Chud the Builder is a live streamer who goes around yelling racial slurs at black people and filming their reactions, which he broadcasts for updoots. He carries a gun just in case. This week he ended up using it, and getting charged with attempted murder in Tennessee, after getting his ass kicked by a man he’d just shot.

There are a number of obvious problems with live streaming just as a vocation. For one thing, it’s a plainly degenerate form of entertainment, and the genre of harassing strangers in public while filming them is the lowest of the low. Freedom of the press is protected at the expense of privacy in this country, but that’s a subject for another post.

You can search for Chud the Builder on your nearest streaming platform. I won’t belabor the point: he’s clearly a resentful and alienated narcissist, a provocateur hopped up on raceslop memes and tropes designed to bypass the prefrontal cortex.

Not that I’m confused about what’s putting people over the edge nowadays. Far from it. I grew up in left coast hippy liberalville in the 1990s, so I’m acutely aware of the bizarre ideological fetishes that crescendoed in the Obama era and have led to so much social decay. There is a tweet about this you may’ve seen:

The statement is true, broadly speaking—but there’s a wrinkle in it, viz., that “normal” and “successful” are two different things. In fact, they’re two very different things, otherwise everyone would be successful. Successful people can work their way around the proverbial communism that’s being arraigned here. They can lean on relationships and back channels. They can retreat into gated communities. They can shelter assets (or liquidate them) and, finally, they can emigrate.

Another wrinkle in this analogy is that American “communism” does not “rob and/or kill all successful people.” Au contraire—the Obama regime (c. 2008-2024) and its ideological predecessors enjoyed the backing of the “successful” class to plunder the “normal” class by e.g. tripling the cost of their health insurance. It’s only very recently that the wealthy are starting to enjoy the scorpion as much as the frog does, with unprecedented tax initiatives in blue states causing talk (at least) of a wealth exodus.

In law school, I was called on the carpet by a diversity commissar for expressing anodyne opinions in a class where we were actually assigned to opine on controversial topics in a class discussion. That doesn’t sound like much in the way of persecution, but it had a tremendous chilling effect on my ability to network, which is critical for a law student. All the more so, given all the outrages and revolutionary terror of the early 2020s. The show trial of Derek Chauvin took place when I was a 2L.

The point is that I am acutely aware of the social pressures that produce a Chud the Builder. Moreover, as a general matter, I think that he’s entitled to express his opinions about any topic he likes, and say the n-word, no matter who it gives umbrage to.

That said, accosting strangers on the street a crime. What’s more, if you voluntarily take the initiative to gravely insult a stranger, to his face, about his race or religion, you can’t pretend to be surprised when you catch a beatdown. That is not “censorship,” or a “slippery slope.” It’s an iron law as old as time. Evidently, Chud the Builder was surprised to catch a beatdown.

Take a real life vigilante like Marianne Bachmeier or Jason Vukovich as a counter-example. Not only did they not film anyone for updoots (obviously) but, more importantly, by taking justice into their own hands they crossed a rubicon, turning their backs on society’s protection. Even in vigilante movies e.g., Harry Browne or Falling Down, the protagonist is someone who completely loses it and decides, deliberately, to spurn the social contract.

In contrast, Chud the Builder went around filming people while taunting them. Consider the purpose served by filming these confrontations. Filming or recording a stranger in public invokes the protection of the system. It signals the ability to get the person you’re recording in trouble. It makes them think twice about standing up for themselves when you’re harassing them and acting obnoxious. It’s a big part of the overall mechanism of chickenshit online harassment and defamation that’s so prevalent nowadays, and that’s what interests me here as a defamation attorney.

This kind of behavior is fundamentally anti-social, and should be proscribed. Unfortunately, the right to not be harassed is still being held hostage by overwrought protections for idiot louts and human detritus. Chud the Builder, it seems, is no longer enjoying that protection. If the law did a better job of deterring cyber-harassment in the first place, he might have stayed home and not shot anyone.

If you have a defamation, doxxing, cyber-stalking, or First Amendment matter in Washington, New Mexico, or Texas, please visit my law practice at latenightlaw.com.

This blog post is commentary and is not legal advice for your individual situation. All text content © Aaron Cress 2025-2026.