Under the Influence

Rodger Morrow

Editor & Publisher, Beaver County Business

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When I was a boy, anyone who wanted the town’s attention climbed the water tower. This required no sponsor, no ring light, and no algorithm, though the town had several busybodies who performed the same function. The audience was whoever happened to drive by. The reward was a lecture from the police chief and a longer one at home. As a career it went nowhere, which was the point.

Today the water tower has been replaced by the livestream, and the audience by the planet. The platforms pay best, I am told, for outrage, fear, and shock, and the young have responded as the young always respond to a price signal.

Consider the Tennessee streamer called Chud the Builder, who built an audience on racial provocation. In May a confrontation outside a Clarksville courthouse ended in gunfire. Both men were shot. He was charged with attempted murder, spent months in custody, posted a large bond, and went home under house arrest, where he has resumed streaming. It was reported that the microphone stayed with him on the stretcher. Say what you will, the man does not let a bullet interrupt the work.

In Miami last Christmas Eve, a streamer called Clavicular appeared to drive a Cybertruck over a man who had climbed onto it mid-broadcast, then wondered aloud whether the man was dead and said he hoped so. Police found nothing criminal. The platform banned him. He claimed self-defense and faces unrelated charges elsewhere.

In Arizona, Heston James Cobb and companions walked into businesses dressed as employees or claiming to be from corporate, disrupted things, and filmed the results. Millions watched. He pleaded guilty to criminal impersonation, agreed to take the videos down, and arranged restitution; probation was expected. In my day, pretending to be from corporate was called middle management, and nobody filmed it.

Two Argentine YouTubers were arrested at a World Cup match in Miami after using expired credentials to get past security. Charged with interference at a sporting event and released on bond, they blamed confusion. The case was pending. Confusion is a fine defense. I have relied on it all my life.

Then there are the rage-bait street interviewers, who approach strangers about abortion or immigration in ways apparently designed to produce an angry clip, often without clear consent to publish it. Criminal cases are rare. The usual penalty is backlash, which in this business is also called growth.

Smaller stunts earn smaller rewards: a lifetime Six Flags ban for chicken nuggets on a Cedar Point roller coaster, complaints about heckling and disruptive photos at events like the U.S. Open, and criticism of true-crime creators who pose outside crime scenes and private homes.

The sexual branch of the trade requires fewer props. OnlyFans creators have staged challenges claiming hundreds of consenting adult partners in a day; Bonnie Blue claimed more than a thousand in about twelve hours. Others took the act outdoors, walking streets with visible evidence of recent activity or flashing a stadium crowd at a college football game. OnlyFans has restricted the extreme challenges, and some public displays have led to arrests

under local obscenity laws, the street being, legally, not the bedroom. My mother would want me to change the subject now, so I will.

None of this is new. Trevor Jacob staged a plane crash for a sponsored video in 2021 and later went to prison for obstructing the investigation. In 2024 Poonam Pandey announced her own death in the name of awareness, then declined to stay dead.

The motives are always views, sponsorships, or clout. The costs have included arrests, bans, restitution, injuries, and lost credibility. Not every outrageous post is a bid for attention, but plenty are engineered for nothing else. Few of these people escaped every consequence, but the outcomes ranged from felony charges to a lifetime ban from an amusement park. “It’s for content” is no defense once a law is broken. It works splendidly, however, for the many stunts no prosecutor bothers with.

None of this will end Western civilization, which survived the Visigoths and the leisure suit. The narrower worry is the example. Children raised watching people risk their necks, break laws, and turn private acts into public spectacle for pay may conclude these are ordinary career moves, like dentistry. Whether that improves on climbing the water tower is a question time will settle. Meanwhile the rest of us can watch from a safe distance and note that the algorithm, like the busybodies before it, still rewards the spectacle.

The busybodies, at least, never paid.