One of the earliest subjects of the modern-day internet meme (differentiated from earlier formats using the appropriately absurd term “dank memes”) was a 24-year-old “home-free” man (as he preferred to be described) and went by the name Kai. This stereotypical airhead West Coast surfer dude became America’s sweetheart overnight on the back of a viral interview about his intervention in a hate crime.

On 1 February 2013, Kai was in the passenger seat of a car, hitchhiking in Fresno, California, when the driver, a white 6’4, 300-pound racist claiming to be Jesus Christ rammed into a black pedestrian. When a woman rushed to help the victim, the driver got out of the car and began assaulting her as well. To stop him from hurting the woman, Kai hit the driver in the head three times with a hatchet.

The only person to get an interview with Kai that day was Jessob Reisbeck, a sports anchor for a Fox affiliate channel who’d been asked to cover general news that day because of a lack of staff – it was literally his first day as a general reporter. “Smash, smash, sah-mmash!” Kai recounted in the interview. And that was it. The video was uploaded to YouTube and the next morning Kai was a sensation.

Production still of Caleb Lawrence McGillvary a.k.a. “Kai” in ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

Jessob Reisbeck in ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

During the documentary, the cameraman who filmed the exclusive interview notes that a story needs “a villain, an unlikely hero, an amazing scenario and someone in distress”. It was all there. Kai even started the interview with an unsolicited message of kindness: “No matter what you’ve done you deserve respect, even if you’ve made mistakes you’re lovable.” 

A few months later, he was sentenced to 57 years in a maximum-security prison.

What makes The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker more interesting than your run-of-the-mill Netflix true-crime doccie is director Colette Camden’s focus on how the hysteria around Kai was so strongly guided by the reporting of an untrained journalist. The internet’s ravenous hunger for the next big thing is reductive, christening people celebrities without a second thought. Sensational media might even shape their story around a catchy alliteration; “The Hitchhiking Hatchet Hero”, it was reported. 

Several people involved in popular reality television production are interviewed in the film about what made Kai go so big so quickly. One of them notes that “most reality television productions are looking for the next big pop-culture icon to emerge”.

There was an absolute frenzy to get hold of Kai. Jimmy Kimmel wanted him and the team behind Keeping Up With The Kardashians even planned to give him his own television show. As the only person with Kai’s email, Reisbeck, the initial reporter, was swarmed with messages from people trying to get a piece, but he was determined to be the first to bring Kai to the world.

In such a frenzy, convenience is often prioritised over thoroughness. Kai’s quirky, light-hearted demeanour distracted people from the violence of what it was he was being so celebrated for. He may have saved a woman from assault, but his phrase that was being quoted and turned into memes and autotuned remixes, “smash, smash, suh-mmash!” is his proud description of how he bludgeoned a man’s skull with a hatchet. 

‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

Many people were completely oblivious to the signs that Kai might be dangerous. He showed no remorse about the gruesome incident – he was remarkably unshaken. At one point he brags about saving another woman being assaulted by busting all of the abuser’s teeth out. Kai’s birth given name is Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, but when asked in the interview if he has a surname he shrewdly replied, “No, bro, I don’t have anything”, and people just accepted that funny but suspicious answer. 

Steven Colbert joked that “for the first time in history, people are saying, boy, we sure are lucky that homeless hitchhiker was carrying a hatchet”. Kimmel had Kai on the show and ended off saying, “thanks for not killing me with a hatchet”. His erratic behaviour and awful explicit stories of a traumatised childhood and having been a rape victim were ignorantly glossed over as harmless symptoms of homelessness. With the benefit of hindsight everything about his presence in the media was unsettling.  

Production still of Caleb Lawrence McGillvary a.k.a. “Kai” in ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

Production still of Caleb Lawrence McGillvary a.k.a. “Kai” in ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

As a subject, Kai is reminiscent of Joe Exotic from Tiger King – the charismatic psycho protagonist still clinging to his tall tales of “woe is me” from behind bars. We know from the start that something scary is going on but the slow release of menacing details and twists that bring the full picture into focus is still shocking. Kai’s constant repetition of his message of love begins to seem like a mixture of virtue signalling and self-assurance about a history of brutal vigilante justice. 

Brad Mulcahy, the “human interest researcher” for Jimmy Kimmel Live at the time, who procured Kai for the show, is asked during the film why people didn’t see that Kai was dangerous. He starts his reply: “I think they did.” Possibly the most indicting take on the public treatment of Kai is that people did see the signs, but were so pleased with the story woven around his perceived heroism that they chose to ignore them. 

Camden’s directing makes the case for Kai’s being mentally ill all but irrefutable, but it’s always balanced by clips of his charm that drew people to him. Before sentencing Kai for the brutal crime he was put away for just months after his sudden rise to fame, Judge Robert Kirsch described him as “a powder keg of explosive rage”. And even suggested that his charm might have been a premeditated cover for his criminality, saying: “You created this public image of a free spirit, but underneath that free spirit, the jury saw another side of you. A cold-blooded, calculated, callous killer.”

Production still from ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

Brad Mulcahy in ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.’ Image: courtesy of Netflix

The documentary concludes insidiously, without unexpected surprises. It’s a shame that Camden focused so much on the specifics of Kai’s story rather than explicitly exploring how some media’s bottomless hunger for content encourages rapid, reductive portrayals, but the saga does provide an ideal case study for that. At 125 minutes, there was also room to dissect the “romanticisation” of homelessness which was tied up in Kai’s fame, as someone living happily off of the generosity of others. Possibly this line of investigation was avoided because of the irony that the brief face of the “home-free” nomadic lifestyle will now have a permanent address for the rest of his days. DM/ML

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker is available in South Africa on Netflix.

You can contact We’re Watching via tevya@dailymaverick.co.za