It's Clear Why TheBurntPeanut Subs Have Skyrocketed By 4,482%

It seems like every year we get a new streaming sensation. Sketch dominated Twitch in 2024, but now it's the year of the peanut. TheBurntPeanut is a man who streams behind a virtual peanut body. All fans can see of his real face are his lips and eyes, but they simply can't get enough of TheBurntPeanut's unorthodox presentation and intensely entertaining personality.

It can be a tough time for streamers, like Ninja, who's lost 98% of his viewers in recent years, but TheBurntPeanut has seen his views skyrocket by well over 4,000%. He's one of the streamers who gave "Escape From Tarkov" a second chance at life, and the game paid him back in kind, winning him a niche in the streaming world. 

"Tarkov" helped TheBurntPeanut find his initial audience, but that game is far from the only reason that the Peanut is so popular today. We're here to dive deep into the latest streaming phenomenon, and to figure out why, exactly, so many people are spending their free time watching a peanut play video games.

It might seem like TheBurntPeanut came out of nowhere, but very few people in the streaming industry are true overnight successes. TheBurntPeanut has been working at building his online following for years. Today he's a massive star on Twitch and YouTube, but when he first started working as a content creator, everyone's favorite peanut was just trying to make it on TikTok.

At the time, TheBurntPeanut hadn't found his signature look, and he was still working to find his content niche. The only thing he had right from the start was his sense of humor, and that turned out to be a liability. On an episode of the "Around the Bar" podcast, TheBurntPeanut said that his TikTok account got banned dozens of times for various things that happened on his streams. "I mean, Jesus Christ, you get banned for saying 'freak," the streamer said, adding, "I mean, the limitations are crazy." 

It didn't take long for TheBurntPeanut to decide to move his operation over to Twitch, but then he discovered that TikTok clamps down on people saying "Twitch" to promote other accounts, too.

TheBurntPeanut's brief foray into TikTok streaming might have been a disaster in terms of viewership and account longevity, but it did teach him an important lesson. From the very beginning of his career, TheBurntPeanut has proven he had an intuitive understanding of how important it is to be everywhere when you're creating online. He understands that, in order to build as large of a fanbase as possible, you need to meet people where they're at.

When it comes to his streams, TheBurntPeanut doesn't have anything resembling platform loyalty. His streams go live on Twitch, Kick, and YouTube simultaneously, so Peanut's fans can watch him from their preferred platform. Part of the reason big name streamers like Ninja have lost viewers is because they've gone platform-exclusive. Very few streamers are popular enough to get viewers to switch to a different website or app, which is why switching platforms can be one of the riskiest decisions a streamer makes. By keeping his streams open to all platforms, TheBurntPeanut manages to sidestep that issue and find new fans everywhere.

It's time to address the elephant, or, well, Peanut, in the room. There's no doubt that some amount of TheBurntPeanut's sudden and sharp rise in popularity is due to his, let's say, unique appearance. When people see a talking peanut laughing and playing video games, they feel compelled to stick around and find out what exactly is going on.

Many people see TheBurntPeanut's presentation as part of a new trend of VTubers, "virtual" YouTubers who use animated characters on camera instead of showing their actual faces. TheBurntPeanut himself, however, really doesn't like being lumped in with that trend. "Everybody knows I don't like being called a VTuber," he said on an episode of the "Around the Bar" podcast. The streamer went on to explain that he views VTubers as having exclusively human avatars.

TheBurntPeanut also admitted that before his current incarnation, he tried to become a VTuber with a human avatar. He eventually gave that up and stopped streaming for a year. When he got back into the game, he dropped his VTuber persona and replaced it with his current peanut incarnation. The rest is history.

Very few people manage to find success by being purely variety streamers. Most of the biggest names on Twitch and YouTube belong to streamers who found a niche and built a community around it. Ninja had "Fortnite," Doctor DisRespect had "Call of Duty," and for a long time TheBurntPeanut had "Escape From Tarkov."

"Tarkov" is the brutal FPS game that helped make extraction shooters mainstream. Games like Embark Studios' "Arc Raiders" have taken inspiration from "Tarkov," and TheBurntPeanut has been a fan of the genre for a long time. The streamer didn't find an audience just because he was playing "Tarkov," though. Because "Tarkov" is a somewhat slow and methodical game, it can be boring to watch someone even as skilled as the Peanut play.

Instead of matching the game's serious energy, TheBurntPeanut decided to approach "Tarkov" with humor, and that turned out to be the key to his early success. His YouTube channel has multiple videos with more than half a million views that are compilations of TheBurntPeanut's funniest moments in "Tarkov." Fans love his lighthearted and downright goofy approach to playing such a challenging and serious game. TheBurntPeanut found a unique approach to streaming a niche game, and that helped him get a foothold and start building an engaged community.

Streamers are often gamers themselves, but they have a very unique relationship to the video games that they play. Often a streamer's success comes down to what game they choose to play, and sometimes a popular game can quickly turn a streamer into an overnight sensation. Something like that happened to TheBurntPeanut when "Arc Raiders" made its debut.

In October 2025 TheBurntPeanut was already a moderately successful streamer. He'd spent years building out an audience, and he'd found a solid niche with "Escape From Tarkov." There are some notable similarities between that game and "Arc Raiders," which is probably why TheBurntPeanut decided to check out Embark Studios' latest release. Now he couldn't stop playing "Arc" if he wanted to.

"Arc" became massively popular after its debut, and TheBurntPeanut's "Arc" streams absolutely exploded in response. If you take a look through his YouTube channel now, you'll notice that almost all of his most-viewed videos feature him playing "Arc." When TheBurntPeanut started playing the game, he had about 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. Within just the first few months of playing "Arc," his subscriber count skyrocketed to over 1 million. No matter what happens next in his career, TheBurntPeanut will always remember "Arc" as the game that helped level up his streaming career.

TheBurntPeanut plays niche games with an eye-catching avatar and an engaging sense of humor. When watching his streams, it quickly becomes apparent that TheBurntPeanut is a natural entertainer. That makes it seem only natural that he's finding so much success today, but the truth is that there's an endless amount of entertaining individuals streaming on Twitch and YouTube. Hard work and genuine skill can only take a streamer so far, and TheBurntPeanut will be the first to admit that some of his success can be chalked up to pure luck.

On the "Around the Bar" podcast, TheBurntPeanut talked about his experience with the internet's finicky algorithms, and how random chance helped transform his career. "What YouTube does is they select trending channels for gaming, and then sometimes you'll just get lucky. You'll happen to be trending that day." 

From time to time, TheBurntPeanut has been the beneficiary of YouTube's mysterious decision-making. He said that he's seen his streams on the platform jump from 12,000 concurrent viewers to 30,000, just because his channel has been selected as trending in the gaming category. One of the secrets of the streaming industry is that no matter how entertaining an individual streamer may be, they're always at the mercy of the platform they use.

TheBurntPeanut has spent a lot of time streaming alone. Unlike 2023's fastest growing streamer Kai Cenat, the Peanut doesn't invite crowds of friends over for his streams, and, obviously, considering the peanut, he never does any IRL streaming. As his channels started to take off, though, TheBurntPeanut got even more exposure from bigger streamers reacting to his sudden rise in popularity.

At the demand of his fans, NickMercs (pictured above) sat down to watch some of TheBurntPeanut's stream compilations in front of his own audience. NickMercs laughing hysterically through some of TheBurntPeanut's most over-the-top clips gave the up-and-coming streamer some serious exposure. "Peanut is by far the most hilarious streamer. Comedy and streaming gold," wrote one commenter on the reaction video. TheBurntPeanut has managed to break gamer containment, causing major political streamers like HasanAbi to talk about his success in front of their own massive audiences.

TheBurntPeanut has also gotten the chance to play some of his favorite games with other big streamers. A compilation of him playing "Arc Raiders" alongside Shroud and Myth is one of the most-viewed videos on his channel. TheBurntPeanut is making friends throughout the streaming industry, and those new relationships are helping him grow his own audience faster than ever before.

No amount of hard work, mainstream exposure, or even luck can guarantee someone success in the streaming industry. A streamer might break into the scene with high-skill gameplay clips or by playing the right game at the right time, but that's not enough to maintain an audience. The one thing that all big streamers have in common is that they have the ability to keep people entertained for hours on end.

Casual streaming viewers have been trying to figure out TheBurntPeanut phenomenon. TheBurntPeanut's pseudo-VTuber presentation and his game choices have caught people's attention, but his fans all say that what they really love about the streamer is his sense of humor. "He is the only Tarkov streamer that doesn't play the game like he's at a funeral," wrote one Redditor, describing the streamer's approach to his first gaming niche.

In another Reddit thread, one fan described how TheBurntPeanut has changed over the years, writing, "I went back and watched his old stuff and the vibe is just completely different. He's definitely aware of what works and has intentionally developed it." Fans love TheBurntPeanut's boisterous personality, his many catchphrases, and his commitment to really having fun with the games he plays. There's a lot that went into TheBurntPeanut's subs skyrocketing by more than 4,000%, but the streamer's sense of humor is what's going to help him maintain that success.