Chris and morality

This article is boring and needs more images. Make it better by inserting some of Chris's shitty drawings.

Morality is a means by which to distinguish right from wrong. While some things are generally agreed to be positive or negative, it can often vary by entire cultures, religions or individual people. Chris is no exception to the latter rule and his take on morality is rather noteworthy, to say the least.

Because he is very simple-minded and egocentric, Chris has a tendency to react negatively to a perceived wrongdoing and believes everything he does in response constitutes doing the right thing, without regard for potential consequences or even if others try to inform him that his actions are demonstrably immoral behavior. Suffice it to say, his moral compass is one of various reasons why Chris propelled himself to infamy.

Understanding of morality

Like his beliefs on religion and gender, Chris's stance on morality is difficult to interpret. Chris often claims that he is a kind, good-natured, saintly person that doesn't deserve scorn. While he is known to engage in bizarre and morally questionable actions from time to time, he does (at a bare minimum) acknowledge that ideas of right and wrong (as well as punishment) exist, even if he doesn't get the benefit from them that he often expects. It's conceivable that a mix of his condition, coddling from parents and educators and media exposure led to Chris developing a skewed sense of morality that serves primarily himself more than others.

Given his obsessions with fictional media, and what we know about his formative years, it's very likely that Chris learned much of his ideals and how to act towards others from watching television as a child (note that Chris once stated on a school assignment that he considers TV an effective part of child-rearing). Among 80's cartoons like Transformers and The Smurfs, he has specifically cited Care Bears and especially The Adventures of the American Rabbit (his first role model before Sonic the Hedgehog) as influences.

As such, Chris appears to see the world as though it was a cartoon show with himself as the protagonist and others as villains, operating on very simplistic black-and-white morality in doing so. It is very possible that, as a result of his autism (and generally poor upbringing), he takes the morality he sees in fiction literally and that he genuinely cannot wrap his head around "grey areas" because they would be too complex for his childlike brain to process. It's also likely that, given Chris has openly admitted to thinking fictional characters are real and live in a separate realm (a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit), he views cartoons as inherently realistic and educational rather than often exaggerated media made to entertain audiences and/or sell merchandise. Despite this, Chris has consistently failed to take any life lessons and morals from children's media to heart, and it particularly manifests in the form of neglecting to practice what he preaches.

Virtues he fails (or failed) at

Empathy

Chris has a very warped understanding of empathy. This could be attributed to his autism, as autistic people generally have difficulty empathizing with others, although Chris's case has much more to do with his upbringing.

His dubious (if virtually nonexistent) ability to empathize has also led him to denounce most anyone with whom he had a conflict as mean, heartless or even flat out villainous, irrespective of all evidence pointing towards responsibility for turmoil falling on him. Despite fervently chiding them for allegedly lacking a heart, he often neglects to take their thoughts and feelings into consideration himself, preferring to instead jump to conclusions just because they happen to deviate from his extremely simplistic ideals (not to mention deny him what he feels entitled to have).

A perfectly good example of his failure at empathy comes from his edit war with Encyclopedia Dramatica. Because Chris took umbrage at the website's unflattering descriptions of himself and it containing Rule 34 art he despised, he drew and uploaded a scandalous pornographic image of his self-insert with then gal pal Megan Schroeder (who he repeatedly tried to turn into a sweetheart against her wishes), all in a foolish bid to counteract the site's negativity and get them to leave him alone. She eventually discovered the drawing and was understandably revolted by it, promptly chastising Chris for "degrading" and "demeaning" her, to which Chris initially assumed her reaction was from lack of exposure to sexual imagery (rather than the fact that she was nonconsensually depicted in an X-rated scenario). To make matters worse, he admitted that releasing his feelings in the form of a drawing prevented him from becoming "an abusive maniac" and outright told Megan that he was suffering more than she did simply because ED mocked him relentlessly. After a while, this ultimately led to Megan cutting ties with Chris permanently.

Honesty

Main articles: Honest Content and List of Chris's lies

Possibly influenced by The American Rabbit, Chris has been known to self-profess that he is True and Honest. How Chris goes about honesty is nowhere near the positive virtue he apparently sees it as.

For one thing, Chris has been known to be too honest for his own good, particularly lacking a social filter whilst divulging information to trolls. Among various things, Chris revealed that he has incontinence issues, drank soda mixed with Navy, wore a muscle bra, lived in a poorly-maintained house and so forth. On top of that, Chris continued to be "true and honest" despite that this habit always worked to his detriment, with trolls using this newfound information as ammo to humiliate him further.

Inversely, Chris is also not above lying, omitting details and/or framing events to use his victim complex for personal gain. In fact, an entire list of his numerous lies has been documented for anyone who might be curious. For a specific example, Chris maintaned a story that he was banned from a PVCC English class because he told the professor that he was autistic. During a chat with Jackie, he admitted to making offensive statements during a class discussion regarding one student finding a homosexuality allegory in the story Wednesday's Child. Even with this confession, he still insisted the professor was somehow prejudiced against autistics.

Kindness

Main article: Chris and kindness

Chris has also shown a number of times that due to his facade of kindness to others, he can very easily be manipulated by other people, as he rarely questions anyone's intentions beforehand, as that would be the "unkind" thing to do. This shows that Chris seems to have a stronger appeal to just being kind to people for its own sake, rather than so that he can be more approachable.

Whoever Chris acts kindly to depends on who he would classify as his "friends" and his "enemies". If someone gets in the way of whatever he wants to do, or he shifts the blame on someone else for his own fails, Chris will deem that someone as a troll that wants nothing more of him than to make him miserable, showing very little respect of whoever inconvenienced him. Whoever Chris doesn't classify as a troll or feels "temporarily" joined the side of the trolls are his friends. Typically, Chris will attempt to befriend internet celebrities and staff members of the media he enjoys.

Remorse

Main article: Chris and remorse

See also

• Chris and hypocrisy
• Chris and his personality