Killdozer: In Gamblor's Claws
The Wor on Gamblor, Episode 2
EPISODE 2 | JULY 4, 2025 | UTP SALUTES 2025 YEARS OF AMERICAN HEGEMONY
When a reasonable newsletter author is driven to do unreasonable things, you might expect the worst.
But when a “““reasonable”””" man is driven to do (extremely) unreasonable things, you probably should expect the worst.
Just over 21 years ago, on June 4, 2004, a local libertarian extremist turned internet folk hero, Marvin Heemeyer, began a violent assault against his enemies: the town of Granby, CO and its crooked, corrupt government officials.
Their crime? Not paying for a $42,000 sewer hook-up he requested, not getting the overvalued amount for a portion of property to be used for a concrete plant he campaigned (and lost) against, among other embarrassing, public incidents. He received a “sign from God” that told him to use his Komatsu D355A bulldozer he purchased for $16k—and failed to sell (remember, he couldn’t afford the $42k sewer hook up, but somehow had $16k to drop on a used bulldozer)—to “enact vengeance” against the town. Unbeknownst to local authorities, Heemeyer had, over a year and a half, turned his used bulldozer into an extremely makeshift tank armored with thousands of pounds of concrete, dubbed by the media as the “Killdozer.”
Over the course of the day, he attacked the city hall/library (which was hosting a story hour for children), the offices of the Granby newspaper of record, public infrastructure like trees and traffic lights, political enemies’ homes. Nothing was safe. Throughout his violent rampage, police failed miserably to stop him. Allegedly, the governor of Colorado considered a 2-man Javelin missile crew on a Hellfire missile-equipped Apache gunship as a last resort.
After his final building was smashed, the bulldozer was rendered inoperable, and he was found with a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound in the cab of his concrete construction coffin. Thankfully, the only person killed by the Killdozer was Heemeyer himself.
I could keep reciting the Wikipedia article for Marvin Heemeyer, but I’ll let you fall down that wormhole. What I think is far more consequential, is how Heemeyer’s violence has been pigeon-holed as a sort of “hero of the common man” story that is supposed to be a celebration of everyday Americans standing up against the tyranny of the nanny state. Like if Ron Swanson got too hyper and took things too far.
This leads me to a totally different kind of Killdozer, YouTube and Twitch’s killdozer_tv (or as Emily and I have Mandela Effect-ed it, killdozerr). I mentioned him briefly in the June 21st edition of UTP, but the crux of the content he has become known for are these “diet challenges.” He’s about as close as you can get to the platonic ideal of one of the internet’s beloved “himbos.”
But why the name “Killdozer?” Is this just one of 100s of radical right-wing messages inserted into every episode by creator Mikey Killdozer?
Honestly, and I think you’d agree if you watch his videos, I struggle to believe he thinks about politics enough to have an ideology foundational or coherent enough to slide into his videos. Over the past few videos, we’ve seen a little more and more about his life. I think he’s a dumb, mid-to-late-20s hot guy who spends most of his time eating gross food, going on walks with his wife (who appears alongside him in videos, lately with increased frequency), gambling, playing World of Warcraft (Volmer looks amazing), gambling, and going to the gym. He’s closer to a golden retriever than a German shepherd or rottweiler. Who gambles.
I don’t think he has anything in common with Marvin Heemeyer aside from bearing the name of his weapon of choice. If I were a betting man, like Killdozer, I’d probably wager that he just thought the name sounded cool.
Here’s a list of all the “diet challenges” he’s done, which is his bread and butter—pun intended:
“The Marshalls Diet” - 7 days, only food and drink (no outside water) from Marshalls
“The Red-40 Diet” - 3 days, only food and drink (no outside water) that contains the controversial additive red-40
“The Protein Shake Diet” - 7 days, only protein shakes, NO OUTSIDE WATER (he almost died)
Last, but certainly not least is: “The Vegas Diet,” where he just…goes to Vegas.
In multiple other videos, we see him sports betting, opening Counter-Strike 2 cases, opening Pokémon cards, playing and losing at slot machines, playing and losing at card tables, among other activities, like playing Fortnite, Minecraft, and World of Warcraft, which he also streams on Twitch.
By all reasonable standards, this man has a gambling addiction.
He apparently has a day job, but it’s not clear exactly what he does from watching the videos alone—he only says he “goes to the lab.” He will drop uncomfortably large sums of money, sometimes in the thousands, on baseball parlays. When he inevitably loses, I’ll credit him, insofar as he responds more or less neutrally. No big crash-outs, for the most part.
But he really likes to open up Counter-Strike cases.
My brother is a Counter-Strike player (I tried to be, too, once upon the time), and I had him over for a weekend recently. I showed him Killdozer—he was unimpressed. However, we got a glimpse of Killdozer streaming Counter-Strike 2.
CS2, and the game it is deviated from, CS:GO have a mechanic where the more you play, the more likely it is that you’ll get a random drop (either in-game or after matches) for some kind of cosmetic item or a case. These cases are marketable on the Steam Community Market, a real in-game market where users can buy and sell cases to each other for real money in the form of Steam Wallet funds.
My brother remarked that Killdozer was actually pretty good at CS, but was amused at his apparent strategy: which is to open a case in between every death, (about 5-10 times a game). For $2.50, you can purchase a key and use it to open a case. “Opening cases” on stream is one of Killdozer’s specialties, and his Steam inventory is public.
Montuga, a website for tracking Steam inventory prices, estimates the cumulative value of Killdozer’s Counter-Strike 2 inventory at $54,953.05
The sheer amount of money this man has spent is almost certainly in the thousands. If he opens 10 cases a day, that’s a minimum of $25. That said, you can use Steam Wallet funds to purchase more cases and keys, so perhaps it’s just a matter of recycling and upselling with some real money here and there. It’s unlikely he’s spent $55k on a free-to-play shooter that’s effectively been out for 13 years, but it’s safe to say he’s sunk in a lot.
What’s most mind-boggling, is that this isn’t real wealth. You can’t really turn it into real money without going through a 3rd party marketplace, which don’t get me wrong, a LOT of people do, and at least it’s possible. Call of Duty will charge you literally $40 on cosmetics in your $80-100 video game. At least CS2 is free and you get to gamble. Case Tracker, a site that does what it says, reports that 32,000,000 cases where opened in the month of March alone. My God. Imagine if the casinos reported how many spins each machine had.
I’m concerned for Mikey Killdozer in the same way I am concerned for anyone struggling with problem gambling.
It’s now extremely easy to gamble, and venues like Counter-Strike cases are effectively casinos with some superficial restrictions and very few regulations around, at least in the US. This sequence from the 6/30 stream really sums it up. In just 60 seconds he warns a viewer “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it,” when they ask for a recommendation on what the best case for “getting started” would be. His warning is totally genuine. Moments later, he unboxes a knife valued at $475 and celebrates with goofy faces, opening more cases, and his “Get a knife, give a knife” rule to entice viewers to continue watch him gamble.
