How Hasan Piker became the most successful (& hated) political streamer

29:09It's just a part of human nature. It's something that I genuinely believe. It's something I believe for the American criminal justice system, which we don't do enough of, rehabilitation. And it's certainly something that I believe for people that have done, I guess, what we would consider internet crimes. Like, you know, something that is worthy of cancellation, for example, right? I think that that person should always be able to grow, learn, try to offer some kind of restitution to those that they have potentially wronged or harmed, and then inevitably become a better person from that. this is the reason why yes empathy is very important for those who don't agree with me and i do stress that all the time um it doesn't probably doesn't make it to the clips but it is something that is very important for me and i think it is something that i genuinely think the left as a broader movement needs more of we we do have a tendency to have a lot of um purity spirals and I think that that is definitely bad.

30:15It's bad for community building and it's also not reflective of how human beings operate. Sure. You know, so yeah. Something you just said there is really important. You said it's bad for the clips and I think that's what I found with the world of the internet opening up political commentary, but I would say even beforehand in news, right? Like it's just the nature of it. Empathy is not interesting at scale and that to me I think is challenging and challenges my questioning of like, should the news be entertainment? You know, like when I turn on the news or I watch, you know, what you're doing or, you know, I love Jon Stewart.

30:53I think Bas Musev's also fantastic. Like, I think I enjoy watching that way more than I do watching the news. Yeah. That's where I get my information. But I question the concept of like, should news be entertainment or is there a place for like a boring version of the news, which is like, here are the facts, here's what happened. Yes. Devoid of opinion. But then it's, again, like you said, that type of stuff doesn't make the clips, it doesn't make the rounds. It's not interesting. And with media being at everyone's fingertips, it's much more interesting to share something on each of the extremes, right?

31:28Or each of the polls. Absolutely. I think that it is incredibly important to definitely still have real journalism happening without it we are we're screwed um it's all it's also a little bit self-serving for me to say this because like obviously i'm not out there you know what i mean i'm not gonna i'm not going to a conflict zone and and filming stuff or or uh photographing events so uh i have to rely on journalists as well to do so and i have many brilliant amazing journalist friends who do phenomenal work all around the globe and i rely on their investigative reporting to be able to do my coverage.

32:08Having said that, however, I think what people need to have is media literacy. I think people need to be a little bit more critical about the way that they consume the media and understand that every single media outlet does have certain biases. What do you think the role is then of someone like you or of a creator who's engaging in some ways in journalism? Is it to be forthright about opinion, about what's opinion, what's being taken as fact? like yeah how does the creator i guess do it differently i mean i i am always i always tell people when i'm speculating i always tell people when it's like this is something that i personally believe i always explain what my biases are and you can pick up on it immediately like i'll start um you know i'll start i'll start yapping about it i can't stop and the thing you are who you are Yeah, that is true, I guess.

32:58But beyond that, of course, I'm still operating with, my premises can't be faulty. I'm operating with objective facts as close to objectivity as you can arrive at. And that's where I make my analysis. That's where I drive my analysis from is still factually accurate information to the best of our ability. I do think with the, on the topic of media literacy, with the increase in content, the opportunity for media literacy, in my opinion, goes down actually, right? Like the vast quantity of headlines that we consume on a daily basis or, or clips or, you know, long form, whatever we're consuming, as that quantity has gone up, I think whatever your understanding is of the media will be applied across the board.

33:52like to have a nuanced take from clip to clip or headline to headline is extremely challenging and a challenging assumption of of society yeah i think many people don't do that at all and they don't have that they just like are fed this information they have not even know they should do it you might not even know that one headline is different from another headline yeah no that's why I think that we're arriving at like one of my major goals is I look at the news and I hand hold you through it where I if you are confused about what's going on in the world my job the way I see it is like I'm there to be entertaining first and foremost but also like basically tell you like here's what the headline says but here's what is actually going on and here's what that headline might mean and sometimes it's uh you know the headline is accurate or the the story is completely, you know, devoid of any sort of errors or omissions of details.

34:47Right. But, but that is what I'm trying to do. That is what I'm trying to do when I look at Fox News. That is what I'm trying to do when I look at MSNBC, because I have plenty of disagreements with liberals as well as I do with Republicans. I think the interesting parallel between yourself and the New York times is that, you know, the New York times, I open the app every single day and I go straight to Wordle and then play the spelling bee every day. That's great. And then, and I'm in, I'm in there. And then I'll quickly click on the news tab and I'm like, all right, I'll, there's some things that are happening and I will spend way less time looking at the headlines and the news, but I'm in like, you've brought me in New York times.

35:25You got me, I'm in a news world. Right. And I feel like with you, your beginnings were gaming on Twitch. And even still now there is like, like you said, you're like having fun, right? Occasionally you do play games. Yeah. And then there's a news element as well that like, it's an interesting thing that like the news more so than ever requires this entertainment that may not be a part of it, like with the New York times, but it's like right there. It's like, you need that too, to bring people in. For sure. I think, um, I do it for not the revenue reasons that New York times does it for, but instead I do it because, um, I think it, it allows people to see me in a different light and not as like the serious news guy who's yelling all the time.

36:08So on that topic of like, you know, revenue and business, like the business of streaming, the business also of political commentary. I think it's interesting to break down like, what does that look like? Because you brought up NPR at the beginning of the conversation. And I actually think what you do is similar to when I grew up, my brother, and like we're like young kids like when we were in the car with my mom or my dad he wanted to listen to npr and i hated it because lame as hell yeah it's super lame and i would make fun of him for it but he always wanted to listen to it so i was subject to listening to a lot of your brother would have been a fan of mine if he was like you know if it was he was i mean my brother's like speech and debate model un oh god school okay and then abandoned all of it went into fashion so yeah that's awesome yeah but but um i grew up like you know he introduced me to john stewart but i grew up listening to npr in the car and i think actually what you do being live for that amount of time is more akin to like the radio yeah right no absolutely i um i describe what i do to people that are outside of the age range of understanding twitch as basically rush limbaugh but not evil, if that makes sense.

37:23I said that to Samir. Colin said that to me yesterday. When I listen to a sonnet, it has the same rhythm as Rush Limbaugh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So in that context, like NPR was funded by, like it's public radio. It's funded by people essentially donating, right? Yes. There's a, I think there's a tax component to it as well. Like there's government grants and then it's funded by donors and also ad revenue as well. And, uh, I think that like creates a conflict of interest in many instances, which they of course immediately will reveal. They'll be like, we're, they'll do a story about Facebook and then they'll be like, we're also funded by meta.

37:59But, um, but yeah, that's, you know, usually how it goes. So outside of then the, that type of funding, like for you, that, that mix is funded by the people, right? So the people who watch you, they're, they're funding you plus ad revenue? Yes. So the largest chunk of my revenue comes from subscriptions. I think that that is the most reliable, most sustainable way of doing this business in general for someone like myself. Yeah. Because I don't want to be beholden to advertisers and especially considering the way I do commentary and what I talk about in many instances, there's always going to be so much volatility if I'm hyper focused on ad revenue.

38:44But that doesn't mean that I don't have ad revenue. Of course, ad revenue has played even a larger role on Twitch because I think Twitch as a platform directed by Amazon wanted to generate more ad revenue because they saw that that was better overall. The splits were better for them and they had a better way of basically, they have too much inventory and not enough monetization on inventory. So they really made an effort to push for ads. So that is, you know, that's something that I have to do as well, contractually obligated to do as well. And beyond that, there's sponsorships. They can be, you know, multiple year long sponsorships that are more holistic, like a brand partnership or a one-off.

39:26And for me, I spend most of my time, my manager, you know god bless him he's he's great uh spends most of his time basically telling people like we're not going to work with you sure but um but overall you know i'll play like a video game every now and then and that'll be sponsored um and by the game yeah by the by the developers yeah by the publisher yeah i mean because the reality is like i mean we're all in the business of being credible to our audiences right like that is the most important thing you can be as a creator but I think you more so than ever, more than, more than anyone has to be incredibly credible.

40:04Yes. With the advertisers you work with, the sponsor you work with, how the products that they make are made. You have a, you have a different lens on the business of sponsorships. Yeah. Yeah. If, if a, a, yeah. Like if a company is, is known for, you know, having terrible business practices, like I'm not going to work with them. And that's not necessarily across the board. Yeah. I know, but most people don't really care about it you know what i mean and and they just or they don't even know about it um the reason for why i do that isn't necessarily because like my audience will respond negatively to it but it's just like i personally don't want to work with them either so that's like it's perfect in that regard and you're you're offset by subscriptions like yeah and it's not a nominal amount of subscribers like no it's it's not i've been in the top 50 000 subscribers.

40:52Yeah. I've, I've been in the top five on the platform for, I would say the past, um, four years almost now. Yeah. Like it's never, you know, it's, it's stayed around 50 swings up, sometimes swings down, but it's usually around 50 ,000. What do you credit that to? Is it a mix of consistency, a mix of like community building? I think, yeah. Consistency, community building, people see value in uh in the amount of news coverage that they get they also don't get to see the ads because i run ads so it's like an ad for experiences i run four minutes of ads which is the lowest ad density that i could potentially uh negotiate for and it's much lower than many of the other content creators on the platform but um you know that can be annoying for people do you have any control over what those ads are now um i think i could probably if i wanted to be like, I don't want this brand to advertise on my stuff.

41:51I don't really care overall. Like if it's running against my content, I don't really care about it that much. Um, cause I don't personally believe that it's gonna end up changing people's minds at all. Are subscriptions, uh, do they increase sort of like seasonally? Like, do you find that, okay, during election cycles, my subscriptions go up and then there's some attrition or what does that look like for you? Um, in general, I think it's just more so tied to viewership. If a viewership stays stable, subscriptions stay stable for the most part. Um, if viewership goes down, then subscription numbers go down as well alongside it.

42:29Um, but yes, in times of like the election cycle, when my overall live concurrent viewership goes up, of course the subscription number goes up as well. For sure. Does going on traditional media outlets do anything for your Twitch audience. Yeah, it does actually, but not in the way that you would think it's not necessarily good for like me reaching out to a broader audience because they watched me on TV or something. It's actually the, the merger of like a non-traditional media person myself going on traditional media actually makes a lot of people in the non-traditional side, pay attention to it and watch clips of it so when i go on pierce morgan's show for example um even though ironically he's no longer on tv i don't think but regardless like when i first went on it was on tv and it looks like it's tv right like when i when i do that people on twitch are very invested because they're like oh that like he's he's entering like this serious legitimate environment so i think um But at times it's like a total circus.

43:35It is. It always is a total circus. But I guess what I'm trying to say is it gets more people invested on TikTok. Those clips go far and wide on the internet, ironically enough. It's never about the organic viewership that exists for television. It's always about the internet and the internet audiences on all of the other platforms that go, oh, that's an internet guy on TV. I'm going to watch that. I'm going to share that. Yeah, that makes sense. To me, it comes back to the media literacy conversation of like, I say this to Colin all the time. I say like the world glances, it doesn't read. So like at a glance, it looks official and legitimate.

44:13Yeah. And I think that's the same as like you see these advertisements or sponsored posts for like supplement companies where it has someone at a podcast mic looking like this explaining the supplement. Yeah. That's just an ad shot at a podcast mic. Yeah. But because of the context, the contextual nature of it, it's like that's an expert. yeah right and so like at a glance you you look at the world and like it's organized in this way that makes sense unless you you know again like it comes back to the i find that my phone was you just said so fascinating because like i realized a like a couple maybe like a year ago that a lot of these tiktoks from tiktokers that are talking into an sm7b sometimes not even talking to a microphone there's a different microphone i could tell yes i have one right right i work i do audio engineering to a certain degree so i realized they don't have real podcasts at all that's right they're simply creating snippets if you want to go see the original work there is none there's no it doesn't exist yeah this is a more legitimate format for zoomers than the actual tiktok straight to camera format so in order to create an air of like legitimacy they fake podcasts and i'm 32 too so from where i'm standing when i when i see a podcast i'm like that's illegitimate like i have a podcast i'm a dickhead you know what i mean like what that's that's ridiculous you think a podcast is serious because someone brought an sm7b doesn't mean this yeah yeah so i find that fascinating that like people i guess we've like devolved kind of where where what we consider to be like a legitimate expert source is just a guy with an sm7b and more often than not that guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

45:58I think it's like akin to a pharmaceutical commercial and someone's wearing a white lab coat, but there's no mention of this being a doctor. You just glance and you're like, oh, clearly. But that's like, you know, media drives ideology, right? Like media is the way we understand and organize the world. And so like the democratization of media has now offered the opportunity for everyone to pick from those. Like you go back in time, you think about like, you know, Marlboro cigarettes and like this, the, the, the vibe of masculinity, right. And that's able to permeate into society of like, this is what a man looks like.

46:31And that then gives you social cues in a real life environment. But now that real life environment is the internet. And so like the social cues that you can pick up on from media and apply to what you're creating then can also permeate through society. Yeah, no, for sure. I think that it's just, it's new and you see a lot of people in positions of power, try to make sense of it and then also control it. You saw this with the TikTok ban as well. Like the, I mean, it was pretty obvious what was going on. They were like, we don't want a foreign government to be able to have such a successful product.

47:07There's a business aspect to it. They wanted to take the successful product and basically force China to divest from it and give it to an American capital owner, a guy that we can trust. Right. And then there was also So the other side of it, the capacity to be able to influence millions of people, change their perspective. And I think that the lack of control over that was genuinely frustrating for a lot of people in American politics. And that's why they openly were like, we don't want this. We have to force you to divest, which we'll see what happens. I don't know if it'll be successful. Maybe by the time someone's watching this right now, you'll be laughing at me saying that.

47:50But I, you know, I think that it's very scary for people. The democratization of media is very scary for people. And in certain instances, I get that. I get it too. Because if you don't have like organs of government or organs of authority that you can trust to a certain degree that will have your back, right? Or when push comes to shove, they will do the right thing. Then who can you trust? Then we're just completely living in anarchy. and i don't necessarily think that that is is great i i don't i'm not a committed believer decentralization of that sort although i do benefit greatly from the democratization of media i do also see how damaging that is in many instances with what i call brain rot right there's so much of that there's so much anti-intellectual sentiment there's so many people masquerading as intellectuals who don't actually have the academic background at all, or maybe it may be in many instances in the podcasting world, people do have an academic background in a totally separate field.

48:54And then they use that as a position of legitimacy and authority to just promote a, and I don't know, a side hustle or talk about something entirely irrelevant to their field of study. But now they have this, like, now they have this legitimacy. That's why I always say I'm an idiot. Yeah, I was going to say, like, I would imagine people question your legitimacy, your authority, because when you get to a position of not just being someone that grabbed an SM7B and shot something random, but actually having people tune in at the numbers that you have, of course, people are going to assume you have authority, you have legitimacy, you are a leader of a group that people listen to.

49:33Yeah, I mean, I don't like when people say that. People do say that. they say, oh, are you an activist? Are you, or you're a journalist? Um, I, that's why I always say I'm an entertainer. It's a little bit cowardly to, to just hide behind that. But the reality is ultimately I don't want people to engage in any sort of like, uh, idolization. Right. And that's why I'm always like, I'm a human being. I have the capacity to fail. I have the capacity to lead you astray from time to time. I will do my very best to not do that, to make sure that that doesn't happen. But ultimately I could still get some things wrong.

50:14Right. And you know, I just, I don't, I don't know. I, I want people to see what I'm saying, listen to what I'm saying and internalize it and try to understand what I'm saying rather than like who I am as a person. The who I am as a person obviously is important because of the medium. People care about that sort of thing. You develop a parasocial relationship with your favorite content creator. But I want that to just be a way to open that door to charitability so that you can maybe cultivate an understanding of a different perspective that you've never heard before. You've never really actually explored.

51:00At face value, I'm sure just to come back to the business of this, like I'm sure a lot of people, I know it actually for a fact, we talked about it, but like people look at you and go, all right, well, this is just, this is also just a great way for you to make money. You drive a nice car, drive a Porsche, you bought a nice house, you wear nice clothes. But then I hear about your schedule. And I think to myself, like, yeah, you, you do make good money, but you don't have any time to spend it. Yeah. Is that fair? Or like, like, I don't like, what do you do? Or you're spending it in the way that you're spending.

51:32That doesn't sound interesting. Yeah. Well, the way there was a clip that actually went out of context on this exact thing that you're talking about, where I was talking about like, um, like not endlessly trying to engage in profit seeking behavior for purely making more money. And I remember addressing it because I was like, I love what I do. This is what gives me a fulfillment. This is what, uh, I have a lot of autonomy over my life. I could have a lot of autonomy over my work. If I wanted to, I could stop. Right. And there's society has offered me many different ways of just like at this point generating revenue with the preexisting capital that I have.

52:16It's as a matter of fact, society is like telling me to do that instead. That's the dream, right? That's the American dream is that you have enough money, you generate enough money, and then you put that money in the stock market and then you never have to work. And that kind of capital accumulation is something that obviously I think is, is, is not great in general. And I think that there's a, there's a lot of, of, um, systemic problems that stem from that, but I'm not even going to get into the dense theory of it all. I simply enjoy what I do and I want to be able to do it for as long as I can, as long as I can get enjoyment and fulfillment out of it.

52:51And I have enough that I can launch projects if I choose to give money to charities when I want to, and be able to do cool things and, um, and, and reinvest it into, I guess, my business. As much as we can like describe it to a, or describe your career as a, as the radio or Rush Limbaugh, I'm curious, uh, do your parents understand it? Like, do they understand it, appreciate the career that you've built for yourself? Um, at first they didn't. Uh, I'm the only person in my family that does not have anything above a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences. So I went to college. I graduated. That was it for me.

53:37My father has a doctorate in economics from the London School of Economics. My mom recently just graduated, got her PhD, went back to college and got a PhD. My brother has a master's. so I'm a little bit like the black sheep of the family in that sort and my dad for years anytime he would see me anytime we had a phone conversation be like son when are you going to go back to school and he would say that over and over again but that's because I was super broke you know 10 years ago and was like trying to do all this stuff that stopped around five years ago and I think it stopped when they were like okay you're making a lot of money it's fine you don't have to go to school anymore uh so they don't bother me anymore with uh with with higher education which is ironic because I do sometimes think about it like if I were to ever stop I'd probably do that I'd probably go back to college um but um they get it they understand it and and what was your relationship to money growing up um I come from a very affluent background for turkey which probably would make you like middle class in america but like for turkey it was really good and um i guess like my relationship with money was that i didn't really care about it at all my parents wouldn't spoil me they spoiled my brother a lot more than me because he's the second one right because he's coming after me so i had to fight for all these i had to fight these battles to get a cell phone and things like that and he never had to he just took it for granted.

55:18And, um, and, and I never really cared about money until I didn't have it. Sure. I, I started caring about money when I got out of college and I didn't have like a decent paying job and I was budgeting like crazy. I had to, I was getting overdraft fees and then you're cooked. Cause then the way that the bank of America used to operate, they would like hit you would like eight different, uh, you know, they would, they would massage it, the numbers in a way to make sure that you get like, you know, right as you're at, uh, right as you're, you're nearing the red, they boom, hit you with like eight different, um, you know, eight different payments so that all of a sudden you got like eight different overdraft fees.

55:59You know, I had, I went through all of that and, uh, that's when I, that's definitely when I was like, oh shit, this is not great. And how did, what is your current relationship with capitalism versus socialism? Because I've heard you talk about this before. And I was very curious to talk to you about it in the context of like the world of creators and how we operate. Because there's like an organization of the game of being a creator that is inherently, it operates within the confines and the lines of capitalism. Of course. Right. Everything does. Everything does. But I'm saying like the video game of being a creator, of rankings, of understanding your viewership, of understanding this infinite level of growth that you have the opportunity for on a week-to-week basis.

56:50How does that play into your relationship with money today? Some things never go out of style, like trust, reliability, and driving a Toyota. Take the legendary Camry and Corolla, designed for comfort, engineered for performance. Hurry in. Offers end September 30th. Toyota, let's go places. I mean, I, um, I have the fortune to not care about it. Right. And, and I think that is again, because I got unimaginably lucky that I was able to, um, that I was, I was able to do this thing on Twitch and, and, um, and be able to become incredibly successful, which is like, you know, one in a million chance, right.

57:38Uh, that I, I have the, the freedom and the privilege not to care about like consistently needing to generate more revenue. especially because like I said I get my I get my my emotional fulfillment elsewhere a lot of people I think pursue money for the sake of money there's a certain point that you need to do it all right like money isn't everything not having it is is a bit of a cliche but it's true like it definitely was for me as well when I was like when I was broke as hell it definitely was the most important thing. It was like a weight that I always had to carry everywhere. So yes, I think the relationship that I have with money is that it's freedom.

58:23It gives you the freedom to say, fuck you to advertisers. If you want to, it gives you the freedom to say whatever you want. As long as you believe it's true, it doesn't matter. That's the way that is my relationship with money. And as long as I don't have that fear, as long as I don't have that weight back on my shoulders, I can just consistently keep maxing out as much as I want to on the content front. Yeah. As someone who tracks injustice, highlights it, do you see anything within the confines of the creator economy with the relationship between creators and platforms? Oh, yeah. That you feel is unjust or that needs to be changed that maybe is not worthy of like being talked about on one of your streams, but within the confines of like, this is what we talk about here.

59:12Well, I mean, look, obviously I am in a very fortunate predicament. So I have a lot of leverage. I have a lot of bargaining power because like, you know, this platform is generating a lot of revenue and getting prestige from having someone like myself on it, right? For Twitch. And I also have the opportunity to maybe go to another platform and be like, Hey, I'll take a deal with you guys, you know, and they don't want that, right? They don't want the exclusivity to go away. Usually. um having said that however i mean the the streaming economy is a monopoly amazon runs it uh twitch is the dominant force owned by amazon youtube kind of came in as a player microsoft made an attempt it fell apart going back to the main point although i am very fortunate i think that there are millions of content creators who are not in that same situation and they have no bargaining power.

1:00:03They have, they have no bargaining power in the same way that, um, Uber drivers don't have any bargaining power against Uber. Um, and I think here in America, especially we have basically decided that that is just the way that we're going to operate. And we even have resentment towards any kind of like unionization initiative on that front. Um, having said that, however, with respect to Twitch streaming, given the barrier of entry being marginal, anyone and everyone can become a streamer or a content creator in general. It makes, I think, any kind of labor initiative, any kind of unionization initiative become impossible.

1:00:42So you're at the whims and the mercy of the corporation. So if Amazon decides, Twitch, you're not making enough money, you got to serve ads. Maybe you don't want to serve ads. there's not really much you can do you have to serve it right because what are you going to do build your own platform you can't do that and even if you do build your own platform you're still paying aws there is no alternative in the most long and convoluted sense of the word streaming is is susceptible to the exact same market forces under capitalism as anything else and you as a consumer if you're wondering why the fuck am i seeing so many goddamn ads on this platform.

1:01:18What the hell's going on? That is a directive given to Twitch by Amazon, who has a bunch of quants and a bunch of mathematicians with PhDs sitting in a room, constantly figuring out new ways of maximizing revenue that decided, you know, this is what we should be doing with Twitch, you know, in an effort to generate more revenue and take advantage of the monopoly that we have in the live streaming space. And then you as a consumer experience that in the form of seeing ads. And probably at scale though, for a large portion of consumers, the nature of human beings and hedonic adaptation would be that like, okay, there's more ads, but after a week, I just get used to it.

1:02:04Absolutely. Right. And then scale that out across everything. No, absolutely. We have a phenomenal capacity to adapt. I think that's like, If we're thinking about man as an entity, as a unit, that is our most incredible capacity. And it can be for good or it can be for bad, right? We do prevail and we do adapt to the conditions no matter what. And I think that you're absolutely right. People get used to it. They find different ways of maybe using an ad blocker or just subscribing. and um and and inevitably they're just like yeah i'm dealing with it who cares or maybe they just sit there and watch it yeah i mean you could scale that all the way up to like the political climate exactly like it's just there's like hedonic adaptation at every level yeah things feel crazy and then all of a sudden you know eight years later you're like oh maybe this is just the way politics are now yeah yeah no and that's very scary when you think about what we're heading towards, I would say, not to get too political, but yeah, that is definitely true.

1:03:14In that, with this being an election year, I'm curious your perspective on how politicians should be engaging with social platforms. Obviously, we've seen AOC on stream with you. We've seen politics take to the landscape of like the democratization of media and social, But I'm curious your perspective on like, how should politicians engage with the creator space? Like, should they be streaming? Should they be making vlogs? Should they be tweeting? Like, what is the, how should we engage with politicians in the social landscape? I'll tell you this much. I would rather have a politician never touch a single social media platform, but then also, you know, but genuinely be invested in like the things that they supposedly care about, like eliminating poverty, combating homelessness.

1:04:08I would much rather have them actually do the things that they say they're going to do when the election time comes around and not even like, I guess, utilize social media. But I guess the other side of it is it's another mechanism for communication and branding yourself and trying to gain more supporters. but i i think overall i don't necessarily care about the pr side of it as much as i care about like the actual impact the actual legislation the actual follow-through on the legislative promises that politicians make um i mean the the biden administration uh recently uh came out with a with a job opportunity they're looking for a meme manager like 85 000 meme manager a meme manager, a meme creator.

1:05:04That's not going to work. That is just so incredibly silly in my opinion. You're just doing that because you want to you just want to do it so that you've tried your best I guess. It almost feels like lip service where it's like yeah sure we're doing it. Biden is literally trying to ban TikTok, openly advocating to ban TikTok while simultaneously posting TikToks. That is an inconsistency that I think even the dumbest American, and many of us are very dumb, myself included, uh, we'll see and go, what? Like you're, you're posting on TikTok, but you want to ban TikTok? What's happening here? Um, so I think I, I, like I said, I care more about like the actual, uh, the actual campaign promises they make and follow through on.

1:05:49I just questioned the, the level and this actually across all of us, like whatever you do, like accessibility, right? Like how accessible should someone be? And specifically someone in politics. Like - I think they should be way more accessible than the average celebrity. And in what - I agree with that. And what venues should they be accessible? I think that they should be doing town halls in person and also be accessible online as well in that regard for sure. I think that they should be, if they're doing things that their constituents don't appreciate, they should have to face them. When you have a politician on stream, is that, can that be taken as an endorsement?

1:06:32I guess yes and no. I don't think I've ever worked with a politician that I don't fully align with though, or not fully align with or like align with in any capacity. So I don't think I would do that. Do you ever like go out into the world, like go to a coffee shop and crave anonymity? like do you ever crave like what your life was like pre making videos pre being like a twitch streamer being this yes for sure um when i go out in public uh for sure there are moments where i'm like oh shit like i don't want to i don't want to be seen right now you know what i mean i don't want to be i don't want to be noticed uh and it does happen sometimes where i mean happens all the time, but like in, in like 99 % of the interactions is super positive and wonderful.

1:07:22So it doesn't really bother me as much. And I enjoy it. I enjoy putting a face to the, to the username, right? All of a sudden, instead of like someone online, this is a real human being with goals, aspirations. And when they say like, oh, you've changed my mind on this. I love that. that's great um but uh there are definitely a lot of you know privacy concerns there's a lot of um there's a lot of stuff that creators regularly will not discuss in an effort not to create uh in an effort not to to legitimize and uh on that front yes they i definitely wish that I was more, I could be more private.

1:08:09Because you're very different from other streamers because of your subject matter. Yeah. So like people's relationship with you and the things you say have a lot more of like a guttural either love or hate or like you live in the polarities, right? And so like different from like a Ludwig who's like, I hung out with that guy and he made me laugh when I watched the stream. You have a very different relationship. For sure. And the premise of also your show or what you do is interactive news. So it's also very different where it's like, if I'm watching the news or when I grew up watching the news, I can't comment and have the broadcaster say something based on what I just said or argue with me or debate with me live.

1:08:47And that's like crowdsourced across hundreds of thousands of people. Yeah. That's a very different parasocial relationship than other parasocial relationships. For sure. There's like so much access. Yeah. um i feel like streamers are in this weird intersection where they're not like real celebrities um but i mean they at least the top streamers like they make a lot of money sometimes even more than like traditional celebrities do having said that however um in many instances like traditional celebrities can maintain a level of privacy like a like a Hollywood actor is, it is only going to, especially when they have PR, especially when they have studios that are also like multi-billion dollar companies that are also maintaining the, the image of an actor, right.

1:09:36Um, they can put their best foot forward at all times. Streamers can't really do that because like the nature of our content is interactive. So obviously there's always going to be people trying to trip you and, uh, and that's fine. Um, uh, but no matter what, you know, there's going to be a weak moment in a 10 hour timeframe. And I think that like that very real, the weak moment of, of maybe emotional immaturity can be, you know, broadcasted to millions of people or someone can misunderstand you. And then that can be broadcasted to millions of people. And that like your point could be misconstrued and even weaponized against you in a very meaningful way.

1:10:14And beyond that, I think that that like, you know, people, when they see that maybe they harbor hostility and resentment towards you because they're not i don't fault them they're not supposed to go in and find out what i actually am about or whatever they just see that and they're like fuck this guy right and i get it and uh for i mean that that aspect of it definitely is is uh shitty where it's like i made you like i gave you five dollars a month. Like I have a say in how you conduct your affairs. You better not piss me off. It's like I paid taxes to this commuter. Yeah. I'm dropping you up literally.

1:10:55Yeah. They don't see it in the same way when they go watch a movie. They're not like, you know, Chris Hemsworth, how dare you? Or even Jake Tapper, right? It's like, if I don't like what Jake Tapper is saying, I just changed the channel. Yeah. And people don't have the, people don't view it in the same way when you're like super accessible. So it's the, it's the other side of the parasocial coin. Is there anything you've learned about people you're at odds with in terms of the difference between interacting with them online and meeting them in person? Um, yeah, I, I went to the white house correspondence dinner many, many years back, not the actual dinner, but like events that the young Turks was, um, putting together over the weekend and my hatred for DC amplified.

1:11:45I mean, it was like, I, oh God, I just, I hate the moral rot so much, especially in media because these guys at events were so excited to see like, you know, Scaramucci or, or people that like, they act like they despise on camera you know what i mean and and i think for a lot of people in mainstream media not everyone but but for a lot of people in like mainstream media especially like the on-camera talent and whatnot it is really hollywood for ugly people like it just is they just care about like the superstar celebrity status of people more than they care about their perspectives. And even with people that I've like debated in the past, they would DM me and be like, Hey, you want to get, you know, you want to get drinks?

1:12:34And I'll be like, fuck no. Like, what? No, I, we just, do you think I was faking it? Like when I was talking about all the things that I believe in and how antagonistic you are towards that? Going back to the empathy question that you had, actually, one thing that I failed to mention is that I have so much, I have endless empathy for those who I feel have been maybe blinded by or maybe are on their own journey of self-reflection and maybe changing their attitudes. But I don't have any empathy for professional commentators. If you're a professional commentator, political commentator, and you are routinely churning out this propaganda on the right, I have all the smoke for you.

1:13:19I will not empathize. Are you not a professional commentator? I am. You are? Yeah. Oh, you're saying, but a professional commentator on the other side? Yeah. Got it. Like, and cause I, cause I feel like you have this responsibility. You have this, this, um, you have not only these opinions, but you are like actively trying to change people's minds to agree with you or feeding them an endless amount of information in a certain direction that like feeds into their biases. And I feel like it's, it's, you know, it's damaging overall to both public discourse and to improving everyone's lives. So like, yeah, if you're, you know, if you're constantly talking about like police brutality as a necessary byproduct of governance, for example, and I'm using very light terms here.

1:14:10um if you're basically saying black people deserve to be brutalized you know i don't fuck with you fuck you if you're constantly talking about like trans people and and engaging with this like trans panic i don't fuck with you i'm not gonna i'm not gonna hang out with you i'm not gonna be friends with you i'm not gonna get drinks with you especially if you're like a political commentator uh who who legitimately is at least portraying themselves as invested in this matter i think that's ridiculous because they're not open to other perspectives or because they're no because i think that they're doing something that's harmful got it i think that they're actively actively uh you know radicalizing people in the wrong direction people can say that about me too right as long as you just address what i'm saying you know as long as you have an issue with my perspective fine we can have a conversation and and i'm not even talking about like oh you claim to be a socialist but you have a house like not the bullshit i mean like real real things that you genuinely disagree with with the way i see the world and not like vaguely gesturing at things that other people have told you is wrong because of your own personal misconceptions about what it means to advocate for progress, you know?

1:15:29I think that a lot of that comes back to, like, something that has come up quite a bit in our conversation is clips. And I feel like clips are the units of conversation of this, of our current world, right? Like a DM on Instagram of a clip is how you connect with someone, whether that's a funny clip or something that would make you angry or make you agree, whatever it is. Like the clips are the currency of conversation in, in today's social economy. Yeah. And I was curious now just on that nature of clips, like clips almost for someone like Twitch streamers or, or, or commentary creators feel almost akin to like a highlight for an athlete.

1:16:11Yeah. Right. Like it's good to have a ton of clips out there and good clips of yourself doing your craft. Well, is a positive thing. Yeah. You've also now opened up the copyright, or maybe that was forever. Like you don't copyright strike anyone who clips your content and puts it across YouTube. From the jump. I've always, I personally think that copyright stunts innovation in general. So I personally don't appreciate copyright at all. Obviously, there are certain instances where it can be valid, but uh very limited and certainly not directed towards like mega corporations that are using this as a vehicle to just try to farm as much revenue as possible off this uh product long after it should have been opened up to every single person um and uh yeah no i've always i've always told people like if you want to make a channel like a fan channel and upload whatever you want from my streams you can do so we call it the hasan eclipse industrial complex um and there are a ton of channels like maybe 50 some of which are very successful some of which are very big channels with literally youtube check marks as a matter of fact um and they i just know that because i'm churning out 10 hours of content like there's just no way I'm going to, I'm not going to be able to package it and repackage it and reformat it and upload it.

1:17:42I don't want to do that, you know? Uh, so go off, make money, make your own money, uh, off of it. If you would like to do so. And it's been very successful for a very long time. YouTube has kind of tackled it a little bit. They call it duplicate content. Um, so they just like take them down in many instances. Um, but I think as long as they are editing them too, like who cares? it's great it does limit your uh capacity to i guess like manicure your message sure uh because like less control over your message yeah you have way less control over it and it does get me in into trouble every now and then and it has in the past because like i don't know who's you know someone makes a thumbnail and a title that i don't agree with all of a sudden someone could or like clip that and or someone take a screenshot of and be like look at this asshole and it's like well I didn't do that it even happens to us though on like a minor level it can be a minor shift there's a few accounts that clip out everything from our show that has to do with money so the majority of the clips about our show are all about money yeah but like this episode has not been you know entirely about money no right but that is often the image that can go out into the world because that's the sheer number of clips like that's the majority I think those sensationalism wins in an ad-based economy, right?

1:19:05In an ad-based content economy, sensationalism wins. Absolutely. And I think that's also like, again, when it comes to the news, when it comes to anything, right? And I think that brings into the question, like, I've been thinking about this a lot of how much do, how do we diversify ourselves so we're not so ad-based, right? Because then you do inherently, if you're running a business, you make decisions based on what's going to work and what's going to work. Oftentimes, uh, Andrew Schultz said this, uh, he said like, what works right now is a car crash on the internet, right? He's right. He's right.

1:19:40And fights, fights, car crashes, like, and then if you play that out to like discussions, of course, it's much more interesting. If, if we were sitting at this table, uh, aggressively arguing, it would be much more interesting. Yeah. If the title is confronting the most controversial streamer, which is out there, you should put that out there. You should but you should have confronted me more. Right. I mean, I don't mind it. Totally. I know it's a part of the game. It's a part of the game and it's, it's more interesting and it works better in an ad based economy. Yeah. Is that a problem? Uh, yes and no.

1:20:14Um, I think that we just can't necessarily force people to appreciate polite discourse. Sure. If they just don't like it, They don't like it, right? I mean, I have a similar issue with debate, online debate. Okay. Online debates are, I mean, they can be productive, right? And it is, but broadly, it is very toxic. It creates a very toxic environment. And I don't think it is a good environment for learning or appreciating a different perspective. When you say online debates, what do you mean? Online debates is like I went to, you know, I don't know, like a right wing podcast and sat there and owned them.

1:21:02Got it. Right. And it is like hyper sensationalized. It basically does exactly what you're what you have gripes with, but for political discourse. and because my goal isn't necessarily to just like max out my visibility and and you know show myself as this like supposed intellectual gladiator or whatever my i i usually stay away from them and i mean i still do it when there's like a valid platform or a person that i definitely would love to uh would love to talk to or debate duke it out if you will in the marketplace of ideas like Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder or something. But beyond that, I don't think it's like very, I don't personally think it's very productive.

1:21:50It's rather self-serving even where you're not really going into the nuances in many instances of what your worldview is. and you're simply playing a game of maybe even chess or checkers where you have established what the interlocutors talking points are, you know what they are, and you have your talking points. And the goal is to basically overpower your opponent with rhetoric, which is why someone who is maybe not very intelligent or not, I wouldn't say intelligent, but like knowledgeable can debate someone who is very knowledgeable and still come across like they have, I guess, functionally won the argument.

1:22:37Like a Ben Shapiro could go up against a climate scientist and as a climate denier, a climate change denier, he could functionally through rhetoric look, appear to a not very knowledgeable audience as though he won. But that doesn't change the truth of the matter. that doesn't change the scientific consensus on the matter. And I think that that at the end of the day is unproductive in general. It's sensationalized. It gets people excited. And it shows your side winning over the other side. And a lot of people are interested and invested in the blood sport. And I engage in it sometimes, like I'll go on the Piers Morgan show or whatever for that reason, because I think that it opens the door to a broader audience.

1:23:26But ultimately, if that's all I would do, I feel like it would not genuinely change people's perceptions at all because they would just be invested in the blood sport rather than, they would be more invested in the rhetoric and it would devolve into sophistry rather than the actual ideas that I want people to really try to tackle and maybe even change their minds on. I'm curious about how you feel about the general health of the streaming economy and where it's headed. Like, is it still a great place for someone to enter into? What is the health of the business of streaming? I think it was the Wild West, maybe like in the 2016 to 2018 era.

1:24:15And I think it peaked for sure as far as it being the Wild West, lack of terms of service and lack of content moderation. And also on top of that, just so much unimaginable amounts of money being thrown in this space in general. Through exclusive contracts? Through exclusive contracts, through revenue splits in general. and I think now it's like kind of trying to land in a place that is more sustainable um that stuff was never going to continue obviously like I never saw this side of it because I I came into the space uh or I was too small at the time when this stuff was happening but like Ninja, Tfue, all these people like getting you know 30 million dollar contracts whatever like that is unimaginable right the only way you can get that now is if you are like sponsored basically by a unregulated crypto gambling casino, uh, based out of the Cayman islands or whatever, you know, like there's no other way that you're getting numbers like that.

1:25:24And even then those guys can't, what does a Twitch contract today look like? There are none. There's no Twitch contract. I am the exclusive contracts. I am, I think the last Twitch, uh, contract officially. And a Twitch contract means here's a guaranteed amount. And is that against your situation. It changes. It changes for every single person. It's, it's very dynamic. It's very different. Um, some people will have, uh, MGs, minimum guarantees, um, where they're like, you're going to get this money no matter what. Right. Right. We're just giving you this money at the end of the year. If you are, if you don't get the, if you don't generate this revenue through your subscriptions and through your ads or whatever, you're still going to get it regardless.

1:26:07some people have incentive based contracts where they're like you have to hit these minimum standards kpis uh and then you will get uh you know like a monthly stipend on top of the revenue that you have some people uh will have contracts where or did have contracts rather because like i said they don't do them anymore uh where uh you are generating revenue up to a certain point and the rest of it the company takes right because like they're already paid for it or something like that and then there's like bounty systems on top of that i don't know if they still have it i've never seen a bounty board but uh twitch used to have like a like an internal uh user board basically for like being able to pick uh some kind of ad like some kind of sponsorship to play like a game for an hour or two hours or whatever.

1:27:02And, and then there's like ad incentives. I don't know where we're at with that incentives now, uh, where I think like they were trying to get people to run ads. So they would give them extra money if they ran like, you know, 10 minutes ads per hour. And, and then like the more they do that, they gamified it. Basically the more you do that, the more money you get, that sort of thing. Um, uh, and then there's like, I guess across the board, you know, maybe not an MG, but just like straight up, here's the revenue. Uh, here's just $30 million to be on our platform. I assume that's how it worked back then.

1:27:33Um, all that's gone. Why are you the last Twitch contract? I think it was just, it happened to be that way. Like I was, I was the, the last person to negotiate my contract, I think. So then once that contract's out, that's it. If you get an offer from YouTube, would you go to YouTube? Potentially. I, I, I have investigated the streaming space on youtube. I think that there's a lot of issues a lot of issues with like lack of moderation a lot of issues with like uh Not being able to have a space specifically for live streaming I don't think youtube across the board cares about live streaming as much.

1:28:10I think that like ventured into it But then they were like, oh short form content is king. We should actually uh invest more into shorts and I think that they generate so much more revenue because live streaming is like hard to generate revenue off of in general um we still haven't been able to figure out an adequate way of not for the streamers themselves i'm saying like for the platforms it's it's very um it's too much bandwidth and too much money on the back end that you need to spend to do live web hosting in real time with with not a lot of revenue to make up for the cost yeah so i think streaming like 70 80 hours a week.

1:28:48Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Live in high def, just straight up. Like that is significant bandwidth. Yeah. That is, that's unimaginable amounts of money. So I think, um, I would say that, uh, that, that this is the reason why YouTube doesn't care about live streaming and like beefing up live streaming as much. And I don't think they're giving, they're not giving contracts anymore either. What role does YouTube play in your sort of content ecosystem? Twitch is very insulated as a platform. It has, you know, it develops these communities that are super loyal, unlike anything else online, anything else. Like there's nothing that you can compare it to.

1:29:31However, because of that, there is no like real VOD mechanism. Like they have VODs, but it's, you know, it's whatever. Uh, and they go away after like 90 days, I think. Oh, wow. Um, oh, they don't store like a catalog. No, no discovery then. No. And yes, there's no discoverability on Twitch for the most part, unless you're at the top of the leaderboard. That's why it's a very top heavy platform in general. Um, and the, the issue is, uh, or I guess like because of that uh you need to be present on every other platform and and uh and oftentimes drive traffic back to twitch like that is the successful method you blow up you go viral over and over again either on reddit or on twitter or on youtube or on tiktok and then you try to bring that content back into twitch that audience back into twitch sorry very successful examples of this on tiktok are jinxie and and queso these guys have uh i mean even go so far as to kai sanat who was a twitch streamer and he really blew up on tiktok aiden ross also when he was a twitch streamer blew up on tiktok and then was able to like convert those people enough people you know hundreds of millions of people are seeing these tiktok clips and then you know 10 000 people go and watch you, that's massive.

1:30:56That's ginormous. That's a ginormous amount of people. So I think that there are still examples of this and it's mostly coming from TikTok, but YouTube is still important as well for, for, for putting your best face forward, I guess. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. I think the, the landscape of streaming right now is so fascinating to me, especially with Kai. I think like to, to watch Kai enter into mainstream culture in the way that he has, like, I feel like more than YouTube creators, streamers are able to enter the mainstream in a completely different way. Yeah, YouTube. Why do you think that is? Because YouTube is still like not as, I think YouTube is still just not as personable.

1:31:34Like there's still like a level of lack of access that comes from like doing a YouTube video, making a YouTube video, right? It's like premeditated. Yeah. Even Kevin Hart, right? with Kai it's like it's so the barrier to entry to join a live stream is so low it's like Kevin here's what we're gonna do just show up and we'll like riff and we'll have fun he has to go to Kai's sure but if he's making a YouTube video it's probably way more extensive of like we're gonna shoot this whole thing that has to have a story arc I think there's an element of threat for the content creator as well like there's an element of danger literally for your reputation when you join this like environment the Twitch that yeah Anything can happen.

1:32:20That can be hostile. I think with that concept of like everything is, like what works today is a car crash. Kevin Hart going on Kai's stream is like, you're waiting for something to happen, right? Yeah. It's good, like something crazy. And Kai is good at making things happen. Yeah. Literally nonstop, wall to wall. Yeah. When he's live. It was too safe. Yeah. If you watch a YouTube video, you know it's been looked after. It's been edited. Everything's been chosen. What do you think a healthy content diet is for someone? Like someone wakes up in the morning, they want to know what's going on in the world.

1:32:51What is a healthy content? You're asking a crackhead. So it's like, I'm the worst person to, to give people, uh, advice on this front. You know, ask me about fitness. I'll talk to you all day. I'll give you great advice. Ask me about healthy content. I don't know. I mean, for me, it's, I pay attention to mainstream media in general, like a lot of, a lot of NPR, New York Times, all of these outlets, democracy now. And then beyond that, I think I don't necessarily consume a lot of Twitch content. I don't at all, actually. Interesting. Partially because I'm live for most of the duration of the day.

1:33:33And when I'm off, I actually watch traditional stuff. I watch movies. I watch anime. I watch TV shows. so that's what i um in the brief moments that i have to myself that's what i like to consume uh that's what i like to to to enjoy yeah not a lot of youtube not a lot of sometimes i've been i've been on tiktok more because of twitter being just this like right wing uh constant car crashes yeah it's like this this awful platform to be on where it i started noticing that it was like genuinely shaping, uh, the way I view myself even. Cause like, obviously I'm in a different situation than the average person.

1:34:19Cause like, there's a lot of hate that you can get online and, and Twitter was basically like constantly feeding me this information. And I was like, damn, like, man, people hate me. And, uh, I didn't realize that like, uh, in the words of Tyler, the creator, which I will not repeat, just turn it off. How was online bullying real? Um, Just turn, you know, just turn your monitor off. I kind of did that. And it did actually greatly improve my mental health. So not just like the hate threads or whatever, but beyond that, I think like seeing constant death and destruction and just like senseless violence and so much unfiltered bigotry.

1:35:00Oh my God. Yeah, Twitter becoming this like shithole kind of moved me in the direction of TikTok a little bit. which feeds you what you want to see. And it does a very good job of feeding you what you want to see. It picks up on a little thing. Maybe you watch one Kyrie Irving slow motion video where you see the, the man just demonstrate the best ball handling you've ever seen in your entire life. And then you watch that for an extended period of time. TikTok's like, that's what you want. You want more Kyrie Irving ball handling videos. And he's, and TikTok is right. They're right. I do want to watch it.

1:35:36I just sit there. At least you can have the confidence when you're on Twitter knowing it doesn't know what you want. So you shouldn't take it that personally, right? Like with TikTok, it's like a reflection of you. And so you got to kind of check yourself. I think TikTok did that really well because it feeds into like things that you want to see. I think Twitter is doing the reverse of it. Therefore, you page mechanism is like who like they want to max out on every platform wants to max out on, you know, making sure you spend as much time on there as possible and maybe see some ads. Right. Twitter I think was like oh what pops off on Twitter discourse like antagonistic discourse so they just feed you everything you don't want to see and but when you see it you're like oh I'm I have to write something here I'm mad I'm angry so that's like it's it's not good for your mental health whereas I feel like TikTok very addictive also bad in a different way is just basically showing you things you do want to see and things that you are interested in and it's feeding you more and more of that.

1:36:34So it is addictive in the opposite direction. But I think ultimately, I guess like a healthier direction. I think you are right. I was maybe, I don't know, my stuff's pretty weird. I was searching your name on Twitter and just to read up on some of your tweets and things like that. And then right after we got served a post for Hustlers University from Andrew Tate. And I was like, in what world would we ever get served Hustlers University? is so far yeah from what we would consume well because i've debated you debated him yeah so immediately and his haters like i mean not his haters his his fans like grab on to everything uh algorithmically twitter's like okay you want in on this fight yeah yeah yeah you're a loyal soldier now so i i guess i'll say like um you know with all of us being the voices now of of the internet, right?

1:37:27Like people find their own voices they want to listen to, you know, on the internet. We also are now the next wave of employers, right? A lot of us have employees, we have teams. So how do you think about like how we should be organizing our own companies to pave a path for a better future for the workforce, for like society? Like do you, how do you think about that for yourself and how do you think about that for others? That's a great question. So for me, I know Ludwig talked about setting up a cooperative, which I, you know, I talked to him quite a bit about when he was launching that initiative.

1:38:06I also run a cooperative structure. And for the most part, I don't view like I don't view the products that I'm making as like its own thing that that is is going to be like a revenue generation. I see it as marketing if you want to think about it that way like YouTube for example my YouTube is always in the red with my compensation structure for my editors right it's always in the red it's never especially recently since like October 7 the CPMs are unimaginably low and view counts are down but it doesn't matter to me because I see that as like more important to have like at least my own VOD content, right?

1:38:55And they do a phenomenal job. But on other aspects, like the podcast, for example, it's like, it's a revenue sharing structure that is equal and evenly parsed out. I had the opportunity when I was building the podcast, for example. It's that across the hosts and the - The producers, yeah. Yeah. So everyone has an equal share. Yeah. Everyone has an equal share, but more importantly, everyone has an equal voice. I think that is like also very important um like if we want to make a decision if we want to and that's and and we have the benefit of like being a smaller group obviously so like it's much easier in that in that uh circumstance than like uh uh I don't know like the factory floor with an assembly line or whatever but like you can still and many companies successfully do this have a cooperative structure.

1:39:45And I think that like lends itself to long-term sustainability because you are no longer as susceptible to market factors and can withstand certain crashes much better than other corporations can. What does progress look like today for you in your creator career? Is it just like maintaining viewership, maintaining subscribers? Is it showing up more on traditional outlets? Is it like moderating debates between politicians? Like, do you have a vision of, okay, if I go down this path, this is where I want to be? Progress for me would be brutally honest, more viewership. Progress for me would be, don't care about the revenue aspect of it.

1:40:28If it happens, that's great. But what I would care about the most is having a much broader, much more diverse, much larger, younger as well, audience that is tuning in and is maybe picking up certain things from what I have to say. And it's causing them to self-reflect. That's what I care about. That's what progress is for me. It's not about like getting on traditional media. It's not about moderating politics, not moderating political debates or anything like that. That's my main focus is how do how do i uh get more people invested in seeing the world at least a little bit more skeptically and a little bit more critically viewing the media in a little bit more critical way of a lens and and trying to understand that you know the the systems that we exist under we should not take them for granted they have not been that way for as long as we've I mean, they've been that way for as long as we've been alive, but that doesn't mean that they can't change.

1:41:34I really like self-reflection as a goal and as a point of progress. Like for me, my perspective on all this is like I think empathy is incredibly important. I think discourse is incredibly important. I think understanding a lot of perspectives are important, all with the goal of self-reflection. Um, my fear is that we in, in this world of democratization of media have learned a lot about what works and how you can create a business out of what works. And I think sometimes those are at odds. Um, and I think that's, that's, that's the challenge as we move forward in this landscape. Yeah. What's the retirement plan of a streamer?

1:42:14Like we talked, we've talked to Ludwig about this. Ludwig said he wants to bake bread. Like the retirement plan of a streamer. Is it just like, like for you at what point do you not stream seven days a week there's just i'll die probably just a retirement plan to just die yeah yeah understood it's my retirement plan all right so who knows who knows with kai like what does kai do is this kai do this for the next 10 years um i mean i can't speak for him personally i don't know but like i suspect that his goal probably is to go into traditional media yeah and like become an actor and become like the next kevin hart potentially right and um i think that like a lot of people see it as a jump off point like twitch streaming whereas like i on the other hand don't see twitch streaming as like a jump off point or a way to build like sustainable revenue i see it as like this is what i want to do many people throughout my career especially like in the aftermath of the 2020 election when more people started tuning in and started paying attention asked me like oh do you want to go to cnn i've talked to people at CNN.

1:43:18I've talked to, uh, I've talked to people, uh, in traditional media that, that were interested in bringing me on board. And I have always refused because, and that's why, when you asked me like, what do you want to do? What's your next step? It's like what I'm doing right now, but at a much larger level, what I'm doing right now, as long as there's, if there was 300 ,000 people tuning in instead of 30 ,000 or 20 ,000, I'm set. That's it. I, that's what I want to do. Yeah. That's, that's all I want to do. I had another question for you about streaming. I was curious your perspective on IRL streaming, like people going out into the world with a camera and streaming.

1:43:57Like that has been a very, that to me feels like a very new format. No, that's actually a very old format. That's like the original Twitch. That's the original Twitch. I guess that's Justin TV. And it was really bad. Yeah. Like that's what I was saying when I was at Wild West, like that back then it was like crazy. But that, the reemergence of that or like that starting to come back to me feels like a reversion back to the wild west in a way that feels uncomfortable it definitely is like bigger now though like back then it was just like very straightforward you have a an IRL bag that you just take out into the wild and do crazy stuff right um I even uh I love IRL streaming uh and when I was a much smaller content creator I did it all the time.

1:44:41I would IRL stream going to the grocery, going to get groceries. My first ever, like, uh, during COVID, uh, when, when we had the lockdowns and then they were like letting us go into the grocery store, I, I, IRL that process. It was crazy. It was like a, it was like a zombie movie. No cars, nothing. Right. And I, and IRL stream that process and I would just like take my dog to the dog park, stream that, play basketball, stream that. And, um, nowadays I feel like you can't really do that for two reasons one if i do that i'm getting swarmed no matter what and it doesn't matter where i go like i'll go to tokyo i'm getting fucking swarmed in tokyo which is insane the exact opposite time uh time zone you know i don't know how like yeah um no matter where i go it turns into like a meet and greet so it has to be like very structured and it has in a closed environment.

1:45:34I still do it. Um, and I still try to do it and try to freestyle with it. But, uh, overall, I think nowadays, the other reason is that, uh, content has been like greatly elevated by the likes of Kai. The, I call it the Mr. Beastification of like Twitch, the Kai Sinatification and many others that have like greatly elevated the type of content that people are expecting. So in their like segmentation of it or in the like in the car crash, writing. Yeah. Like the, the craziness, like they, they just, they want you to do something crazy, right? Like they, you can't just like do regular monotonous, boring things and like talk to your audience.

1:46:13Like people go, eh, this is kind of boring. I'm tuning out. You know, I'd rather go where does that take us? Where does like the, uh, pushing the boundaries of what can happen live take us? I think it, it can go to a dangerous place as it has with like really awful content creators in like Japan and whatnot, like, uh, you know, yelling Hiroshima and Nagasaki at like Japanese people and the subway and even getting arrested time and time again. Um, and, and then people are like, I don't want this anymore. Like you're done. No one can do this anymore, which is awful in general. Or you can go to a good place where, um, you know, it kind of forces you to really think about what kind of content that you want to make in the IRL, uh, in the IRL sphere where you can't just like explore, but now you have to, like, I went to a restaurant that has active sumo wrestlers that wrestle one another.

1:47:06And we asked them if we could wrestle them. So I, I wrestled with like a, like a former sumo champion, um, on camera. And then, you know, that was awesome that was like something that i had to plan out and um it makes it less accessible for the average person to be able to do so but like i think it elevated my content that way it's more produced yeah not necessarily like high production quality but just more thought out yeah yeah it's i mean it's what jimmy's doing on youtube right it's just yeah it's more produced than anyone else exactly so that just yeah and then there's always a uh opposite reaction to that too right is that the same with streaming where there's like a more loaf a desire for a lo-fi content i think that um streaming is about the interaction that you have with the individual content creator so like the lo-fi stuff always will consistently work really well like super well produced uh high production value live streaming content that loses uh sight of that interactive nature of the content itself never does well on twitch that's why like g4 and many others like have come and went.

1:48:14Whereas like you also then have high produced content in that of that sort that is very successful, like critical role. Right. So it just depends. But in any case, like no matter what you do, you have to still maintain that interactive component. Yeah. Well, dude, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your perspective. Thank you for having me. thank you for coming this was fun fun to to chat and to uh open our minds a bit and you know like just hear how you do things just as a streamer as well as in the category that you're in it's fascinating hell yeah cool man all right