeah, I started doing like the culture stuff, the media stuff on whenever like a guest host wasn't there. I would just fill in last second. And I was so bad. I was so bad on camera.
It was crazy. But I knew that I would just have to constantly train myself and constantly keep going until I would inevitably get better. And now I can't shut up. So I guess to a certain degree it worked out. But I was doing that at the Young Turks and at the Young Turks in that process I figured out like I need to have something for myself. And I also need to I'm a gamer.
I the market at the time for gaming and commentary was heavily dominated by the right wing, which is not dissimilar to what it looks like right now. But I wanted to show that it wasn't just like woke SJWs like the left was much larger than this. It was a it was a diverse umbrella of people who are progressive minded but can also have fun.
Because I think that the right had so successfully undermined the optics of the left in general by constantly presenting them as woke rad libs who never enjoy themselves, who don't want to have any fun, who are very censorious and yada, yada, yada.
to be fair like that's how the right is as well and that's how they've always been and there was some truth to that in general but i think that it was so uh successful as a as a mechanism of pushback is so successful as propaganda that a lot of young men responded to that and I wanted to tackle that. I wanted to penetrate that.
And I wanted to show people like, no, you can have progressive politics and like still have fun. This is ridiculous. And all these guys that are actually pointing the finger at blame at the left and saying that they're annoying and woke scolds are actually just neck bearded losers themselves. And they also are hysterical quite frequently. And that's how I got on Twitch.
How long did the lie last with your parents before they realized that you weren't here for the reasons you said you were?
Um, I think they kind of gave up on me, so that was fine. I, I think I'll just say it like this. Every phone conversation that I had with my dad when I was working at the Young Turks and until I would say 2021. every foreign conversation was, when are you going to get a PhD? Like, what are you doing? When are you going to get higher education? You have to get higher education.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Hasan Piker face growing up?
Um, I mean, Turkish bullying is different. Like it was pretty violent, you know, pylons just beating the shit out of someone. You know, I also was the, uh, the rich kid cause my family initially is very affluent for Turkey. And, uh, my father lost all of his money by the time I got to college, but that's besides the point.
But in that process, they took me out of private school in third grade and sent me to public school. And Turkish public schools are, you know, that's like the Turkish income inequality is something that is very different than even American income inequality, even though America is now more, America is now resembling Turkey a little bit, the Gini coefficient. But
Would say that that wealth disparity was so severe that means that like someone like myself going to public school in Turkey was almost controversial at the time at least for middle school Because public schools, when you go to high school and college, are the best schools in Turkey. Because we have a nationalized education system. But in middle school, it was like, I guess, unique.
And I got, I had this kid who, you know, followed me home with a knife. And I remember like negotiating with him in the entire school.
uh throughout the entire process and uh i just like walking backwards because he didn't know where i lived and just because i used to walk home from the school and walking walking walking and then uh luckily because i was so late that my mom was outside already and she was screaming she didn't even see the kid had a knife um but it was like a somewhat traumatic experience for me but it was also kind of a funny experience
Because I guess that was a little bit like bullying, if you think about it.
I mean, somebody chasing you home with a knife, that qualifies?
Yeah, I think it was a little bit extra than bullying. But yeah, the next day, the principal in front of the entire school reprimanded him and pulled his ear and kind of beat his ass in front of everybody. He was crying and he was forced to apologize to me for almost...
killing me with a knife and and you know follow me home um but uh you know i've had experiences like that and then also experiences for being like a little different too for sure uh or just being fat and being unathletic being uh someone who's interested in nerdy stuff like interested in american culture rather than the normal stuff that everyone else was interested in.
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Chapter 5: How did Hasan Piker develop his unique voice?
what was hard was to basically take my personality and the way I operate off camera and become comfortable enough on camera that I can be exactly like that on camera and we're there now but this is this conversation that we're having would not be different whether the cameras are on or off like I would just this is exactly how I
But are you a one-man operation? So you have people who are helping you with publicity and whatnot, but when you're doing what you're doing, it's you with a thousand tabs going straight ahead. Do you have trouble sleeping? Because I would just imagine that your mind is working all of the time.
Yes and no. I feel like I sleep like a baby. Like I don't have an issue going to bed. I just knock out. But I will wake up, take a piss at 5 a.m. every morning. And when I do, I notice myself like arguing with commonly held perspectives when I wake up in that moment where I'm like, oh, fuck, what am I doing? But sometimes I'll be like, that's a great argument. I got to remember that.
So upon waking, your first morning meditation, when I'm asking you, can you get your mind to stop, is to argue with commonly held beliefs as you shuffle to the bathroom.
Yes, yes, 100%.
because i would imagine your mind doesn't i don't know whether you do meditation or breath work or any of that stuff but i imagine it's a bit of a fishing reel that it's it never stops no it's definitely always going for sure and you like that or would you like to still it some
I like it but I also do shut it off and the way I shut it off is by mindless television consumption like I watch a lot of anime and I play a lot of video games like that's how I shut it off where I don't think about anything and that is my hyper fixation for the moment like a TV show that I'm watching that I want to catch up on or a video game that I'm playing.
So in the brief hours, the three hours, four hours that I'm awake when I'm not in front of a camera, that's what I do. Or I play basketball.
One of the reasons I'm fascinated by you and your ilk in a new media age is because from where I am from afar, even if you love it, The needing to feed the machine seems like an oppressive burden, especially if you're self-employed and you're a one-man operation and you've largely arrived at your dreams and now you have to stay ahead of everybody. I don't know how competitive you are.
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Chapter 6: What are Hasan Piker’s thoughts on his mental health and career resilience?
So that is what keeps me hopeful, even when I feel hopeless. And I guess I've grown accustomed to loss in that regard. So I don't expect it. I don't expect victories. So when they come, it feels great. And if it doesn't happen, then I was right.
But what did you learn in the examination and the introspection of the wallowing in, I don't know if I can do this anymore?
I've always been very aware that a big chunk of my identity or a big chunk of what I enjoy is directly tied to something that is unfortunately quantitative. And I say unfortunately because... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
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