Passive observers

When people first hear of Chris, they may become interested or fascinated. While some will degenerate into white knights, A-Logs, enablers, weens or carpetbaggers, there are those who choose to keep their distance from Chris and don't want to be a negative influence on him. These select people are what we call passive observers. They enjoy observe Chris's antics from the delightful view of the moral high-ground while not directly interfering with his life, and recognise that Chris really needs help from the people around him and trained professionals, not random people on the internet.

The CWCki as passive observers

Some passive observers decide to record the more interesting and comedic events of Chris's life. On the CWCki, avoiding direct contact with Chris is essential — along with trying to remain as neutral and unbiased as possible — but a little ribbing is okay, so long as it doesn't go too far. The CWCki's wealth of information over the years has been gained from Chris's inability to keep information to himself - his incredible honesty has made sure we know everything we need to know without having to befriend him.

Open-ended questions have also been a good way to get information in the past, as we've discovered from the Mailbags, and details of how to ask Chris a good question are provided below. Chris tends to interpret yes-or-no questions without subtext; for example, one person asked him if he listens to music while working on the comic, and he simply replied "yes". He missed that there may have been subtext (what kind of music, does it help/distract you, has it ever provided inspiration, etc.), and didn't provide much information. However, he has a tendency to be incredibly candid when asked an open-ended question.

Criteria

Passive observers are very strongly discouraged from doing the following:

• Attempting to contact Chris — Do not directly message Chris on any of the social platforms he is on. If Chris tries to contact you or mentions you in a comment, just ignore him.
• Defending Chris — Chris is by no means innocent, and he is beyond help from people who aren't professionals, which you most likely aren't.
• Expressing hatred for Chris and over-exaggerating his flaws — For the simple reason that this makes you no better than Chris. If you really hate whatever Chris is doing, you don’t need to threaten or otherwise get actively involved with him over it.
• Encouraging Chris’ bad habits — Playing along with his lifestyle is a very bad idea, as it only gives him more of a reason to remain as childish as ever.
• Attempting to troll or annoy Chris — This is not only is most likely to fail, it's also fruitless and often comes back to bite you in the ass.
• Attempting to profit off of Chris's fame - Often times, those that do this, usually big names, get in a heap of trouble for exploiting Chris's infamy.

Q&A advisory guidelines

In some scenarios, it’s perfectly fine to ask Chris questions under some set conditions:

• Make sure your question is actually for getting important details from Chris.
• Don't get too intimate with him. Chris is not your friend and likely never will be.
• Avoid asking repetitive questions like “When’s the next comic coming out?” or “Is Barb still alive?”.
• On the rare chance that Chris vehemently refuses to answer, just leave it at that and stop asking. If it doesn't work the first time, chances are it won't work the next hundred times.
• Your question must not be a negative influence on Chris.

If you are an editor of the CWCki and you'd like to ask Chris a question yourself, then you should post here. Just be sure to look through the various Discord Q&A sessions in order to make sure that your question hasn't already been asked, and remember to follow the guidelines.

Why passive observation works

You don't have to risk becoming an easy target

Kiwi Farms is the internet equivalent of Roanapur from Black Lagoon: a seedy, shady underworld that's dominated by thugs, gangsters and mafiosi and "governed" by leaders of various major organized crime groups, and any outsiders that try to meddle in their affairs are met with vicious retaliation by the inhabitants. Much like Roanapur, Kiwi Farms is a seedy, shady website that's dominated and ruled by the trolls, and any outsiders that try to meddle in their affairs are met with vicious retaliation by the inhabitants. This includes getting involved with lolcows that they're documenting, such as Chris. Trying to get into contact with Chris for one's own ends is the equivalent of an outsider stepping into Roanapur unprepared: they're going to get viciously targeted. As such it is best to not try to interact with Chris in any way shape or form unless you wanna risk being a possible target for the trolls themselves.

Concerns with privacy

In the post-Idea Guys era, users of Kiwi Farms have made it a habit to dox people who tried to contact Chris with the express purpose of getting directly involved in his life for their own ends as a deterrent.

Prevention of further degrading a mentally ill man's sense of reality

Even by the time he was discovered by SomethingAwful and 4chan in October 2007, his grip on reality was already weak, such as his belief he can curse people who have inconvenienced him. Marvin (a former Miscreant) later confided that his group regularly interfered with any attempts to help Chris by deleting emails before Chris could read them or by manipulating Chris to believing the white knights were leaking information. This did no favors to a man with an already weak grip on reality and virtually nonexistent social skills, and the Miscreants only ended their Truman Show engineering over him once his dad died. By that point, the damage had been done as what they did have Chris with lingering suspicion and paranoia as to the motives of others, and he has occasionally posted on social media channels about how he suspects people offline of being trolls, albeit without any real evidence. Following the death of his father in September 2011, Chris's mental state has taken a freefall, as he was immediately thrust into the world of adult responsibilities that he was mentally and emotionally ill-equipped to deal with due to a lifetime of being coddled by his parents and thus increasingly invested into magical beliefs as solutions to the problems presented by reality. His increasingly deteriorating mental state has resulted in numerous maladaptive coping mechanisms such as escapism (Astral projection, the Dimensional Merge), rationalization ("I can't go to BABScon because of COVID-19, so it must be a part of the merge!"), Nostalgia (trying to relive his high school days), dissociation and safety behaviors (Spirit possession), and sensitization (i.e. flipping out over blocks on Twitter, resulting in the Soft Exile). By the time of the Idea Guys in 2017, Chris's mental state has deteriorated so badly that he was dancing with dancing with Magi-Chan at BronyCon 2017, just a month prior to his interaction with them. After the Idea Guys were ousted by the Guard Dogs, the damage had been done, as they have devolved Chris's mental state into a too far gone state that he has chose to completely alienate himself from his remaining real-life friends in in favor of his imaginary friends and internet enablers. With Chris being blacklisted by virtually every convention (one of the last vestiges of real-life socialization for him) due to his incest in July-August 2021, Chris has made himself into a pariah. Trying to further degrade his already horrid mental state is the equivalent of kicking down a weak guy who cannot defend himself at all. It's borderline A-logging at this point.

See also

• Unholy Quintet - How not to observe Chris.