Chris and negotiation

"Shut Up and Buy My Toys, please."

- Chris, to a potential customer.



While dealing with Chris, trolls often experience his unique form of negotiation. Due to a severe sense of entitlement, a lifetime of coddling and other factors beyond his control, Chris has no grasp of how to compromise and often fails to understand what sort of bargaining position he's in.

Often, trolls blackmailing Chris will find him making demands of them as if he were the one with leverage. Conversely, some have experienced the oddity of having Chris run away from a situation where he was purposely given the upper hand. When it comes to dealing with Chris directly, one can only expect that he will always take the path of least resistance, even if it doesn't benefit him.

Concept of compromise
Negotiation is based on compromise. Both parties must work together and make concessions to each other to find the best possible solution to their problems in a satisfactory manner. Chris doesn't understand this, and arguably cannot understand this, given his severely stunted ability to understand that other people have thoughts and feelings that differ from his own. Being completely ego-centric, Chris believes that, in any exchange, both parties must share the same viewpoint: his. Chris can't stand any form of prolonged confrontation and quickly tires if his demands aren't met exactly as he has made them.

On numerous occasions, Chris has tried to negotiate either by making ridiculous demands or outright refusing to give anything up (or do anything at all for that matter). After he makes his case, his mind is "closed on the matter" and he is unwilling to budge. When further pressed, he often shuts down completely and walks away from the table, into the waiting arms of his PlayStation 3.

Other times, Chris just asks whoever he has bothered if both of them can just "forgive and forget". He said this to Michael Snyder when asking about being unbanned from The GAMe PLACe two years after his original ban. That may be somewhat understandable, but Chris also tried this same excuse a day after he doxxed Mr. Smith.

Mary Lee Walsh
"Mary, I've slept on it, and I have realized that note-hanging is not the way to get attention. And I don't really want to meet with either you nor Susan, no offense. I'll tell you what, let's forget the meeting, and if you will allow my newsletter to stay in distribution, I will do all of the following: -I will never hang notes on the wall again. -I'll consider stopping my Silent Treatment on Susan. -I'll consider knocking you and Susan up my scale of Respect each by 2 points (0 = No Respect...10 = Respect)."

One of the earliest examples of Chris's attempts at negotiations was in emails between Mary Lee Walsh and himself, shortly after she arranged a meeting to discuss his relationship-soliciting on campus. Instead of apologizing, Chris vowed to "never hang notes on the wall again", and to consider "stopping my Silent Treatment" of Susan Hannifan, a PVCC Guidance Counselor, in exchange for letting him continue distributing his newsletter and cancelling the meeting. To further sweeten the deal, Chris offered to "knock[...] [Walsh] and Susan up my scale of Respect each by 2 points". Ignoring the horrible choice of words in regards to "knocking up" two of his female superiors, Chris believed that an imaginary measurement of his personal opinion was an extremely important bargaining chip. This is an example of how Chris behaves in negotiations where he wants something from another person - by offering minimal effort on his part, but expecting full returns from the other party.

Shigeru Miyamoto
During the Nintendo saga, Shigeru Miyamoto stated that Chris must meet him at Nintendo's American headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Chris handled this by making a video where he pretended to come back from Redmond when he never left the house. Chris demanded that the CEO of an international company come to HIS house and meet with him. When Chris was pressed as to why the meeting had to be at his house, Chris said that he had no money. When he was asked why he had no money, he said he had no job. When he was asked why he didn't have a job, Chris made various excuses and cited his very brief employment at Wendy's. He also insulted Miyamoto, asking him "Are you the "Mario" who Plays Fair, or the "Bowser/Koopa" who Cheats and Lies?" This sort of "pass the buck" attitude is very common when dealing with Chris. Nothing negative can ever be his fault.

Audiobooks
In 2009, Chris came into contact with Vivian Gee, a white knight who eventually turned into a troll. Vivian was very helpful to Chris at first, but Chris refused to hear any of her input. As a result, their relationship soured, and Vivian started a popular Sonichu parody audiobook that Chris despised. Chris ranted and raved, demanding that the audiobooks be removed. They were not. One month later, Chris quickly changed his tune. After taking out a copyright on the name "Sonichu", Chris believed he now had magical copyright powers and demanded that Vivian give him 25% of all the profits she'd made from the audiobooks (which was $0). Overnight, something that he had made death threats over became not only welcome but highly sought after.

Jack Thaddeus
When Jack stole Chris's PSN accounts, Chris asked him "Why don't you come down to my house yourself in person, unless you are the cowardly weakling?" Jack had to remind him that he (Jack) held all the cards, and Chris was in no position to make demands.

THAT IS MY HOUSE
After his parents ordered that he remove all copies of his video tour of 14 Branchland Court from the Internet, Chris made another video in which he made his demand that all the copies of the tour which had been uploaded by trolls be taken down. Rather than calmly and politely explaining that the videos posed a threat to the safety of his family (which would likely have gotten at least some of the trolls to remove their copies), Chris loudly shrieks like a child and even turns his demands from being idiotic to being vaguely insulting by admitting it was his fault for uploading the videos, then immediately threatening the trolls with detectives and police if they didn't immediately do as he asked. Humorously, Bob does a better job at mentioning how serious the situation is, but because Chris didn't include his speech in the final video, the damage the trolls would cause in result was inevitable.

Sweetheart sagas
Whenever Chris wants to meet one of his "sweethearts" in real life, he usually wants them to come to him, no matter how difficult such a trip would be. He wanted PandaHalo to come to him despite her living in Australia. He wanted Julie to come to him even though she was supposedly a poor immigrant who couldn't afford a car or bus fare. He wanted Kacey to come to him even though she lived in the D.C. area, which is an hour or so from Ruckersville.

One of the most recent sweethearts, Jackie, was willing to have a relationship with Chris as long as he tried to become a better person. Instead of trying to put more effort and try to better himself, he decided to end things.

During the Julie saga, Chris made several deals with Clyde Cash and The Miscreants, all of which he reneged on:


 * In the first deal, Chris agreed to do a video where he came out of the closet to save Julie's life. In the first take, he called himself a "gaybian", which was done so that he could somehow say he was gay without actually calling himself gay. He did a second take where he clearly stated that he was being forced to say he was gay. When he finally did call himself a homosexual, he mumbled it and stated he was "guhhhhh".


 * The second deal was that Chris would clean his room to save Julie's life and that he would do a video to prove it was clean. To avoid having to clean his room, he merely pushed some of his stuff aside and filmed his floor for 30 seconds before he did his Captain's Log.


 * The final deal resulted in the infamous Julie Reveals Herself call. BlueSpike, as both Julie and her kid brother Max, had gained access to Chris's PSN account. In the guise of Max, he offered Chris an ultimatum: The PSN and Yahoo! accounts or Julie. In a conversation before the call, Chris told Max that he chose Julie, believing that, like in the movies and TV, he would get both back for "making the right choice". Right when "Max" put "Julie" on, Chris immediately asked "her" to get his PSN and Yahoo! back. Failing that, he tried to guilt Max into giving it back to him. In the main call, Max gives Chris one last chance to change his choice. He sticks with Julie, despite the hold that his PSN account has over him. When Max threatened to sell his account on eBay, he revealed that he "made the right choice" and that he deserves his PSN.

Chris, CWCipedia captain
When he was given his wiki for free, he demanded complete executive control from day one. In Chris's mind, this meant that every demand he made would be fulfilled by the staff and that anything done without his permission would be removed immediately. He insisted on a gaudy background, and threatened to stop working whenever the webmaster displeased him. Later, when Jack Thaddeus graciously paid for the CWCipedia's webspace with ads featuring homoerotic images, Chris went on a tirade and immediately demanded that they be taken down, yet refused to even consider paying for his website. When removal failed, he said that he wanted them to be smaller, as if he had some say in how large advertisements were. Chris had no concept of how advertising worked but merely assumed that he had the final say in everything.

Later, during the "popularity contest" between Sonichu and Asperchu, he tried to make amends with Alec Benson Leary to remove Asperchu ads from the front page of the CWCipedia. However, instead of making reparations, Chris demanded that Alec tell his fans to go back to Sonichu. Chris, who was in no position to make requests, attached several "clauses" to his apologies. Chris's list of demands was larger than the apology they were bundled with. All of this came after Chris drew a comic where he broke into Alec's house, stole a dating game from his Xbox 360, blew up said Xbox, and freed a group of Rosechus that he implied were the victims of sexual abuse. After finally fulfilling most of Alec's requests in a substandard and slapdash manner, Chris killed him, his webmaster and two other comic artists in Sonichu #10 as some sort of childish form of revenge.

Simonla
Evan created Simonchu as a joke, giving permission to use him in the comic, but then Chris decided to instead make his own female version named Simonla Rosechu. This (along with Chris openly lying that he was given permission to alter the character) roused Evan's ire considerably and started a long fight for the future of a recolor OC. Evan demanded that Chris remove Simonla from the comic and Chris, naturally, was tenacious in his attempts to prevent Simonla from meeting her untimely demise. At first, Chris simply ignored Evan's orders. Then (after plans to include Simonchu as Simonla's brother didn't appease Evan) Chris later contrived a new excuse to disregard the wishes of a perceived foe and keep what rightfully wasn't his: that Simonla was happily living in CWCville with a boyfriend and it would be a cruel violation of her rights to kill her for good.

Evan gave further demands but Chris continued to dig in his heels, even nonchalantly explaining his egocentric delusions to Alec Benson Leary (who was dealing with Chris's domineering attitude toward the CWCipedia as was) in an attempt to justify sparing a stolen OC. Only when the CWCipedia was shut down by force did Chris finally budge and even then, his compliance amounted to no more than a toilet explosion as her cause of death. And to say nothing of the "revenge" Chris graphically dished out to a fictionalized portrayal of Evan afterwards.

Michael Snyder is ColdHearted and Mean
Less than two years after getting banned from The GAMe PLACe, Chris wouldn't take no for an answer, so he decided to try and persuade Michael Snyder to let him resume patronage. When an apology attempt was met with point-blank rejection (as well as an anti-Semitic insult and a call to the police), Chris demanded his fanbase harass Mike in retribution on his behalf. Unfortunately for Chris, his decision to record the altercation as "evidence", in case he needed to prove he was faced with aggression, led to his "fans" praising Mike for sticking to his guns against Chris.

PlayStation Network
Often, trolls will gain access to Chris's PSN, and make various demands. The most common of these demands is that he sell or throw out some of his beloved toys or games. Despite his claims that he plays with everything in his room, a glance at his PSN account shows otherwise. Most of his PSN activity is divided between LittleBigPlanet, God of War 3 and ModNation Racers, which leaves most of his vast collection of games untouched. Even though he doesn't use the majority of the toys and games he owns, he refuses to sell them. This refusal is usually followed up by him saying that he doesn't have the money to do something that would improve his life.

Between late August 2010 and early September 2010, Chris was met with the opportunity (not really) of gaining $9,001 in exchange for the destruction of his PS3. Needless to say, it didn't go well. The bounty was only for trolls and was, in turn, fake. However, Chris tried to haggle (albeit very poorly) with Clyde Cash and Surfshack Tito to get something that never existed. The ultimate result of this was Chris actually waiting for his money at the Charlottesville Fashion Square after being tricked into going there. After realizing he had been tricked, he ended by telling them to "go point at your own damn snouts and Oink like Eric Cartman, and then Rape yourselves with your own Damn Darth Maul Dual Light Saber."

Flipnote Studio on 3DS
In one of Chris's many Flipnote Studio creations, he requests that Nintendo port the software to their 3DS platform. In typical Chris fashion, his animation consists of him yelling loudly and demanding that Nintendo bring the software to the 3DS. Chris had sped his voice up to the point where it's hard to decipher what he's saying, but he assumes that being loud will get you what you want. Throughout the entire animation, his tone of voice and choice of words suggest that he's under the impression that he's some sort of spokesperson for all Flipnote users. Nintendo eventually released Flipnote Studio 3D in February 2015.

Calling Out
Returning to YouTube after an 8-month hiatus, Chris decided to confront two of his trolls, Surfshack Tito and Thorg, over what they've done and demanded that Tito apologize to Sony over the hackings and to The Wallflower for "breaking them up", then give him $1000, and telling Thorg to apologize for putting up pictures years ago and to put up a non-slanderous billboard saying that Chris is STRAIGHT. He also wants them to remove all contributions to the CWCki. If these weren't done, he'd reveal their pictures and possible other dox and have the trolls troll them.

Unlike the incident involving Clyde Cash resulting in a very poorly made decision, Chris honestly believes he has the upper hand and can finally pay back against some of his trolls. However, what he's doing isn't a negotiation, but an extortion, expecting these goals to be completed or they were to suffer the consequences with Chris doing nothing on his part.

eBay and Craigslist sales
Chris's idea of salesmanship is interesting, to say the least. He attempts to sell mostly old, broken or worthless items and tends to demand many times the item's actual value in exchange, often non-negotiable. An early example was his attempt to sell an ancient television on Craigslist, demanding $250 for a piece of junk he'd be lucky to sell for a tenth of that sum.

Since then, he has become a much more prolific e-merchant, and has whittled away 2014 charging thousands of dollars for his "art" on eBay, showing that he is still delusional enough to vastly overestimate his e-fame and artistic talent. Similarly, he tried to sell his late father's replica of a Stradivarius violin for almost $100,000, as if he believed that a violin with a manufactured label saying it was made in the 1950s on its interior could be the real thing. Most recently, he has attempted to sell his and his mother's ancient, barely-functioning cars. Typical of Chris, he is demanding thousands of dollars for cars which are worth maybe a few hundred (as scrap). He also characteristically demands that the deal in question is of a "no-haggle" nature even when setting unrealistic asking prices on sites where haggling is often the norm.

Needless to say, most of Chris's merchandise either go unsold, or he is forced to accept a more realistic price for it. We can only assume the rest is bought by his most avid fans who glory in the opportunity to possess samples of his fine work.

However, Chris may not just ask for ridiculous prices in exchange for his shitty possessions because he's taking his prospective buyers for fools, but because he doesn't know the first thing about value. Consider his lavish spending sprees that transcend his ability to fund them; his parents taught him nothing about the value of money, which he thinks can be pissed away nonchalantly. He also struggles with measurement, as evidenced by his estimation of a 12-pack of canned lemonade weighing 50 pounds, a symptom of autism, it's possible that his incompetence in this regard also extends to an estimation of value.

The reality, however, could also be something much more sinister. The high prices he sets for his goods may not be due to ignorance of value, but a symptom of his abject materialism and hoarding, inherited from Barb. It's possible that Chris is so attached to and obsessed with his material possessions that he seriously finds his ludicrous prices an acceptable consolation for him to have to give up part of his precious hoard.

Unban contracts
In October 2016, Chris delivered contracts to at least two stores (Gamestop and Best Buy) from which he was banned. In these contracts (which were likely not signed), he puts in a clause stating the stores in question can't call the police against him (making the contract null and void, since contracts can't protect against prosecution.) He also wants the managers to "forgive and forget," and claims that not signing proves they are "most uncompassionate and lacking of heart and soul of any person."

Sonic World
If, for whatever reason, you needed further proof that Chris hasn't learned from previous failures at negotiation, the trouble he got into with the Sonic World Discord server in late 2020 is a perfect example.

Chris took Cirrusfire's Sonichu character mod and reposted it with considerable alterations (i.e. replacing the soundbites and character bio with what he made) and absolutely zero permission from the modder whatsoever. After he was rightfully kicked from the Discord server for this unwanted misuse of someone else's hard work (as well as an egocentric tirade on his Twitter with more expression of his delusions), he went to have a word with Cirrusfire himself.

Instead of acknowledging he had done something wrong and offering to work things out (which no one would expect from Chris by this point anyway), he opted to berate Cirrusfire. Not only was he under the impression that him crediting the modder and Sonic World being a non-profit fan project would justify meddling with data unauthorized, but he also proceeded to claim he was hurt by his so-called act of "generosity" to help Cirrusfire be "made famous" and outright accuse him (along with others in the server) of being "ungrateful and selfish".

Sure enough, Chris was eventually banned from the server, no closer to getting what he wanted than every previous conflict he failed to amicably resolve by his own fault.

In court
When Chris was arrested in August 2021, he found himself before the courts to be arraigned for the charges. After being reminded that said appearance was to determine if he would be given bond or not (based on his likeliness to appear on trial and if he, the defendant, constituted a danger to himself and others,) Chris made demands that he be let home to collect his things, but not before risking contempt of court by doing things such as stomping his feet in anger and interrupting the judge several times with inane outbursts such as: "I'm famous on the internet!"

Needless to say, the judge was not impressed with this petulant behavior, and ruled that Chris be held without bond until his preliminary hearing on 16 September 2021.

Ignoring reality
When Chris is faced with a task requiring any effort on his part (no matter how minimal) or involves something that does not benefit him, he completely ignores it. Chris automatically disregards anything that will not benefit him immediately, or almost immediately. The hardest part of negotiating with Chris is that, if you make a demand that he does not agree to, he shuts down. Like a spoiled infant, Chris will not even deal with something that isn't self-serving and easy.

On the other hand, when you have something Chris wants, Chris will not give up until he has acquired it - on his terms. When the road to a reward has a sign that bluntly says Chris is not eligible, he will attempt to get the reward anyway or claim that the rules are discriminatory and unfair. Chris will pursue his goal thoughtlessly and simple-mindedly - expending great resources in the process - often ignoring even the idea that he might not get what he wants. In the process, he frequently acts as if he has some sort of leverage even in situations where this is manifestly not the case — he continually made demands of the CWCipedia's administrators, for instance, even though they had full control over the website and he had none.

Also (whether you think it's due to being naïve about how real-world humans work or a failed attempt at deliberate manipulation), Chris seems to assume that if it comes straight from his mouth in a situation where he expects complete benefits, what he says would (and should) be immediately accepted by the other party, willfully ignoring literally anything to signify he is neither True nor Honest. His many "apologies", for one thing, which he seems to think will make anyone denying him what he wants change their mind and let him live a consequence-free lifestyle (which of course is largely because of Chris actively defying established rules and norms for socially acceptable behaviour in the first place).

Altering reality
In some instances (the rare ones that he does what he was instructed to), anything said or done he feels slandered his good name he will simply state are lies and instruct everyone to ignore them, then will close his mind on the subject. This is retarded for two reasons. By telling his "fans" to ignore the lies, he is alerting "fans" that are a little behind on what's happening with Chris of their existence, making more people see them than would have if he didn't acknowledge them. He is also showing he is aware of their existence, and still insisting they are lies.

As mentioned above, Chris will also expect any lie he makes in a conflict where he is hopeful to get something he wants to be taken at face value, no matter what. To name one specific case, whilst on the verge of facing legal action if he didn't stop using Simonla in his comic, Chris claimed that he could've easily come up with the character entirely on his own and later edited Simonla's CWCipedia entry with a false statement that no OC theft ever occurred. Predictably enough, no one bought this lie.

Delays


When Chris has to meet a requirement during a negotiation (most noticeably deadlines), he will explain that he is "working on it". To Chris, saying this is an acceptable substitute for actual work, whether or not he is indeed "working on it". If in his own good time, Chris feels inclined to fulfill the deal, he'll submit whenever he wants to, regardless of the original agreement, well after the deadline. If the agreement was that he would receive something for the "work" done, he will demand it unceasingly, despite not holding up his end of the deal in any way, shape, or form.

Even if Chris somehow agrees to a set of terms, he will try to get around them. If he agrees to give something up for someone, he will go behind that person's back to get it back so that he could have both. If he agrees to draw a comic, he will most likely do something easier, like making a video or write a blog entry, figuring that that counts as work. If he agrees to willingly slander himself (like calling himself gay, for instance), he'll either mumble it so that it's incomprehensible, or he'll hide his face.