AI Summary
5 min readThe Rat Clock and the Rise of the Internet's Most Depressing Influencer
Zach Hoyt, better known as Asmongold, wakes up every morning to the smell of a rotting dead rat in his bedroom. The sunlight hits the carcass, the fumes intensify, and that's his alarm clock. He told his millions of viewers this matter-of-factly, as if it were normal. And for his audience, it apparently is.
Asmongold is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, a figure so profoundly grimy that his room has been turned into a horror video game, whose fans watch him eat at fast food restaurants with girlfriends who won't look at him, and who has become, in the words of The Atlantic, something like Gen Z's Jake Tapper. He is also, according to the people who study him closely, a genuinely broken person whose influence is quietly warping the minds of young men in ways that are distinct from the more familiar manosphere of Andrew Tate.
From Rat Video to Roach King
Hoyt's first YouTube video, uploaded in 2008 when he was 18, shows him trying to catch a rat in his parents' disgustingly filthy kitchen. He was already living in squalor. Over the next decade, he built a following by uploading World of Warcraft gameplay videos, then by streaming the game on Twitch for four days a week, sometimes more, for years straight. He became the single most popular WoW streamer on the platform.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:05) **Introducing Asmongold** - The hosts explain why they hate talking about the internet's "grossest" streamer and set up the episode's thesis about a new kind of infection ruining young men online.
- 2 (04:20) **The Origin Story: Rat in the Kitchen (2008)** - The podcast plays Asmongold's first-ever YouTube video as an 18-year-old named "Zach Raar," featuring a rat in his parents' disgusting kitchen.
- 3 (07:36) **The Modern Asmongold: Defending AI Undressing** - A clip shows the modern, influential Asmongold defending the use of Grok AI to undress women and children, saying "don't post stuff on the internet" if you don't want it to happen.
- 4 (09:00) **The WoW Years and Early Fame** - Asmongold's first home base was World of Warcraft, where he started uploading gameplay videos and eventually showed his room on request, creating "haunted" content.
- 5 (12:46) **The Twitch Era Begins (2016)** - Asmongold starts streaming on Twitch full-time, playing WoW four days a week for three years straight, becoming the most popular WoW streamer.
- 6 (15:51) **The Lolcow Goes Viral** - Asmongold lands on livestream fails for having roaches in his chair, then later for having dried blood on his wall from wiping his bleeding gums.
- 7 (17:51) **The Pink Sparkles Dynamic** - Asmongold goes viral for dating streamer Pink Sparkles, which opens a discussion on Twitch's unique misogyny.
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Show Notes
Today we're joined again by journalist Kat Tenbarge to talk about one of the grossest guys on the internet. He’s also one of the most popular Twitch streamers there is. His name is Zack Hoyt, better known as Asmongold. His first video was in 2008, featuring him trying to catch a rat in his parents’ house. He then became obsessed with World of Warcraft and started streaming his gameplay. The rest is history.He has a “rat clock.” Roaches frequently join his streams of popular video games. Then, of course, he got radicalized by the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial and started getting political. How did we let this happen? And is he part of the manosphere or kind of his own thing? Ryan, Kat, and Grant try to determine what exactly is appealing about this kind of guy.
Our guest Kat Tenbarge runs Spitfire News. Subscribe to Spitfire News at https://spitfirenews.com/, and follow her on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok @kattenbarge. She also makes videos for our friends at COURIER, which you can find at https://www.youtube.com/@COURIERHQ.
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