Roberto Escanio (born August 22, 1997), better known online as Fanum, is a Dominican-American streamer and content creator. Fanum emerged online around 2016. He is known for being the originator of the vernacular "Fanum tax".[2][3] He won "Breakout Streamer of the Year" at the 13th Streamy Awards and the "Best Role Play Streamer" of the year award at the 2023 Streamer Awards.[4]
Fanum was born on August 22, 1997 in The Bronx, New York City to parents of Dominican descent. He has a younger brother who has appeared in his videos.[3] He speaks English and Spanish.[5] After graduating from high school in New York City, Fanum enrolled in college but left mid semester to focus on earning money for his YouTube equipment.[6]
Fanum began streaming on Twitch in November 2016 and made his YouTube channel, JustFanum, in May 2017. He posted his first video in February 2019. He streamed NBA 2K and later expanded to IRL vlogs, which often drew upon his experiences in New York.[7][8]
Fanum has been featured on the music video for Offset's September 2023 single "Fan" alongside Kai Cenat.[11][12]
In June 2024, Fanum appeared as a contestant in the Sidemen reality competition series Inside. The series features 10 guests who compete in challenges to secure a prize fund totalled at £1 million, with everything they buy or do costing money from the prize fund. He was in the show for seven days and finished in 4th place.[13][14]
Fanum is an original and prominent member of the American content collective known as Any Means Possible or AMP. He contributes to the group's collaborative challenge videos. Fanum invited popular streamer Kai Cenat to the AMP group. In August 2023, Kai Cenat was arrested following a meet-and-greet he hosted with Fanum in Union Square Park that resulted in at least 2,000 people crowding the park. The event resulted in property destruction and several injuries. While no charges were placed against Fanum, Cenat was charged with inciting a riot.[7][15]
Fanum tax (/fæn.əm.tæks/ⓘ) is an Internet slang term describing the theft of food between friends.[16]. The first usage of Fanum tax referred exclusively to Fanum, who jokingly "taxed" snacks by taking bites of food from fellow content creators during streams.[3] The term circulated among the YouTube collective AMP in late 2022 and was popularized especially during Fanum's Twitch streams with popular American YouTuber Kai Cenat, where Fanum would take Cenat’s cookies.[17] In an interview with Wired, Fanum defined the term as:
Let's say your friend having a meal, he's having a good meal, and you just want a piece of that meal. Like, you know what I'm saying? You need a share. That's your friend and the friend's share, right? Get you a little piece of the meal. It's the Fanum tax. You just go ahead and just like, lemme get a little bit of 5%, 10% of the meal, maybe 20%.[18]
On October 2, 2023, a TikTok account under the username @ovp.9 posted a short video of a character from the online video game Fortnite "singing" to a musical parody of the 2021 song "ecstacy" by Suicidal-Idol.[19] The parody, titled either "Sticking Out Your Gyat for the Rizzler" or "You're so skibidi, you’re so fanum tax",[20] features multiple internet culture terms including gyat, Skibidi Toilet, rizz and Sigma male. The song was used in many videos on TikTok, inspiring the mass creation of videos featuring Minecraft-inspired games on the platform.[7] The sound was used in over 195,000 videos and amassed over 321 million views on TikTok.[19]