After Dalton Eatherly, known as “Chud the Builder,” shot a Black man outside the Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville, Tennessee, the case has escalated quickly: on Friday, a judge announced charges including attempted murder and set a $1.25 million bon
For the third morning in a row, people close to the livestream world were forced to stare at the same uncomfortable truth: the humiliation had turned into gunfire.
On Wednesday. May 13. Dalton Eatherly—better known online as “Chud the Builder”—shot a Black man outside the Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville. Tennessee. The victim was reportedly a disabled veteran. Eatherly was there because the man was appearing in one of two criminal cases in which he was already out on bond.
The courthouse shooting was not the first time Eatherly’s content ended with someone else paying the price. In early May, he appeared in livestreamed footage after refusing to pay a $371 restaurant bill. In that recording. he berated restaurant employees. including a South Asian server he called a “jeet. ” and told the server to go “shit in the street.”.
What happened on May 13 moved the story from online provocation to criminal accountability almost immediately. On Friday. the judge overseeing the shooting case announced charges of attempted murder. employing a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony. aggravated assault. reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon. and set a $1.25 million bond.
Along with a Black stranger, according to reports, Eatherly also shot himself in the arm.
Eatherly’s online persona has been built around a routine that weaponizes intimidation as performance. At 28 years old. the Tennessean’s sizable fanbase has grown through livestreams in which he approaches random Black people. provokes them with racist abuse. dares them to react. and threatens them with a gun and bear mace that he carries.
In this world of monetized escalation, the injury and the spectacle don’t end when the camera stops. Even after the charges, copycats are already moving to fill the gap.
One is Hexumlite, a 23-year-old looksmaxxer whose earlier content centered on insulting anonymous women on the street. His shift now is sharply specific: asking random groups of white women what they “think about niggers” and advising others not to “get attacked by any niggers.”
Another is Onlyusemeblade, real name Brian Russo, a 40-something gaming streamer. In a recent video, he called an unknown Black woman a “weird nigger bitch.”
The livestream ecosystem also reaches beyond its own creators. After a clip widely circulated last week. a white man told Black security staff outside a Nashville restaurant that they were “chimping out” after they refused to let him take his dog inside—after. in other words. they did their jobs. Hexumlite, who caught the altercation, then shouted, “Chud the Builder!”.
The legal case over Eatherly’s conduct may sideline him for a while. But it does not slow the deeper American pattern the incident draws into view. The rhetoric around these “ragebaiting” videos—laced with racial slurs. the staged challenge to provoke reactions. and the promise of consequences—has long been dressed up as something else.
Eatherly cast himself as a crusader for a white race oppressed by the request to not publicly use the word “nigger” or to taunt and traumatize Black people with it. After his arrest for stiffing the restaurant. he posted. “I am simply weary after 6 months of being attacked by our government for expressing the constitutional freedoms our ancestors fought and died for. ” adding. “It’s not illegal for White people to say the same word they say to each other.” After last week’s shooting. he declared. “We should all have the same right to free speech regardless of what color my skin is.”.
That framing has won him attention well beyond Tennessee. His guest spots include Alex Jones’s InfoWars and an appearance on Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’s show.
His videos have also been bolstered by Twitter’s algorithm, which the article says favors all things white supremacist under owner Elon Musk.
In parallel. the argument that Black people are uniquely dangerous—paired with the insistence that cruelty is “defense”—has a long and worn history in the United States. The article traces it back to the era after slavery. pointing to 1868 language about the “outrage of Negro domination” and later white claims that violence toward Black people. from verbal harassment to lynching. was justified by that threat. It cites a 1914 quote from a white woman saying, “The Klan…saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule.”.
Even in the present, the logic shows up in new packaging. The piece describes Musk as tweet-complaining that Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy is evidence of anti-white racism, positioning Black freedom as a form of white suffering.
What ties these threads together in the aftermath of May 13 is the imbalance—between who gets harassed, who gets filmed, and who believes there will be little meaningful repercussions.
The article says Eatherly’s favorite slur in these confrontations—“chimping out”—is rooted in a decades-old online slur and a longer tradition of animalizing Black people as impulsively violent, driven by instinct, and subhuman.
It also draws attention to the self-contradiction. The people behind the livestreams mock Black restraint while insisting they’re the victims. The piece argues they count on restraint from Black people even as they pretend it doesn’t exist. and it points to the way the legal system is described as backing Black targets—while no Black streamer. in the article’s words. could get away with the same length of harassment long enough to turn it into a living.
In that world, the point is not simply anger. The point, the piece suggests, is power—captured on camera, monetized through audience participation, and used as proof that the targets will comply.
The film grain of this conflict is visible in Eatherly’s own posts. The article says that less than a week before the shooting, Chud wrote on social media: “Series finale is dead chimp on the pavement and you monkeys rioting when I walk free.” It adds, “Stay tuned.”
For all the talk of rights and speech, the story that comes through is the way dehumanization becomes entertainment. The piece connects the modern rage livestreams to older forms of popular amusement. naming minstrel shows as the country’s first original entertainment form and describing lynchings as a longtime Sunday picnic for white spectators. It argues the money flows because anti-Black humiliation becomes a commodity.
And even as Eatherly’s arrest and the judge’s charges bring a hard stop to his courtroom vicinity. the article insists the machinery of humiliation is already resilient. It points to a wider roster—Hexumlite. Onlyusemeblade. and others—plus white people who aren’t livestreamers but still join the performance by mocking. taunting. and cheering the breakdown of boundaries.
There’s also a brutal personal angle in the aftermath. The piece describes Hexumlite posting an ongoing stream of videos in which he says “deep down inside. man. I’m still miserable” and confesses to feeling like “a piece of shit.” It says Onlyusemeblade. if the spelling is read correctly. recently had to have some toes amputated because of years of alcohol abuse. It also describes Chud as a jobless deadbeat dad with an estranged baby mama and a son he doesn’t live with. adding that the son had to start a fundraiser last year because of his inability to hold a job.
The piece closes with a warning drawn from Toni Morrison: “There is something distorted about the psyche,” she said. “If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is: White people have a very. very serious problem. and they should start thinking about what they can do about it. Take me out of it.”.
Dalton Eatherly Chud the Builder Clarksville Tennessee Montgomery County Courthouse attempted murder charges $1.25 million bond livestream racism ragebait Hexumlite Onlyusemeblade Brian Russo Gavin McInnes Alex Jones Elon Musk white supremacy