Just Mike 🇺🇸

Watch ChudtheBuilder when he hears the charges and bail conditions. He looks absolutely crushed by the weight of reality suddenly set upon him. And honestly, it’s sad. Not just sad, but tragic. He is 28 years old and a father, and he became drunk on the perception of power — and sometimes invulnerability — that comes with social influence. This is a cautionary tale about the danger of unearned power and influence. For the average person, having tens of thousands of followers here can feel life-changing. Reaching close to 100k can feel like winning the lottery, at first. It can be exhilarating to reach millions of people and feel like you are part of a small elite capable of breaking social media news with the right post or moving tens of thousands of people with a few carefully crafted words. Even in the real world, people begin to treat you differently. It’s ridiculous, but true. When people find out you have a following, they begin to ascribe special significance and power to you that is usually grossly exaggerated. They think you are special and important and capable of doing things for them, and so they begin offering things to you. For people like Chud — young men who have never been “somebody” before — being thrust overnight into social media “stardom” (even if it is lowbrow, C-tier stardom) is intoxicating. Before, you were someone who always had to say “yes sir” and had accepted that life would consist of hard work with little respect or payoff. Now you begin to wonder how high you can climb and how much power, fame, and influence you can amass. It’s so intoxicating that it warps your ability to think rationally. You see the numbers — 200k+ followers and $70k in donations, with more pouring in — coupled with an endless stream of affirmations in your DMs and comments, not the reality that your reputation is being cemented as the guy who walks around calling Black people “n*ggers.” In a matter of weeks or months, you have achieved more influence and reach than most men could ever imagine. But here’s the rub: you did it without the years of hard work and painful lessons most people who achieve that kind of standing endure on the way up. You’ve been handed power and influence absent the wisdom that comes from earning it yourself — and you acquired it not by creating something important or valuable, but through cheap parlor tricks that entertain people who don’t care how this ends for you, only that they are entertained along the way. And so, emboldened, a man like Chud sets out with his camera, gargantuan hubris, and an army of followers telling him to “keep going,” even if that direction leads straight off a cliff. But you don’t see it, because you haven’t earned the wisdom that comes from smaller failures and hard-earned lessons earlier in the journey. Fail? How could you fail when so many people support you? Hundreds of thousands — even millions — are cheering you on. You must be doing something right. And in fact, you become so convinced that you are justified and untouchable because of the hordes you perceive behind you that you grow brazen and reckless, going so far as to predict that this story ends with a “dead chimp” and “me walking free.” And then it happens: your opportunity to “take a stand” and show your audience what this was really all about. But when the police arrive and arrest you, and the discussions begin between your lawyer and the district attorney, you suddenly realize that all your fame, power, and influence were an illusion. It existed on X, but the social capital of X suddenly means very little when standing before a judge and jury who have no idea who ChudtheBuilder is. Your viral posts are no longer impressive; they are evidence — an indictment of a reckless man drunk on power. You are now learning your first real lesson about the pitfalls of power/ influence, but at an apex where the fall is unrecoverable: forgotten and alone in a jail cell.