Odds & ends #12: hash-slinging slasher edition
Jesus vs. Santa (1995) is considered one of the first viral videos.
Netflix knows what you want, and that’s competitive baking shows, and true stories about the most heinous, nightmarish crimes against humanity ever committed. When you’ve binged Professor Lollipop’s Chocolate Showdown, followed by all three seasons of I Killed Her and Wore Her Skin, luckily six more shows in the same vein immediately pop up in the “for you” section.
Having played all the hits like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez, and of course that lonely dreamboat Jeffrey Dahmer, Netflix is now dipping from the well of somewhat more obscure cases, like Killer Sally, about the murder of a professional bodybuilder by his equally ripped wife, and I Just Killed My Dad, the convoluted story about a teenager who murdered his abusive father. New to the service this month is The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, about a viral video sensation who was later convicted of murder and is currently in prison.
Watching The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker is a strange experience if you don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of viral videos, let alone the actual human beings behind them. Said human being here is Kai (just Kai), a genial hippie hitchhiker who saved the lives of two people from a violent attack. Kai’s interview with local news, in which he gave a colorful, profane recounting of the incident while following it up with uplifting messages of love and acceptance, was released on YouTube, apparently turning him into a media sensation.
I say “apparently,” because I have no recollection of this person, even though this only happened barely a decade ago. Kai’s immediate ascension to stardom is spoken in such breathless tones by everyone involved that I initially thought it was a parody, an episode of Documentary Now! that accidentally ended up on Netflix instead of IFC. But no, he has a whole Wikipedia page and everything. Even though I certainly feel like I’m online all the time, I must have been away for the week or so when Kai was a thing, just like I somehow missed ever knowing who The Try Guys were until one of them cheated on his wife and everyone took it very personally.
ANYWAY, HWH doesn’t actually get to the crime (the murder of a 73-year-old lawyer, in what Kai claimed was self-defense) until halfway through the documentary. Much of the first half is devoted to an absurd attempt, orchestrated largely by the reporter who originally interviewed him, to turn Kai (real name Caleb McGillivary) into a TV star, even though it was apparent almost immediately that (a) much of what McGillivary said, both about himself and the incident triggering the viral video, wasn’t truthful, and (b) he wasn’t mentally stable.
Nevertheless, McGillivary, despite losing his train of thought in the middle of a single sentence and having a penchant for urinating in public, was scooped up and shoved in front of the camera for Jimmy Kimmel Live. He was even tapped to do a recurring sketch in which he would give rambling, near-incoherent movie reviews, but once it was realized that his 21st-century take on Pauly Shore wasn’t, in fact, a bit, that idea was quickly dropped, and McGillivary just as quickly faded back into obscurity, until he killed someone three months later.
The documentary asks if giving McGillivary a taste of fame (there was even discussion of a reality show based around his exploits) led to his downfall, to which the answer is of course it did. How could it not? Even without the mental health issues he was already dealing with (and which everyone looking to cash in on his “fame” studiously ignored at first), imagine becoming famous solely for saying something funny1 when you maybe didn’t intend to, and suddenly you’re being shuffled onto a plane and doing comedy sketches on late night television. Complete strangers are declaring you their “spirit animal” (almost like they don’t actually consider you a human being beyond a 20-second sound bite) and swarming you in public. And then, because you are just an ordinary person who’s not built for these kinds of things, people quickly get bored of you and move on to the next thing, maybe a dog who can fart the National Anthem or something.
Because our collective attention spans have measurably decreased in the past two decades, nowadays the rise to viral fame, followed by the inevitable crash, happens within just a matter of days. This is especially true on Twitter and Facebook, where the term “milkshake duck” was born, and where people seem to take an almost sadistic glee in discovering that the latest internet sensation was once photographed wearing blackface, or posted in a Reddit incel group back in 2008. If the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker happened today, his dissembling about his identity and where he was actually from would have been uncovered almost immediately.
We can’t simply enjoy an amusing video and then go about our days without ever thinking about it again. They have to be analyzed and broken down like the Zapruder film, and discussed in think pieces as to how they reflect the current state of American culture. If not that, then they’re at least commodified, with multiple parody videos, autotuned music remixes, and, of course, merchandise2. It’s as if by simply being filmed doing something funny or weird, the stars of viral videos have temporarily signed their lives away for the public’s entertainment, until we get bored and move on to the next one.
By the way, have you heard about Tariq, the Corn Kid? Of course you have, he’s the little boy who was interviewed at a food festival talking about how much he likes corn, and people lost their goddamn minds over it. He got write-ups in The New York Times, People, and The Guardian, interviewed by NPR (where he confirmed that he really likes corn), invited to the premiere of Robert Zemeckis’s take on Pinocchio, and named North Dakota’s “corn-bassador.” Alas, it appears his time as America’s latest sweetheart might be drawing to a close, as indicated in the recent People headline “Is Pickle Girl the New Corn Kid?” Corn Kid is seven. Pickle Girl is three. It’s really weird to see adults discussing children as if they’re fashion trends, but then again, we live in really weird times.
Sometimes in a funny voice, like Sweet “ain’t nobody got time for that” Brown and Antoine Dodson, the “hide yo wife, hide yo kids” guy. There’s something a little icky about white people treating individuals like Brown and Dodson as sideshow entertainment, but as a white people myself I don’t know that I’m qualified to elaborate on it.
I have to assume that most Goodwill and Salvation Army stores have backrooms just filled with “Damn Daniel” t-shirts and throw pillows with Grumpy Cat’s (R.I.P.) face on it.
The first viral Internet children/mommy blogger kids are old enough to start doing memoirs and/or lawsuits and I am fascinated to hear their side of this phenomenon.