Currently, this Twitch streamer is prominently featured on the For-You page of TikTok by numerous users – at a rapid pace he surpasses his own records and stands out mainly for his unbridled personality. But who is Zarbex and what makes him special?
Who is this streamer? Behind the name Zarbex is 25-year-old Maik from Schleswig-Holstein. He was drawn to the internet at an early age, initially experimenting in his childhood room.
In an interview with Henke on YouTube, Zarbex shares that he received his first camcorder as a gift and started making sketches at the age of 10 or 11. He adds that he wore a yellow mask back then because his mother feared he would be bullied otherwise. He dryly remarks, “It turned out later that she was right.”
After a brief phase of producing Beyblade videos, he set all his videos to private and deleted his channels to start anew.
Between 2014 and 2016, he also experimented with opinion blogs. In retrospect, he says: “Even if it sounds stupid that I made these opinion blogs videos and pissed people off on the internet, that was my only outlet. In real life – I was just heavily bullied and school was terrible.”
During this time, Zarbex began an apprenticeship as a paralegal in a law firm, which he did not complete. About this difficult phase he says: “It was a really bad time.” In the interview with Henke, he also recounts that after a period of doing nothing, he obtained his higher education entrance qualification and later completed a second apprenticeship as a media designer for image and sound.
In 2019, Zarbex moved into his first own apartment and started taking streaming seriously. Through Twitter (now X.com), he met the streamer Filow, which marked the beginning of his career.
Even Trymacs started from the bottom and is now among the most well-known German streamers:
“How many retirees can you take on?” asks a viewer
What makes him successful? In recent months, Zarbex has made a name for himself particularly through his open and direct style. He is not afraid to share intimate and often bizarre details from his life.
Whether it is his first time, which “was way too quick – after 3 seconds,” his experiences with unusual objects he had “fun” with, his bowel movements, or his stories from his apprenticeship – everything is recounted candidly. This unfiltered style makes him fascinating and controversial for many viewers.
The streamer is particularly known for answering bizarre questions from his fans, which often end in a humorous competition. Questions like “How many emus could you take on?” or “How many retirees would you defeat?” are part of his regular challenges.
In one of his streams on Twitch, he comments, “When people meet me at events, they don’t say: ‘Hey Zarbex, what’s up?’ – instead, one asks: ‘How many eight-year-olds can you take on?’ Dude, talk to me normally!”
This direct and humorous interaction contributes significantly to his popularity and shows how Zarbex stands out from other streamers through his authenticity and “unfilteredness”.
How his numbers have exploded this year
How is his career progressing? In April 2019, Zarbex started his career on Twitch and began his current channel with streams of games like League of Legends, Minecraft, and Rust. His first significant milestone was reached when, starting in January 2022, he regularly averaged over 100 viewers – a success that lasted until about mid-2023.
From June 2023, Zarbex observed a steady increase in his viewer numbers. However, the real breakthrough only came this year. While he had an average of 781 viewers in January 2024, this number rose to an impressive 6,887 by July 2024.
Zarbex is particularly active in the “Just Chatting” category, in which he has streamed over 2000 hours. Followed by GTA5 with more than 1000 hours, Rust with 900 hours, Minecraft with 300 hours, and Valorant and League of Legends with 200 hours each.
According to Twitchtracker, Zarbex is currently in 10th place among the German Twitch channels with nearly 270,000 followers.
“This was the craziest thing I’ve experienced in 6 years”
What did the streamer recently unlock? On Sunday, July 21, 2024, Zarbex managed to break his own records. In an impressive 12-hour stream, he experienced a true flood of subscriptions, donations, and bits that took his channel to new heights. The highlight of the stream was the appearance of the “Golden Kappa Hype Train”.
What is a golden hype train? The platform Twitch offers streamers the opportunity to trigger so-called hype trains. This happens when support events such as subscriptions or bits on a channel reach a previously set value. During a countdown, the community has the chance to show their support and climb the hype train levels.
A special variant, the “Golden Kappa” hype train, has only been available since 2023. Some time ago, the streamer Reved also managed to unlock this exclusive feature, which challenged her significantly.
What record did he break that day? But that was not all. While subscriptions flooded in at a rapid pace and the chat became unreadable in seconds, Zarbex broke the mark of 15,000 subscribers.
In an emotional moment, he jokingly turned to his girlfriend and exclaimed: “Julia, we’re buying a house next week!” Completely overwhelmed, he later expressed: “I can’t thank everyone here enough. I’m completely overwhelmed right now. We’ve had subathons, we’ve had everything. What happened today was the craziest thing I’ve experienced in 6 years.”
Even the streamer Gronkh has already triggered a golden hype train, which caused all functions of his stream to temporarily crash. You can read more about this here: Gronkh gets 7,000 subscriptions on Twitch in a few minutes, destroying all functions with it
