Clavicular, the looks-obsessed influencer with a knack for producing viral videos, has been charged again in Florida for antics that he broadcast live.
The social media personality, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters, was charged on April 28 with a misdemeanor for unlawfully discharging a firearm in public, months after he fired a dozen bullets at an alligator while livestreaming from an airboat in the Everglades near Miami.
Mr. Peters has not been arrested, but he is scheduled to appear in Miami-Dade County Court on May 20. He was not charged with hurting the alligator, which may have already been dead.
He is a leader of the “looksmaxxing” online subculture, a movement rooted in masculinity, in which young men take extreme measures to improve their looks, such as surgery and the use of unproven supplements or steroids. They also constantly livestream their activities.
This is not the first time Mr. Peters has been charged in a crime that was streamed for his followers. In February, officers accused him of instigating a violent attack on a woman in the Orlando area while viewers watched online.
Mr. Peters’s defense lawyers, Steven Kramer and Jeffrey Neiman, said in a statement on Wednesday that their client was “following the instructions of a licensed airboat guide.”
“He relied on that guidance,” the statement said. “No animals or people were harmed. We are confident that once the full picture is understood, people will see this for what it is.”
The authorities also charged two other online personalities they say also illegally fired weapons that day: Andrew Morales, 22, also known as “Cuban Tarzan,” and Yabdiel Annibal Cotto Torres, 26, who goes by “Baby Alien.”
Mr. Peters, Mr. Cotto and Mr. Morales were part of a group of young men who had set out on an airboat at a state nature preserve in the Everglades, about 22 miles west of downtown Miami.
Florida wildlife officers began their investigation soon after the video appeared on March 26 on the streaming service Kick, where Mr. Peters has more than 300,000 followers. It prompted backlash from community leaders in South Florida and an investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The charges were filed a few weeks after Mr. Peters also apparently overdosed while streaming to his followers. He was hospitalized in Miami.
Content creators in the subculture livestream frequently online, and sometimes participate in risky stunts to keep their followers engaged. On the day of the Miami alligator shooting, Mr. Peters was briefly jailed in Fort Lauderdale on an arrest warrant issued by deputies near Orlando.
Deputies accused Mr. Peters of instigating a fight at an Airbnb between two women “to get views on a social media platform,” according to the warrant.
Christina Morales is a national reporter for The Times.
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