Flipnote Hatena
Flipnote Hatena was a website where users could upload and share their creations from the free downloadable application for the Nintendo DSi, Flipnote Studio, which allowed users to create both word and picture-based notes with the stylus, add sound, and put them together to create frame-by-frame flipbook-style animations. Other users could comment on them either by text, or by creating a Flipnote of their own.
In June 2010, Chris was spotted at a Fridays After Five event in Charlottesville. Among some very disturbing behavior, Chris was seen playing with his DSi for some time. It later came to light that, after leaving the Internet forever, he was now spending his time on Flipnote Hatena, drawing comments in reply to various Flipnotes. Naïve as ever, he helped a valiant troll to find him by registering with his full name.
After a little more than two weeks of shameless self-promotion and sharing his creepy sex fantasies with the world, Chris got himself banned. Chris's account became active again on 24 July, prior to the service ending on 31 May 2013.
Chris's Flipnote career
Predictably, Chris's first contribution to the Flipnote community was a picture of Sonichu, posted on 17 June 2010. Over the next two weeks, he added several more Flipnotes featuring a mixture of his trademarks: whining about trolls and random-access humor.
Chris's Flipnotes freely swiped from various sources of "inspiration." He ripped off some other users' Flipnotes almost wholesale, uses bases for his works, and even plagiarized the 1983 animated Peanuts cartoon "Sally at School" to produce two of his shorts. He stole the dialogue from the first few minutes almost verbatim (the word "princess" is replaced with "sexy, beautiful woman" because Chris has a one-track mind) and used them in his crude animations.
At the same time, he also posted a number of comments on other Flipnotes (excerpted below) and added a lot of stars on his own creations to give himself praise.
On 29 June 2010, Chris first drew the attention of the site's administrators when they removed several of his rule-infringing Flipnotes. For example, RomanticLabyrinth was taken down for being disturbingly sexual. Other Flipnotes were removed from the site for other reasons – Chris autographing many of his Flipnotes infringes their rule about sharing personal information, and several of his other Flipnotes infringed intellectual property rights.
Over the next few days, Chris failed to get the message and repeatedly re-uploaded several of his deleted Flipnotes. On the third version of RomanticLabyrinth, Chris accused the trolls of trying to make him look like a homo, and stubbornly tried to reupload the Flipnote to prove otherwise. The site's administrators ran out of patience on 2 July 2010 and banned him.
Note that the moderators of the site were, by nature of their position, no doubt well aware of how trolling and various other forms of Internet harassment work. Despite what Chris would have you believe, they would never have punished him for what someone else did in his comments section. Unlike Chris, they didn't have an effectively infinite amount of time to dick around on the Internet, so they wouldn't take kindly to flag abuse, either. Someone didn't give him exactly what he wanted, so he decided to go out of his way to flip his shit and ended up getting himself banned, without ever understanding the reasons for being banned, from yet another public venue that dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of people use every day without issue, proving once again that no one can troll Chris better than Chris himself.
Chris's Flipnotes Return...
| “ | After the week was over, and I was able to again access the Hatena from my DSi, I had previously unlinked my DSi from my past account and relinked it to a New account with a different name. | ” |
| Chris, on ban evasion | ||
Showing once again that he never learns, on 24 July a number of Chris's Flipnotes reappeared, including the "tame" version of RomanticLabyrinth. This time, though, he disabled comments on all his submissions, perhaps working on the assumption that it was the comments from viewers (and not the content of his Flipnotes) that led to his original ban.
Within two days after Chris's return to the site, several of his Flipnotes disappeared from his account, including RomanticLabyrinth and others that had been deleted before for violating the TOS. He later reuploaded the deleted Flipnotes. After the sixth time of reuploading these animations, none of them were taken down. Either this was because the mods got tired of dealing with his bullshit, or because vigilantes had given up reporting them.
On 10 June, almost a year later, Chris made a 3DS Flipnote complaining about how Nintendo wasn't making an update for the 3DS fast enough for his liking.
...and Then Depart Again
On 31 May 2013, Flipnote Hatena was shut down, with Flipnotes now no longer visible from either the official site or the application itself. Luckily, Chris's Flipnotes have been mirrored on YouTube. In total, Chris made twelve Flipnotes, got 24,465 views, received 22,482 stars, and received 604 comments.
Flipnote Studio 3D
On 13 March 2013, it was announced that the DSi incarnation of Flipnote Hatena would be shut down on 31 May, in favor of another incarnation for the Nintendo 3DS, called Flipnote Studio 3D. It was released in Japan on 24 July 2013, and after plenty of pushbacks and anticipation was released in February 2015 for American Club Nintendo users as a going-away present for the program's shutdown in June 2015, nearly two years after its Japanese release. Owing to Chris's prior interest in the application and his current ownership of a 3DS, it seemed likely that he would join the new community, especially considering how he gushed about the game a day later on Facebook.
Of particular note is that while the worldwide version of Flipnote Studio 3D is entirely free, the original Japanese version allows one to view and upload their creations online to other users, but would cost a monthly fee. Owing to Chris's spending habits, it is unknown if he used this version. Flipnote Studio 3D also allowed one to download previous Flipnotes made on Hatena, a feature that Chris could've abused.
Aside from using Miiverse to spam the community with his Sonic Boom Protests, he never reuploaded his old Flipnotes, including RomanticLabyrinth. Either he learned his lesson, or he was simply too lazy to try and reupload it again (most likely the latter).
Flipnote Studio 3D's online functionality was closed on 2 April 2018 without Chris doing anything of note.
Chris's Flipnotes
- Main article: List of Flipnotes
Chris's Comments
Chris's comments on Flipnote Hatena, much like his comments elsewhere on the Internet, were self-centered and devoid of any follow-up.
"Boo!"
"Could you make the voice louder + easier to comprehend, please?"
"My Trolls did that to my past websites too. I felt hurt deeply too."
"C.W.C"
Some other retarded comment about a cow
You're singing my song. I was Internet Famous... HUGE MISTAKE! Right now, I have removed Most Every... thing about myself...
...from the internet. Now there is only FALSE info on me that THEY have crafted and spread to Bad-Rep me.
And worse they've found me in R. Life to catch footage of me for their gross, uncool amusement.
I WANT TO GO BACK TO A NORMAL REAL LIFE OFF THE FRIGGIN' INTERNET!!!
AND I WANT MY "REP" CLEAN OF THIER [sic] CRAP! DO you have any advice to help me clear their crap off me?
Response to comment in "Hippo on your head"
True words of geinus
If Chris says you're a good artist, you must be really good!
Not a pedofork!
...to have a gal like you. :) Stay Sweet & Safe, Christian Weston Chandler. PS: Thanks for Faving me
somethingback.
Not a quid-pro-quo!
Comment left on other videos without a picture:
- "Why can't I find THIS FlipNote on my DSi, even through YOUR Profile's Posted F.N. pages? I want to download it; it IS funny. [:)]" (In response to a flipnote that is completely ripped off from Family Guy.)
Chris's Favorites
What Chris favorited should not come as a surprise. In addition to the obligatory Sonic, Pokémon and Family Guy flipnotes, Chris favorited a number of female-drawn animations, done in anime-like styling and done with a particularly shoujo-ai/yuri (lesbian, for those not into animu) flavor.
Sockpuppets
Chris apparently registered several sockpuppet accounts to favorite himself and give high ratings. For example, in the space of a few days, RomanticLabyrinth attained over 10,000 stars. This is reminiscent of his campaign to cheat in the Chop Chop Master Onion's Rap Showdown, in which he freely admitted to voting for himself multiple times.
Suspected sockpuppets included EnterGodmode, Sonichuwulf, and Sonichu4ever.