Hasan Doğan Piker ( PY-kur, Turkish: [haˈsan doˈan piˈcæɾ]; born July 25, 1991), also known as HasanAbi (abi meaning big brother in Turkish), is a Turkish-American Twitch streamer and left-wing political commentator. 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 most-viewed and most-subscribed-to streamers on Twitch, where he covers news, plays a variety of video games, and discusses politics from a socialist perspective.
Early life
Hasan Doğan Piker was born to Turkish parents in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and raised in Istanbul. During his time in public school in Turkey he describes being bullied for his lack of physical fitness and questioning attitude.
Piker returned to the United States and attended the University of Miami, then transferred to Rutgers University, where he graduated cum laude with a double major in political science and communication studies in 2013.
Career
The Young Turks
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. After graduating, Piker was hired by the network’s ad sales and business department. He would ask to host the show when a fill-in was needed, and later became a host and producer. Uygur described his nephew as “magnetic” though “rough around the edges” at first.
In 2016, Piker created and hosted The Breakdown, a TYT Network video series which 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. Piker also wrote political content for HuffPost from 2016 to 2018.
Piker created and hosted another TYT series in 2019 called Agitprop with Hasan Piker. In January 2020, he announced his departure from TYT and his intention to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer.
Twitch
Piker started streaming on Twitch in March 2018, while he was working at TYT. Piker has said he shifted his attention from Facebook to Twitch in order to reach a younger audience, and because of what he felt was a preponderance of right-wing commentators on YouTube and a lack of leftist representation among streamers. He became a popular left-wing political commentator, invited to appear on Fox News’s The Issue Is and the political podcast Chapo Trap House. Piker also streams gameplay and commentary of video games on his Twitch channel. His YouTube channel feature highlights of his streams.
During the first 2020 United States presidential debate on September 29, Piker had over 125,000 viewers watching his commentary of the broadcast, the highest viewership of the debate on Twitch. On October 19, 2020, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez collaborated with Piker and fellow Twitch streamer Pokimane to organize a stream of the Representative playing popular multiplayer game Among Us for the “Get out the vote” initiative. The stream aired the following day, featuring both Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar playing the game with Piker and many other popular Twitch streamers, reaching a total concurrent viewership of almost 700,000.
Piker’s stream covering the results of the 2020 United States presidential election 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 a cumulative 6.8 million hours by an average of 75,000 concurrent viewers. Piker’s stream reached a new high of 231,000 viewers during the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[32]
On November 8, 2021, Piker released a line of union-made merchandise and donated a portion of the proceedings to strike funds in which he raised over $180,000.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Piker, in partnership with CARE, raised over $200,000 for Ukrainian relief funds while playing Elden Ring, with an average of over 70,000 people watching his coverage of the conflict.
Other ventures
Since 2021, Piker co-hosts the Fear& podcast alongside his friend and fellow Twitch streamer, Will Neff. On September 26, 2021, Piker became co-host on the h3h3Productions left-wing political podcast Leftovers.
Political views
Piker has been identified as a progressive, leftist, Marxist and a democratic socialist. He has advocated in favor of workplace democracy, universal health care, intersectional feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and gun control; he has advocated against war, American imperialism, Islamophobia, white supremacy and capitalism.
Piker has cited his upbringing in Turkey under the Premiership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an influence on both his left-wing views and willingness to speak out about them. Piker supported the presidential primary campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, and has been an outspoken critic of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Personal life
Piker was raised Muslim and is of Turkish descent. He is the nephew of Cenk Uygur, creator of The Young Turks. Piker currently resides in Los Angeles.
Awards and nominations
Notes
- ^
Subscribers, broken down by channel:
1.03 million (HasanAbi)
102 thousand (Fear&)
- ^
Views, broken down by channel:
264 million (Hasanabi)
1.3 million (Fear&)
Daily Habits
|
Work Time |
10 AM to 8 PM |
| Workout Time | 8 AM to 9 AM |
| Travel | Update Soon |
| Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner | Update Soon |
Facebook, Instagram & Twitter
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Update Soon |
| Update Soon | |
| Update Soon |
Net Worth
The Estimated Net worth is $80K – USD $85k.
| Monthly Income/Salary (approx.) | $80K – $85k USD |
| Net Worth (approx.) | $4 million- $6 million USD |
