Not a lot of content creators today can say they have genuinely impacted fans across demographics. Roberto "Fanum" Pena surely has a claim to achieving this, with his Dominican Republic roots and Bronx upbringing making him a sort of bridge between two communities that are often at loggerheads: English and Spanish-speaking viewers.
Fanum, a member of the popular streamer collective Any Means Possible (AMP), has enjoyed a stark rise in the post-pandemic era, with various award nominations and wins backing this growth. The latest such achievement came in the form of another nomination for the Best Roleplay Streamer at The Streamer Awards 2025.
With this coveted annual awards ceremony fast approaching, Streams Charts takes a look at Fanum's career and the key moments that have fueled his elevation in the livestreaming world.
Who is Fanum?
Fanum, whose birth name is Roberto Escanio Pena, was born and grew up in The Bronx, New York City. His parents hail from the Dominican Republic, while he also has a younger brother who has appeared in his livestreams. The Twitch star's early life was marked by his efforts in education and the beginning of his hustle to create online content.
Fluent in English and Spanish, the 28-year-old graduated from Bronx Early College Academy and then enrolled at the New York City College of Technology. However, with limited financial resources, Fanum found it hard to attend college. He had to use his phone to take pictures of textbooks he couldn't afford to buy, and used them for most of his schoolwork.
The phone eventually broke, and with neither he nor his family able to dole out the cash needed to fix it, he could not keep up with classes. This was the experience that pushed him to reconsider college and academics altogether.
Early livestreaming career
His financial troubles eventually forced Fanum to leave his studies and focus on earning money for his livestreaming career, including the right equipment. He had already created his first channel, Fanum Live, on YouTube. To raise funds, Fanum worked on small projects on the red platform and started to stream video games, though less consistently at first.
He also joined Twitch in late 2016, with his early content focused on laying the groundwork for his eventual success. Interestingly, his early content across both livestreaming services showed flashes of potential and the unique style and personality that later would gain him attention globally.
He also started posting in-real-life (IRL) vlogs, which often drew upon his experiences in New York, giving his content a real and relatable connection to his community. Pretty quickly, Just Chatting livestreams became his signature content, which helped divert viewer attention to his vlogs and reaction videos.
Between 2016 and 2019, Fanum concentrated on solidifying his livestreaming foundations. He began staying on air for longer, broadcasting more regularly and playing an assortment of games, with Grand Theft Auto V emerging as his favorite title.
During this period, he averaged around a hundred viewers, with a peak of fewer than 500 online spectators. Nevertheless, his humor, storytelling, and New York-centric perspective helped slowly build a loyal audience.
Founding AMP, garnering recognition & mainstream success
In 2019, Fanum and four other livestreaming stars — Davis "ImDavisss" Dodds, Denzel "Duke Dennis" Dennis, Din "Agent00" Muktar and Christopher "Chrisnxtdoor" Dimbo — founded Any Means Possible. He came across half of the group's members while gaming online and the other members while doing IRL content.
Kai Cenat was the final piece of this puzzle, joining a year later just as he was also about to shoot into the livestreaming stratosphere. Each of the group members brought a unique energy and personality, contributing to its success as one of the most successful creator groups out there.
Fanum was also a big benefactor of this rise, doing more collaboration livestreams with and without his AMP brethren. His popularity soared even further in 2022 when he coined the now-iconic term, Fanum Tax. This viral phrase originated as a joke where he playfully took a portion of food or snacks from friends, calling it a tax on their friendship.
He also popularized phrases like Rizz and Gyatt, helped by the AMP group's incessant use of these terms during their livestreams. With these internet slangs becoming part of the wider internet culture and spawning memes, The New York Times even referred to them as "the language of Gen Alpha."
This was also the first year that the YouTuber broke into the yearly Twitch top 500 rankings by watch time, a run he has maintained annually since. Apart from his antics alongside his AMP buddies, what helped Fanum develop a massive following was his role-playing talents in GTA Online.
With RP servers witnessing a boom in the pandemic era, many servers exploded in popularity. Streamers who showed a lot of quirks and big personalities while playing became especially recognizable, and Fanum was one of these creators, taking the District 10 RP server by storm.
In fact, his content in this aspect of GTA play earned him multiple awards, including the Best Roleplay Streamer at the 2022 and 2023 Streamer Awards and the Breakout Streamer of the Year at the 13th Streamy Awards. These wins gave him more mainstream appeal as well, thus opening more doors for him outside of content creation.
For example, he appeared on the music video for Offset's September 2023 single "Fan" alongside Kai Cenat. He also appeared as a contestant in the Sidemen reality competition series Inside, where he eventually finished in fourth place.
Fanum was also invited to and participated in various streamer sports events like the soccer charity match between the British YouTube group Beta Squad and AMP in 2024. He also played for Team AboFlah & KSI in the Match for Hope and as part of the YouTube Allstars team during the Sidemen Charity Match, both in 2025.
Rising up the Twitch viewership ranks
Fanum has maintained significant momentum and received major recognition in the streaming community throughout the last two years. He has been among Twitch's 250 most-watched creators since 2023, with his rank of 134 in 2025 being his highest for a calendar year so far.
Among American influencers on the purple platform, he is in the 39th spot by Hours Watched, accruing just over 10.5 million HW, an increase of 8% year-on-year. Among Just Chatting streamers from this North American powerhouse, he is the 27th most-watched name.
One activity that helped him stay so consistent this year was the marathon streaming event known as AMP Summer in July. The group went live for 12 hours daily, and across those 30 days, they stayed at the San Antonio home of former NBA star Tony Parker.
A trailer was also released announcing the event, featuring the rapper T-Pain. Fanum generated 1.75 million HW in July, making it his second most successful month this year by this metric. He also hit a 116,276 Peak Viewers on Day 7, which easily became his most popular livestream ever.
The entire month's exercise also earned him a massive 131,659 followers, with his career tally now standing at 3.49 million followers. This puts him as the 35th most followed streamer from America at the time of writing, ahead of fellow platform luminaries like Zack "Asmongold" Hoyt and Hasan "HasanAbi" Piker.
As a slew of awards shows appear on the horizon, we must remember the incredible rise of streamers like Fanum. From giving up education due to lack of funds to becoming one of the trendsetters among the next generation of creators, he has shown that talent and consistency can reap rich rewards in the strange world of livestreaming.
Header image via Rolling Stone magazine
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