At 4:35 PM Pacific on Tuesday, with midterm results still coming in, streamer Hasan Piker posted “we are putting asmongold in prison.” The post had 2.5 million views and 152,000 likes by Wednesday morning. It was aimed at Zack Hoyt, who streams as Asmongold, and it was the first of several posts that night promising jail.
Piker kept going. He posted that Democrats were skipping Woke 2.0 and going straight to Woke 3.0. Another post promised jail and told everyone to get more woke right now. On stream, he joked about arresting every Asmongold chatter and about making it illegal to be a reactionary. The target grew from one streamer to his audience to anyone who disagrees.
Asmongold ended his stream around 7 PM and posted “Not a good day!” Piker asked why he had gone offline.
The joke defense is familiar. After a March 2025 Twitch ban, Piker said he should not have used hyperbolic language and that he had some ownership to take. Now the same defense covers a promise to jail a critic, on the night his side celebrated an election win. Lauren Windsor replied that Republicans should not have made an unelected Twitch streamer most Americans have never heard of such a focus of their messaging. That streamer’s one post drew 2.5 million views, and Laura Loomer’s reaction to it drew another 1.54 million.
Piker was not the only voice framing the win in movement terms. Congressman Ro Khanna posted a video that night declaring DEI back and saying America was celebrating diversity and inclusion. Jimmy Kimmel opened his monologue with a line from fantasy: “The blue wave made landfall, and now the Red Wedding begins.” Game of Thrones fans know the Red Wedding as the scene where a host murders his guests.
The Feud Behind the Joke
The jail post came out of a feud with a paper trail. On Aug. 9, Piker called for permanent Asmongold bans on Twitch and YouTube, said Twitch was “terrified of angering the right-wing masses” and said Destiny “got banned for less.” That was three months before the prison joke.
Asmongold has given critics material too. He served a two-week Twitch suspension in August, days after saying on stream that border crossers should be shot, women and children included. Twitch did not state a reason. On Aug. 28 he said journalist Mehdi Hasan should have his citizenship stripped and be sent back. Both remarks are on the record.
The platform treatment still differs. Asmongold lost two weeks. Piker has taken about seven Twitch suspensions, most of them 24 hours. His January suspension, over a “Zionist pigs” remark during a stream about the Alex Pretti ICE shooting, was cut from seven days to three on appeal. He remains a top Twitch partner, and no Twitch action over the prison post has been reported.
Hollywood’s DEI Victory Lap
Celebrities spent Wednesday morning on the same note. Bette Midler, Viola Davis and Mandy Moore celebrated, John Leguizamo called it “redemption time,” and Wendell Pierce called it a new Reconstruction.
The studios have gone the other way. Since Trump’s inauguration, Disney, Amazon, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. have cut or adjusted their DEI programs. California doubled its film incentives to $750 million under Newsom, and studios are balking at the diversity credit attached to it. Universal CFO Arturo Barquet said parts of it are “in conflict with federal law.” No studio has announced bringing DEI back.
Undoing the federal actions behind those rollbacks would take the President’s signature or a veto-proof majority, and the President is still Trump. Until 2028, “DEI is back” is a slogan. The number to watch is whether any studio quietly opts into California’s diversity credit.
If the movement that cheered on election night keeps winning, which of its jokes about prison should its critics treat as jokes?
Eh, this is a character. A big, ridiculous heel for the WWE fans to either cheer or boo.
Now, whether he actually believes any of the tripe that comes spilling out of his gob is immaterial. He's personally not worth any time or consideration.
However, like The View, CNN, and whatever passes these days for the Huff Post web conglomerate, it's the audience gobbling up the horse manure being shoveled that we truly need to worry about.
And they terrify me in a way similar to Lovecraft's "Fear of the Unknown." I cannot comprehend the mindset that makes them like this. It is completely alien, and seemingly, not even human (as I understand humanity).