- Joined
- Feb 28, 2021
Because Hasan was nice to him and could make him money. I really think that it's that simple. I don't think Ethan generally has any political convictions, and adapts himself to whoever likes him at the time. I've only made it about half an hour into his video, but Ethan starts off arguing that he thought Hasan was a liberal democrat like him and basically that all his "America deserved his 9/11" comments were essentially like Ethan's gamer word moments - edgy jokes. But shock horror it turns out Hasan is actually an Anti-American Communist and was being serious the whole time!
The video is actually fairly well made from what I've seen. I find Ethan incredibly boring but when he has a script and edits his footage (and stops coughing into the microphone), he's watchable. And he's crafted a very easy to follow narrative. But it's complete bullshit. It is impossible to encounter Hasan and not know he sincerely means his rhetoric and that he's an anti-American communist. One of the sort who'd like to be a Party Member and still live the high life. There is no situation where Ethan didn't realise that Hasan's comments were genuine. You could show a toddler one of Hasan's streams and they would recognise that Hasan doesn't like America.
Ethan's issue is that he discovered a personal red line. He sees the existence of Israel as justified, and considers himself one of the good ones - he criticises Bibi and says the West Bank settlers are bad. He wasn't able to parse that no amount of emotional manipulation would get Hasan and/or his fan base to agree "Israel has a right to defend herself". Hence what the kids call crashing out.
It's one of the things that pisses me off the most about Ethan, he manages to make Hasan Piker look reasonable by comparison. If he'd dropped this video in early 2024 it'd be a different story, but a year of him sneeding and acting like a crackhead has discredited him. Hasan is quite rightly able to call him out on plugging Teddy Fresh during their genocide stream and then bursting into tears (Hasan's said he was using the "kid gloves" and called Ethan a pussy for crying). Hasan's also said he's more than willing to debate Ethan on his stream or Ethan's stream or anywhere else, but Ethan's stated that he'll only do it if Hasan watches the entire video... because he doesn't want to debate Hasan, he wants Hasan to refuse to watch the video so he can keep up his arguments without challenge.
He seems to have no understanding of optics. His crew keep trying to move past this, but he won't. This whole thing comes across like a spurned lover with an axe to grind - he won't shut up about Hasan, he keeps derailing all his streams to focus on Hasan, he cancelled multiple members only shows to focus on Hasan, he posts on insta stories at 4am ranting about Hasan (despite having three young children) and characterised this "content nuke" as the "most important thing in his life" despite his youngest being less than a year old.
Hasan is correctly throwing around terms like stalker and shitting on him for being insane while telling him to seek psychological treatment. You have to be a real piece of shit to get me to side with Hasan Piker. Also he's absolutely on drugs.
). TLDR, if being pro-Israel/anti-Hamas was ever a deal breaker for Ethan, it must be a relatively recent line in the sand, 'cause Ethan certainly never had a problem interacting with Palestine-aligned political streamers for clout in the past.
