Born Hasan Dogan Piker on 25 July 1991, Hasan is an American Twitch streamer, political commentator, and gamer. Popularly known by his moniker ‘HasanAbi’, which loosely translated means “big brother Hasan”, he has previously worked as a broadcast journalist and producer at The Young Turks and as a columnist at HuffPost.
He is currently one of the Twitch streamers with the most views and most subscribers. He uses his Twitch platform to cover news and discuss politics from a left-wing point of view, and he also plays a variety of video games.
Our world as we know it is seeing a lot of change and evolution, and those who intend to remain in touch with times will have to keep up with said changes. The story of Hasanabi is one of such that shows how much things are done differently in the world today. His use of in-vogue internet-based equipment to propagate his kind of work is indicative of what coming years might look like.
If children are the leaders of tomorrow, then the youth are the incoming leaders, ready to mount the helms latest by dusk. Today’s youth have the best of two worlds (the past and the progressive present). Those who intend to impact the world in any way understand the need to maximize the tools made available by technology and bend them to their will. Just like many others like him, HasanAbi has done this by being an active voice in world politics and delivering his content to his target audience right where they spend most of their time (internet platforms).
Hasan’s political commentary work, for which he is most popular, will be highlighted in this brief biography amongst other notable aspects of his life. First, here are ten interesting facts about him.
10 interesting facts about Hasan Piker aka Hasanabi
- Though born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and by virtue of that an American, Hasan is of Turkish origin. Both of his parents and Turkish.
- Hasan initially attended the University of Miami before transferring to Rutgers University, where he completed his BA degree.
- Piker has worked as a journalist and host. He has worked as a columnist on the renowned The Huffington Post.
- Hasan joined the live-streaming platform Twitch in 2018 and started streaming. He got high praise for his content, and his channel grew in numbers in a short time.
- On election day, 3 November 2021, Hasanabi streamed to over 230,000 people on his Twitch account.
- While still in college, Hasan joined TYT (The Young Turks), a progressive news show co-founded by his uncle.
- During his childhood, Hasanabi was obsessed with everything that had to do with the USA. On the H3 podcast, he called himself an ‘Americaboo’, which means someone obsessed with America.
- While Hassan was born in the US, he spent his early years in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was raised.
- Hasan never bought into the religious dogma taught to them in school as teenagers. For this, he once called himself an “outcast”.
- Piker is currently estimated to be worth around $2 million.
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Early life and education
As his name may already imply, Hasan was born to Turkish parents in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was, however, raised in Istanbul, Turkey, where he attended public school. Hasan wasn’t quite like other kids, and he got bullied for his lack of physical fitness and questioning attitude. Unlike most other kids, Hassan wasn’t satisfied with the religious ideas being taught to them, and he always questioned them. He was also more interested in video games than most other things.
Piker returned to the United States and attended the University of Miami. Alongside his studies, he worked as a club promoter. After two semesters with a 2.9 GPA, he transferred to Rutgers University, where he eventually graduated c-m laude with a double major in political science and communication studies in 2013.
Career
As you may have imagined from the already highlighted details, Hasan’s career is all but conventional. It is, however, not a strange phenomenon these days. People make careers out of all kinds of endeavour, whether or not they fall under the typical or known categories of “career options”. Hassan’s career as a Twitch streamer, columnist and YouTube anchor is as relevant as any other career path.
The Young Turks YouTube
During his senior year of college in 2013, Piker interned for The Young Turks (TYT), a progressive news show and network co-founded by his uncle, Cenk Uygur. Upon his graduation, he got employed full time in the ads and sales department. By and large, Hasan got occasional shots at hosting a show whenever a fill-in was needed. Based on his performance over time, he eventually became a show host and producer. His uncle, Uygur, described him as “magnetic” but “rough around the edges” in his early years with TYT.
By 2016, Piker had created and started hosting his own show, “The Breakdown”, on the TYT network. It was a video series that aired on Facebook and presented left-leaning political analysis targeted toward millennial supporters of Bernie Sanders. The show was nominated in the “Best Web Series” category at the 10th Shorty Awards in 2018.
In 2019, Hasan created and hosted another TYT series called Agitprop with Hasan Piker. Piker announced his departure from TYT in 2020. He had created a Twitch account back in 2018 and cited his intention to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer as his reason.
Hasanabi Twitch
Hasanabi created his Twitch account in 2018 and started streaming there in March of the same year. He was still at The Young Turks at the time. As briefly mentioned earlier, the endeavour was a means to end. In an attempt to reach his target audience, which at the time he had realized weren’t particularly on Facebook or YouTube, Piker switched to Twitch.
According to him, there was a predominance of right-wingers on the two former platforms. The Twitch move proved to be a masterstroke as he quickly became a popular left-wing political commentator and garnered a large following. He got invited to appear on the Fox News show “The Issue Is” and the political podcast “Chapo Trap House”. He also streams gameplay and commentary of video games on his Twitch channel.
Piker had over 125,000 viewers watching his reaction stream during the first 2020 United States presidential debate on 29 September 2020. He surpassed all other Twitch streams of the same debate event. On 19 October 2020, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez collaborated with Piker and fellow Twitch streamer Pokimane to organise a stream of the Representative playing popular multiplayer game Among Us for the “Get out the Vote” initiative.
Hasan recorded yet another groundbreaking success on Twitch during the 2020 United States presidential election. On the night of 3 November, his stream covering the election results peaked at 230,000 concurrent viewers, and was the sixth most-watched source of election coverage across YouTube and Twitch, comprising 4.9% of the market share. He was the most-watched Twitch streamer during the election week. His 80 hours of streams were viewed for 6.8 million hours by an average of 75,000 concurrent viewers.
Twitch ban and controversy
Piker sparked controversy in August 2019, and it got him banned for a week on Twitch. The event occurred on a 21 August stream, where he criticised US Representative Dan Crenshaw for his support of American military interventionism overseas.
In his exact words, Piker asked, “What the f_ck is wrong with this dude? Didn’t he go to war and like literally lose his eye because some mujahedeen, a brave f_cking soldier f_cked his eye hole with their d_ck?” It didn’t end there; later on in the stream, he also criticised American foreign policy and made controversial comments regarding the 11 September attacks. Amongst other things, he said, “America deserved 9/11, dude.”
Of course, the comments were received with widespread outrage on the internet and social media. His uncle Cenk Uygur called them “very offensive,” and invited Piker to appear opposite him on TYT to apologise. While Piker didn’t exactly show remorse for his comments, he acknowledged that he could have worded his thoughts better.
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Codemiko
CodeMiko is a 3D Virtual YouTube character on Twitch best known for her live streams on Twitch where she interviews other streamers, content creators and internet personalities. It is the alter ego of Youna Kang, a Korean-American technician and internet personality. Kang created the CodeMiko persona using Unreal Engine, a motion capture suit from Xsens, motion capture gloves from Manus VR and a facial tracking helmet from MOCAP Design.
In December 2020, Codemiko interviewed Hasanabi. They discussed a wide range of subjects like the original voice behind Codemiko, gaming, politics, fantasies, and their Hentai collections amongst other things.
Personal life of Hasan Piker aka Hasanabi
For a person with a career in online streaming, Piker has quite a private life. Not much is known about his love life or relationships. There have been wild assumptions by some of his audience about his sexual orientation. Being an open supporter of the LGBTQ community, some have assumed Hasan is gay.
Although Piker dated adult film actress Janice Griffith in 2018, he is believed to be single at this time. A while ago, he was linked with the Canadian Twitch streamer, Pokimane. The two were alleged to be secretly dating each other, however, Pokimane shut down the rumours.
Cenk Uygur
Born Cenk Kadir Uygur on 21 March 1970, Cenk is a Turkish American progressive political commentator, media host, attorney, and journalist. He is the creator of The Young Turks, an American left-wing sociopolitical news and commentary program. Before beginning his career as a political commentator, he worked briefly as an associate attorney in Washington, D.C., and New York City. He is also a co-founder of Justice Democrats.
In 2020, Uygur was a candidate in both the special election and the regularly scheduled election for California’s 25th congressional district to succeed former Representative Katie Hill, who resigned in 2019. He lost both elections. Uygur is Hasan Piker’s uncle and former employer at The Young Turks.
Net worth
Hasanabi is currently estimated to have a net worth of around $2 million. He has found huge success on Twitch in recent years, and he is currently the 49th most subscribed Twitch streamer. A major chunk of HasanAbi’s income comes from Twitch and YouTube, along with his other social media handles and brand deals/sponsorships. Streamers also make money through ads, subscriptions, and donations. In 2020, he was estimated to be making around $420,000 yearly, mostly from his Twitch subscriptions alone.
Conclusion
It may take a lot to change the world and influence the thinking of people, but the tools are available at our fingertips. Hasan and others like him have recognized this and have taken the challenge in their strides. What’s more, they are making a living from it at the same time.
There is no predicting the heights this young man will attain in decades to come if he stays on course. With a little bit of smoothening and straightening here and there, Hasanabi’s rough edges will even out, and what a man he will become!
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