It was a tale of two Chilles Wednesday afternoon into Wednesday night as Jose “Chille” DeCastro’s two livestreams from downtown Los Angeles compared and contrasted the start differences he sees in himself between when he’s on his own and when he is in he presence of police officers.
DeCastro went live in early evening local time as he was standing in the middle of he street trying to obtain footage of the fires that have engulfed parts of the Hollywood area. He complained bitterly about the size of his audience, around 300 live viewers, and how going to a vertical format no longer helped grow viewership.
Last year, primarily in the time after vertical format livestreams were introduced by YouTube (i.e. when DeCastro was in jail), YouTube would artificially promote vertically formatted livestreams into its algorithm and would often result in livestreams reaching over a hundred times the viewing audiences a normal stream would take in.
On Wednesday, DeCastro’s livestream was at 300 people in vertical format, maybe 20 to 30 more he’d normally get, but enough of a non-factor to launch a tirade into DeCastro being “shadow banned” and YouTube abusing his channel.
At one point, he stated that he talked someone out of driving to YouTube and doing unspecified harm to the company. Ignoring, of course, his own quasi threats to do the same back in 2023 and playing into the vast YouTube/Google/China/United States conspiracy against him that was keeping his channel from reaching thousands of people in every livestream like “back in the old days.”
If we ignore the fact that there were never any “old days” where his numbers would crack the thousand mark, and that most of his subscribers were allegedly purchased from services he can no longer afford, we may have bought into his hype but… yeah.
It was a standard whine playing into his recent doxing of his mailing address that later tied him to a food truck registered to that address. DeCastro lamented that because of the vast conspiracy between YouTube/Google/China/United States, he could no longer afford to support himself from his multiple YouTube channels and he was thinking about leaving YouTube for Facebook.
Facebook would suddenly become his focus for a rebrand and a new home after he so spectacularly failed with a fourth YouTube channel, a move to Patreon, a move to Twitter and a move to his own private server since late October.
Oh, and there were fires in the area. He stood in the road trying to get a shot of a fire on the horizon and was noticed by someone in a fancy car that wanted free merchandise. The man wanted it so much that he blocked traffic to park and wait while DeCastro slowly walked back to his car, ending his livestream.
Somewhere in either the first or second livestream, DeCastro promised that his Constitutional Law Scholar game would be done by the end of the month and for sale by February. He also had a second project that he couldn’t talk about just yet. But it was coming!
A few hours later, he was again near Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, his current stomping grounds. He described himself as being 3 or 4 miles west of the Hollywood sign and smoke was visible on the streets as he approached a street police had taped off.
As he approached, a local news crew was allowed through the police tape, he attempted to follow the news crew into the restricted area. A police officer stopped him and said they were only allowing people with press passes through the line.
40-minutes of a classic DeCastro tirade later…
Fine. You won’t let us skip it.
Contrary to what he had just said in his earlier livestream, DeCastro was now a media mogul who gets more views than the local TV crews. He ranted that it was illegal not to grant him access past the yellow tape because he was just as much “press” (with his cell phone in hand) as the local professional crew was and that there was case law out of Texas that would back him up.
He briefly caught his breath to make fun of everyone who was wearing masks or respirators as he stated that none of that stuff was worth wearing as masks were all fake, ya’ll.
Pulliam vs. Fort Bend County, out of Texas! He screamed the quote at the unimpressed police officers manning the police tape. He demanded a sergeant because Pulliam vs. Fort Bend County was case law and gave him the right to be press! For sure, Amen, score!
The case, of course, was a civil case from Texas involving a man claiming to be an independent journalist getting kicked out of a press conference by police as they did not recognize him as a local journalist. They threatened him with arrest if he didn’t leave, though was escorted roughly 80 feet away from the press conference and was allowed to film from that spot.
He was later arrested in a separate incident where he interjected himself on a scene where a man was having a mental breakdown. Pulliam obtained permission to film from the man’s mother but was told to leave when the police arrived. When he refused, he was arrested, with Pulliam claiming the arrest was first amendment retaliation for the previous incident.
Pulliam sued in civil court. In September of 2024, he lost a summary judgment on his free speech violation claims related to the press conference as it was rule that the police had qualified immunity. He also lost on the first amendment retaliation claims.
He won partial summary judgment in that it was found that the police acted improperly by ejecting him from the press conference as he was entitled to the same information distributed to the other reporters. A trial was ordered to determine damages.
DeCastro spent 40 minutes in front of the crime scene tape debating with anyone who would listen to him that Pulliam was settled case law and that he damn well had every right to cross the tape since the police had let other journalists through. He didn’t need a press pass, and he was going to get through the tape come hell or high water.
A few minutes later, the requested sergeant arrived on scene. DeCastro went into his Daffy Duckesque rant, the sergeant talked with him for a few minutes, let him through the line and DeCastro celebrated his victory over the police on behalf of all citizen journalists.
Then the smoke hit.
Within a minute of DeCastro walking past the line he began to breathe heavily. He didn’t see much of anything as he walked towards the fire on the hill. As his breathing got heavier, he eventually found a police officer and asked if he could have a N95 mask, the officer complied, DeCastro took two (the extra being for his invisible friend who was supposedly accompanying him), and DeCastro proudly wore the mask he swore he’d never need.
And he circled the block back to Hollywood Boulevard, out of the restricted area and walked right back to his car, celebrating the first amendment victory for the little guy.
40 minutes of protest. 10 minutes of getting access. 10 minutes of finding out access wasn’t worth dying for.
Such is the life of Chille DeCastro.
