Fanum Tax

Origin

The ‘Fanum tax’ is named after Fanum — real name Roberto Gonzalez, a Bronx-born content creator of Dominican descent and a member of the streaming collective AMP (Any Means Possible), whose best-known face is Kai Cenat. AMP formed in the late 2010s and grew into one of the most-watched creator groups on YouTube and Twitch, with members including Kai Cenat, Fanum, Duke Dennis, Agent 00, ImDavisss, and Chrisnxtdoor. The bit began on AMP streams in late 2022. In a widely cited December 2022 Christmas-themed stream, Fanum burst into Kai Cenat’s room and swiped his cookies, and he turned ‘taxing’ his friends’ food — simply taking a bite or a piece as a self-declared ‘tax’ — into a running gag. Heading into 2023, ‘Fanum tax’ hardened into a catchphrase among the AMP crew and their enormous shared audience, helped along by Kai Cenat’s record-breaking year as the most-subscribed streamer on Twitch.

What it means / how it’s used

To ‘Fanum tax’ someone is to take a portion of their food — or, by extension, their money or belongings — as a joking, non-negotiable toll. Kids adopted it wholesale: announcing ‘Fanum tax!’ while grabbing a friend’s fry in the cafeteria became a real-world playground ritual. The term slotted into the broader Gen Alpha ‘brainrot’ lexicon and became inseparable from the viral ‘rizz, Fanum tax, Ohio’ word-salad chants that spread on TikTok in 2023 as a parody of kids’ slang.

How it spread

The tax lived on AMP and Kai Cenat streams throughout early 2023, and clips of Fanum stealing Kai’s food circulated on TikTok and YouTube. A key moment came on June 24, 2023, when Kai Cenat’s YouTube channel posted a compilation of every time Fanum stole his food, which drew millions of views. From there, ‘Fanum tax’ jumped from streamer in-joke to mainstream slang. It turned up in end-of-2023 ‘Gen Alpha slang explainer’ pieces from mainstream outlets and in teachers’ viral lists of words they suddenly heard nonstop, cementing it alongside ‘rizz’ (which Oxford named its 2023 Word of the Year) as a signature term of the year.

Notable examples & variations

• The original December 2022 ‘Christmas cookie’ raid on Kai Cenat’s stream.
• Kai Cenat’s June 24, 2023 YouTube tax compilation.
• Skits where friends dramatically ‘tax’ each other’s snacks.
• Its role in the ‘rizz, Fanum tax, Ohio’ chant used to parody Gen Alpha slang.

Legacy / cultural impact

‘Fanum tax’ is one of the clearest examples of streaming culture minting everyday youth slang: a specific inside joke from one creator’s living room became a word used by kids who have never watched an AMP stream. It endures as shorthand for the friendly, semi-annoying act of skimming a bit of someone else’s food.