There is a niche of streamers considered to be professional “rage-baiters” that platforms like Twitch and Kick specialize in. These types of livestreams exemplify “content over everything” as the rule of thumb. Many such streamer characters have emerged in recent years, with male-to-male Clavicular livestreaming his life as a “looksmaxer” but also Dalton Eatherly, who brands himself as Chud the Builder.
Dalton Eatherly is allegedly a homosexual who dressed as a fairy before rebranding into Eastern Orthodox pseudo-tough guy Chud the Builder. As Chud, he goes around recording himself provoking black people in Tennessee by calling them hard r’s to their face in hopes that the reaction will make for good content. In the event that there is a violent response, he is packing heat. He has pepper-sprayed people. There are other clips of his interactions with whites in Nashville which are casual and cordial, but his most notorious moments involve clips where his free speech maximalism escalates.
Now on Wednesday, May 13th, Chud was involved in a shooting outside the Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville, where an altercation escalated into a shooting. Eatherly claimed that he fired in self-defense, that his alleged assailant with PTSD warned him that if he started “saying all that chimp out shit to me, I’m gonna hit you” to which he started “wailing” on Eatherly who then had to defend himself. Eatherly was shot in the left arm, by his own firearm. He has since been stabilized.
This comes after Eatherly was arrested on the 9th for theft under $1000 for a $371.55 dinner tab that went unpaid as he was kicked out of a restaurant for streaming content. The man known for calling black people “niggers” could be said to have been acting like one by refusing to pay his tab.
Tennessee Law recognizes Stand Your Ground as a defense that would allow for lethal force if necessary, yet it does not apply if one is the provocateur. Unlike Florida, it is not a pretrial hearing in Tennessee. Eatherly has a history of tweets and videos suggesting that he is eager to either provoke confrontation or express his eagerness to use force in self-defense, which could be used against him.
The nature of “provocation” depends on whether the use of the words “chimp out” was provoking the physical altercation. If the DA’s office decides to pursue charges, they would likely charge Eatherly with Aggravated Assault under the standard that the assault was reckless. This would likely be a Class D felony which bears a minimum sentence of 2 years and a maximum of 12 years.
Analysis
In the era of Content over Everything, people are famous for doing stupid things on the internet for cheap clicks. The gimmick of Chud the Builder is that he does the “black people are violent” meme where the black person in the meme responds with “you won’t say that to my face” which thus proves the initial statement. This is all dressed under the guise of free speech maximalism with the pseudo-cowboy aesthetic. Perhaps this incident is a case where the black guy “chimped out” and he needed to defend himself. However, his history will be used against him in a courtroom. Even if he is completely innocent under the letter of the law, his behavioral history works against him.
Eatherly was packing heat and has had standoffs before. While Sailer’s Law would implicate that shootouts with the people Chud likes to provoke would result in more injuries than deaths, it only takes one stray bullet to wound or murder an innocent bystander. This instance might be ruled self-defense, but a violent altercation was always the endgame for this style of content.
For someone who does the whole Christ is King branding while being a professional provocateur for content, he is another online grifter claiming Christ while being a public nuisance in Nashville.
