What is Hasan Piker watching?
"I watched a lot of TV when I was growing up, and it’s all mostly embarrassing stuff."
what are they watching? is an interview series for my newsletter in which I chat with a creative about television itself. Previous interviews include Toheeb Jimoh, Janicza Bravo, Chelsea Peretti, and Jeff Hiller.
This time around, I had the unexpected delight of speaking with political commentator and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who was visiting Vancouver to speak at the Web Summit Conference in conversation with Gabor Maté. We talk about his formative TV shows, his thoughts on Taylor Sheridan, and why he thinks Fox News is so obsessed with him.
I like to start off my interviews by asking: What are you watching lately on television?
I’m watching Invincible, that’s pretty much the only thing I’m watching other than Neighbors. I’m trying to catch up, I stopped after season two and then I just started re-watching because it was in the discourse a lot. People were talking about Viltrumites left and right and I was like, you know what, let me give this another shot. For season two, when I saw the different universes, it got me out of it a little bit, but I got back into it and it’s pretty good.
What is your relationship to the medium of TV these days, do you gravitate toward things that are buzzy and that you want to respond to? I know you also watch SNL…
I watch a lot of television, I watch a lot of news. That’s all I do. I am a media critic for political commentary. I read a lot of articles as well, but my relationship is one of trying to understand the 65+ year olds in this country and everywhere, really, because that’s where they get their primary source of news from. So I watch television to understand, like, liberal culture, for example. I always joke and say I watch SNL to understand what liberals are laughing at, and to see what they’re laughing at means I can develop a better understanding of how they see the world. As far as my regular relationship with TV, my consumption is just for entertainment. I shut off my brain. I like to watch TV shows every now and then after an eight-hour work day of live broadcasting.
I’m always surprised by how the 65+ demo still watch broadcast TV procedurals. Do you ever tune into any of those?
I’m very familiar with it. I don’t watch any of it, but I think it’s really interesting because it’s pro cop, but it’s also very woke at the same time. They are personally rewiring the brains of a lot of boomers to be more open-minded to, like, trans people, to understand consent, especially if they had a very different understanding of consent in their upbringing. They talk about concepts such as patriarchy, but also at the same time it’s very, very pro cop. All of those copaganda shows are very interesting. It’s this “blue lives matter,” but also Black Lives Matter, and “all lives matter” narrative that they teach people. They’re like yeah, we’re pro-trans, but also we got to make sure that the police force is heavily armed and they’re doing a great job combating these sorts of heinous crimes, so they have to be well funded. Interesting.
Yeah, totally. I think the writers are trying to straddle that line to make sure they’re appealing to the broadest possible audience, which isn’t necessarily the case for like, Taylor Sheridan. I don’t know if you’ve ever tuned into any of his shows.
Oh yeah, I feel like he’s the king of anti-woke. My dad loves Taylor Sheridan stuff, he watches them religiously. Wait, is it Landman or is it Oilman?
Landman…maybe his worst show IMO. I do find it interesting his Yellowstone shows address Indigenous land sovereignty in a way a lot of shows don’t and have large Indigenous casts, maybe an underrated perspective to his work.
That makes sense, though. That’s like the Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch. He’s unbelievably reactionary except for when it comes to Indigenous rights. That’s a classic old-school American conservative mentality, where on the one hand they’ll be like pro-Iraq War, for example, pro foreign occupation, endless wars, all that stuff, but then there’ll be weirdly sincere about Indigenous land rights every now and then. I think there’s also an element of LARPing a little bit. They will LARP as though they are somewhat Indigenous. They’ll be like, “Oh, I’m like 1/64 Cherokee.” It’s a classic American white guy thing, I think.
That’s so real. I’m curious, what were your foundational shows growing up, what were the shows that shaped you?
Oh god, I watched a lot of TV when I was growing up, and it’s all mostly embarrassing stuff. I watched an ABC show called GRΣΣK, Spike’s Blue Mountain State, and HBO’s Entourage. Those were all TV shows I watched growing up in Turkey, and I was fascinated by it. I was like, wow, Americans love to party, they have such a fun life. This is embarrassing but Californication played a decent role in me wanting to live in California. Now that I actually have the opportunity to live an Entourage life, I never leave my home. [Laughs]. I don’t party, I never leave my home, I don’t want to do any of that stuff. I guess it played a role in getting me there though.
Was there a show you had to watch weekly growing up? Mine was Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was super formative…
I don’t think I had a show that I ever tuned into every week. Because I was in Turkey, I would have to download stuff anyway. I would have to watch stuff illegally. We have a big black market, there were brick and mortar retail stores that would straight up sell stolen or downloaded copies burned into CDs and DVDs. I would just go there and get a bunch of movies and TV shows. I’ve been doing the Netflix method of consumption before Netflix, basically, because I had no other options. Avatar was also another major one too though, Avatar was great.
Pivoting to TV news: Why do you think Fox News is obsessed with you?
My name is Hasan. I’m Muslim. I say “Israel is 1,000 times worse than Hamas.” You know, it’s perfect. In the past, I said “America deserved 9/11.” I have a lot of sound bites that they can use and abuse to make it seem like I do not have the best interest of Americans in mind, to say that I’m a dangerous terrorist. Even if I didn’t say those things, it still wouldn’t matter, they would still find anything else to say that I’m a dangerous terrorist. That’s part of it.
The other part of it is they can’t really talk about any military successes in the Strait of Hormuz. They can’t talk about the wonderful economy. Everything sucks. Trump is not following through on any of his promises, so they have to find new distractions. I think they genuinely believe that attacking me and tying me to the Democratic Party is a successful way to attack the Democratic Party in the midterms. I think genuinely they’re trying to set up for that.
They’re teaching the base who I am, first, from a very negative perspective, so they can just keep hitting that over and over again when the general election comes around, and then they’ll tie me to random candidates that I’m not even associated with in any way, shape, or form, to be like, this is what the Democrats are, you have to vote for us, the Democrats are insane, they’re going to kill all of you, they’re terrorists, that sort of thing. I think that’s what it is. I don’t think it’s going to be successful, necessarily. It wasn’t successful with Zohran, that was Andrew Cuomo’s last ditch effort to attack Zohran Mamdani. So, who knows?
Does it ever take a toll on you emotionally?
No, I’m used to it. I’m a socialist, I’m anti-imperialist, my worldview is unique to many Americans unfortunately, they’ve never gotten this education at all. They don’t see the world from the class perspective at all. And either they’re totally oblivious to this worldview, or they’ve been antagonized towards it, they’ve been taught that it’s bad and it’s wrong and it’s scary. So I understand. I’ve been on the receiving end of unlimited attacks, on the internet and always from the right, and now even from the liberals as well. This is a media environment that I basically grew up in. Fox News is just catching up to the right-wing reactionaries on the independent media side that have been doing these kinds of heinous smears for the past decade that I’ve been around, even as a much smaller content creator on The Young Turks. It’s not something that I grew comfortable with, it just is what it is. Cost of doing business.
Well, keep up the good fight. On another note, have you watched Industry?
I have not watched Industry. I heard it’s good, though. I’m friends with Kiernan. She’s in it.
[Michel makes pitch to watch Industry]
Alright, I’ll check it out.
Do you think of Twitch as an extension of television as a medium?
It’s very different, so not really. The differentiating factor in Twitch, as opposed to these other mediums, is the interactivity in real time. It’s very different than any other medium in that regard. No other medium has this level of interactivity, even YouTube. You can write comments and stuff, but there’s no way to change what you are watching as you are watching it. What I do I compare to not even television but Rush Limbaugh, AM radio conservative talk shows, that’s the tradition that I think closely tracks what I do, or what I do closely follows that tradition. Except my politics are good and not bad.
Have you ever thought about pivoting to any kind of acting or doing guest roles in TV?
I can’t act at all. I’m terrible at acting.
Isn’t there a performance element to streaming on Twitch?
Sure, but it doesn’t translate to acting, in my opinion. I just can’t do it. I don’t have enough training in it. If this was a real priority for me, I’m sure I could become semi-competent, maybe at some point, but it’s just not something that I’m interested in at all. I can’t even do voice acting, really. I’ve said no to a bunch of stuff but every now and then a production company that’s a fan or has a producer or director as a fan will ask me to do voice acting, and I always audition for it, and I never get it, so I must be dog shit.
I think that kind of stuff is cool, but it’s not a career thing for me. I’m very happy with where I’m at in my career. I’m very happy, and I don’t really have a lot of time to do anything else, anyway. Maybe as a side quest.
I just have one more question before I let you go. What’s your favorite TV-watching snack?
Ooh, I mean, I eat full meals when I’m watching television. So it’s probably a bucket of teriyaki chicken, or grilled chicken breast with some vegetables on the side, maybe some steamed rice. That’s my go-to TV-watching meal.
"[Michel makes pitch to watch Industry]"
Of course he does. <3
It’s great to hear him say that Twitch is NOT an extension of TV and he’s NOT trying to be a performer on his channel. So many entertainment execs are freaking out at streaming numbers, calling it the new TV, and calling content creators the new movie stars; and it’s exhausting to keep hearing. Hearing him give the opposite approach and maintain sanctity in his own method is refreshing.