Democrats spent the last year asking where their Joe Rogan was. Hasan Piker is one of the few left-wing figures with the audience they covet — but the party is deeply hostile to the spontaneity and independence that make figures like him appealing.
Democrats spent the last year asking where their Joe Rogan was. Hasan Piker is one of the few left-wing figures with the audience they covet — but the party is deeply hostile to the spontaneity and independence that make figures like him appealing.
I know who Cenk’s nephew is. Not a fan of either one. Though Hasan is definitely better than his uncle. That’s a low bar.
Hasan gets some pretty stupid ideas in his head. However more often than not he has absolutely found himself on the right side. And I will absolutely commend him and others for going to Cuba to deliver aid. Amid our fascist’s manufactured fuel shortage.
He’s certainly a character. I find him somewhat insufferable, at least in mannerisms, but it’s probably because I’m older. Chewing into the microphone, eating on camera, China glazing, arguing with chat. But clearly as media and taste’s have changed, enough people like Hasan enough to build him up as the bugfest leftwing content creator.
But if you want to know where things are going and what people believe, how they get to those beliefs, you gotta at least recognize them as a political agent. And I do like their focus on media analysis (similar to Majority Report in this regard). They aren’t covering the news if the day, they are covering how the news if the day is presented. Same as watching Meidas Touch to get an idea for what that audience is thinking, or Jim Acosta for understanding that crowd, or Don Lemon or Sabby Sabs, or TYT or dropsite or zeteo and on and on. If you want to know what audiences are being exposed to you gotta go to where that exposure is happening and watch and listen.
And in that landscape, well, Hasan is kinda a gorilla. Just, no left of center anyone is putting up numbers like Hasan does; not even by 10x. Outside of billionaire funded astroturfed RW channels, no one else has the numbers.
Like it’s not about if I like Hasan or not, like, if they are to my taste. It’s about whose got the numbers then trying to understand why. And Hasan speaks to a pretty unrepresented coalition of people who are far from rightwing, and also, far from naively supportive of Democrats. And I think it’s because they are willing to be say the quiet parts out loud, like “US deserved 9/11”.
He also taps into a demographic that the Dems have lost in the past - disillusioned young men.