Hasan Piker started his Saturday, Feb. 24 stream as usual. Before the political pundit fed the daily dose of news to his 2.6 million followers, he updated his audience on what was happening in his life.
The day before, after spending nine and a half hours talking on camera, Piker went to his producer’s housewarming party. After one drink of alcohol, Piker quickly realized his “social battery” had depleted after his time on Twitch.
Within 15 minutes of telling that story, a viewer clipped a 20-second portion of the 15-minute segment. In the clip, Piker said, “A real job doesn’t suck the soul out of you in the same way that streaming absolutely will.”
The clip started to spread immediately, pulling in millions of views on Twitter/X and various streamer-based subreddits. Piker, who was still streaming at the time, tried to stem the outrage. He offered the full context of the clip and further explained his stance.
But the floodgates opened, and no one could shut them.
“I was talking about my social battery depleting. And I was comparing it to the previous job that I held, which was a sales job that was also a client-facing, client-pleasing job,” Hasan Piker told us in an interview. “Twitter being the right-wing shithole that it is… people really pounced on it immediately.”
“When you see that, and you’re angry at the world, you’re angry for understandable reasons,” Hasan Piker said in our interview. “You have no autonomy. You’re alienated for your labor. Your boss is a fucking piece of shit. And then, you see a random clip out of context of this guy who doesn’t have any of those things. You’re going to get mad.”
