"Bring it back": Twitter erupts after Twitch streamer Hasan Piker shaves his beard

American Twitch streamer Hasan Piker shocked fans with his new look. The left-wing political commentator posted a picture of his cleanly shaved face which left fans on Twitter disturbed. Some of his followers photoshopped the look with a beard, bringing back temporary peace amongst his base.

The 30-year-old streamer went on to add to the tweet that his friend @AustinonTwitter could not recognize the gamer.

How did Hasan Piker rise to fame?

The New Jersey native started his career in political commentary during his senior year of college in 2013. Piker interned for The Young Turks (TYT), a news publication co-founded by Cenk Uygur's uncle. Since then, Piker has produced The Breakdown, a TYT Network series that aired on Facebook. It presented a left-leaning political analysis of Bernie Snader’s millennial supporters.

The show won the “Best Web Series” at the 10th Short Awards in 2018. That same year, Piker began writing political content for HuffPost.

Hasan Piker shifted to Twitch in March 2018. Since then, he has amassed over 77.5 million views on the platform. The streamer also posts clips of popular streams on his YouTube channel, which has garnered 725k subscribers. Piker mentioned that he shifted from Facebook to Twitch and YouTube to reach a younger audience and believed that YouTube lacked leftist political representation.

Piker has appeared on Fox News’s The Issue Is and political podcast Chapo Trap House to represent left-wingers.

Hasan Piker became a controversial figure online in August 2019 after dissing US representative Dan Crenshaw for his support for foreign military intervention. He also criticized the U.S. government for its foreign policy related to the September 11 attack, which led to Twitch banning streamers for a week from the platform.

Since then, Piker has collaborated with the US representative Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez for the “Get out the Vote” initiative, reaching over 700,000 streamers. The streamer also became the most-watched Twitch streamer during the 2020 United States presidential election, where his 80 hours of streams were viewed for over 6.8 million hours.

About the author

Karishma is a trending writer at SK POP. With a BA in Journalism, Psychology and Literature, Karishma, who has closely followed the latest internet trends from a young age, found her role at SK POP to be the perfect fit for her professional qualifications and personal interests.

She has nearly 3 years of experience in the industry and has interned with The Hindu and Deccan Herald. In her role at Sportskeeda, Karishma covers a range of topics at the pop division, but she believes her skills as a journalist are best reflected while creating impactful and research-intensive stories. For her, no other step in the writing process is as crucial as fact-checking with multiple sources and accurately conveying facts and data.

Karishma holds deep admiration for artists Luke Jerram and Yoshitomo Nara's authenticity and originality, who are her favorite icons. When not ideating her next story, Karishma can be seen deeply engrossed in a book.

Know More