The online influencer known as Clavicular, already under investigation for a video appearing to show him shooting an alligator, was arrested Thursday in Florida after the authorities said he had instigated a fight between two women and exploited them by posting it online.
Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, 20, was booked into the Broward County Jail on misdemeanor battery charges, according to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, which arrested him.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office had issued a warrant for Mr. Peters’s arrest after responding to reports of a physical altercation at an Airbnb in Kissimmee, Fla., that he had rented. In the middle of the night on Feb. 2, a 19-year-old woman reported that she had been battered by Violet Marie Lentz, 24. Detectives found that Mr. Peters had provoked the fight, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
A warrant was also issued for Ms. Lentz’s arrest, but she remained at large, the spokeswoman said. Neither Ms. Lentz nor Mr. Peters could be reached for comment on Friday.
In an unrelated episode, a video circulating online on Thursday appeared to show Mr. Peters in an airboat with a few other young men in the Florida Everglades firing gunshots at an alligator that they thought seemed dead.
“Let’s just test really how dead it is,” Mr. Peters says in the video before he and another man collectively fire more than a dozen shots. “It’s definitely dead,” Mr. Peters decides before putting away his gun.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said on social media that it was “looking into the incident” in the video.
Mr. Peters emerged as an internet celebrity after he began posting videos on TikTok of himself rating other people’s looks. He had already been a frequent poster on Looksmax.org, a forum where teenage boys ask others to rate their attractiveness and discuss ways to improve their aesthetics.
Mr. Peters has become the face of the Looksmaxxing subculture, which prizes attractiveness above all and favors a particular form of handsomeness — a popular standard is to resemble the actor Matt Bomer. The highly unusual and sometimes extreme methods it promotes to enhance physical appearance have prompted skepticism.
Thousands of people regularly watch Mr. Peters’s livestreams, where he compares himself with other men and appraises women’s looks. He has frequently shared that he began injecting and ingesting controlled substances at age 14 as a socially awkward high school student in Hoboken, N.J.
Although Mr. Peters maintains that he is not political, he has socialized with right-wing personalities like Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist commentator, and Andrew Tate, who has been accused of rape and human trafficking. This year, videos showing the three men chanting along to the Ye song “Heil Hitler” in a Miami Beach nightclub spread online.
After the episode, Mr. Peters said he met with several prominent Jewish club owners in the area. On Instagram, he wrote, “No more politics, just mogging,” using a term in the Looksmaxxer community for outperforming another on their looks.
This week’s arrest added to Mr. Peters’s interactions with the law. Last month, he was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., and charged with possession of a forged instrument and possession/use of a dangerous drug. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute him.
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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