White knight

Artist's conception. Bad artist, but still.

“	Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?	”
Chris, CWC Music Video Holding Out For a Hero

White knight is a term used to describe someone who goes on the internet to help or defend someone else on the internet against other people on the internet out of pity or compassion. White knighting of Chris is especially prevalent because of the unprecedented amount of abuse he has taken, which in turn is caused by Chris's total inability to heed the white knights in his life.

Counter trolls are those who take Chris's side to spite his legion of trolls. Some do this because trolling one gullible idiot is less satisfying than trolling trolls who actually have the ability to understand what is going on. Others have decided that Chris-chan has jumped the shark and are trying to make everyone else leave him alone to put a stop to an old meme. Counter-trolls are not to be confused with anti-trolls, who fight trolls in order to get closer to Chris and troll him.

A meta-topic within the broader Chris-chan saga has been the merits of attempting to help Chris stop being such an epic lulzcow, and whether he is deserving or even beyond such assistance. The consensus on forums such as the talk page for Chris's Encyclopedia Dramatica article, /cwc/, PVCC and #sonichu is that Chris's racism, homophobia, and narcissism make him beneath contempt; and that he has consistently refused to take advice given to him on good faith. White knights and counter-trolls are considered to be wasting everyone's time and trolls have little patience for them.

Motives

Pity

Following the release of Chris's first nude photos and the 21 October 2008 video in which he reacted to the loss of his medallions and Blanca, many, including trolls, felt sorry for him. They had not expected it to be possible for him to be trolled so hard or for him to appear so shattered.

Empathy

The internet is full of autistic people, man-children, and self-absorbed morons. Many of them are right here, fascinated with Chris-chan. All of them see something of themselves in him, whether it's his all-consuming need for female companionship or his fervent belief that his homemade comics matter. A lot of white knights have made at least some of the mistakes Chris has made and have since wised up. They think they can help improve Chris by offering the benefit of their experience.

BAAAAAAAW! Kick the Autistic is a cruel game. Quit it!

Circumstances beyond Chris's control

There is ongoing debate about whether Chris is actually autistic. Regardless, there is clear evidence that he suffers from serious mental deficiencies of some kind.

Chris fails to identify people, a possible sign of Prosopagnosia. Julie and her brother Max used the same voice, and yet Chris couldn't recognize that they were the same person. Pictures of different women were used to depict Blanca, and yet Chris thought they were the same person. Chris believed that pictures of Megan Fox were of Vanessa Hudgens. In high school, Chris memorized his appearance in the mirror because he had trouble recognizing himself. Since he probably hasn't "updated" his self-image, this is a possible explanation regarding why he denies being fat.

Chris cannot "read between the lines" or otherwise interpret subtlety. He interprets Family Guy as being against homosexuality. When two male acquaintances exchanged sarcastic homosexual remarks, Chris concluded that they were gay.

Furthermore, Chris's upbringing was anything but ideal. All of these factors and probably many more have helped give us the man-child we know today.

The trolls are even worse people than Chris

Another frequently heard line of reasoning is that the trolls have gone way too far, and have demonstrated that they're even worse than Chris, or at least equally pathetic. For example, BlueSpike's sadistic abuse of his control over Chris outraged even trolls. And, of course, who really has no life here: Chris, or the people who obsessively document and debate everything he does?

Reasons against white knighting

Chris lacks empathy himself

See also: Chris and death, Chris and his Ego

Chris cannot put himself in your shoes or accept that you have been where he is. He has no "theory of mind": if you used to be as shy around women as he is today, in his mind the fact that you aren't shy anymore makes your experience inapplicable to his situation. To Chris, the fact you got over it and he hasn't yet makes the two cases entirely different. He doesn't want to solve his problems by trying what worked for you, he only wants you to pity him for having problems, until he magically dreams up his own solution.

RocketFox: My father died of liver cancer and cirrohosis a day ago ;~; he drank a ton and it hurt him - I'm only 11 and I dunno what to do ;~;

Chris: RocketFox, you will soon recover from your father's accident, I guess it is; DO NOT DRINK Alcohol yourself; STAY OFF THAT JUNK.

Chris's interpretation of the death of RocketFox's dad as an accident shows that he didn't even bother to look up what cirrhosis is. Immediately afterward, he started talking about a sexy dance.

Chris's reactions to suicide are very telling. After Ryan Cash died because of Chris, Chris marveled at how much power he had right after he tried to publicly console Clyde Cash. When Sarah May attempted suicide because of Chris, his reasons for her to stay alive were "I'd feel terrible" and "I'd just cry." When Chris broke up with Ivy, he somehow concocted, in his head, an assumption that that she had committed suicide. Even after having lost so many dear friends to suicide, he still had no problems telling Clyde and Jack Thaddeus to kill themselves. Many people who have had to dealt with suicidal people or have lost relatives and friends due to suicides might not exactly find this amusing.

In the 22 February 2010 edition of the CWCipedia's "Common Questions," Chris listed the top ten worst things to have ever happened to him. The deaths of "two True and Good Women who [he] had friendships with," PandaHalo and Sarah Jackson, ranked seventh. Those tragic events ranked below getting banned from a game store, finding out two people from said store were posting info about him on ED, and having his personal websites hacked.

On 1 November 2009, Chris made a video involving Clyde being as "weak as the Twin Towers" and used his mouse cursor as a plane flying into them.

When Rashid Ali Abdul, an Iranian fan, told him that her country's religious authorities sentenced her to death by beheading for reading Sonichu, Chris said that he was sorry and that the situation was "Pitiful".

While some of this can be attributed to Chris's autism, a condition that often results in a lack of empathy, most autistics can at least learn how to express empathy through a combination of carefully reading the emotions of others and thinking about how a situation affects other people. Chris refuses to seek serious counseling or psychiatric help for this sort of thing - but that's another point.

Autism does not excuse a terrible person

Chris knows he has trouble understanding non-verbal social cues due to his autism, and yet he still jumps the gun on interpreting other people's intentions all the time.

Autism, in and of itself, does not create a failure as massive as Chris Chandler. A majority of autistics manage to get psychiatric help for their problem and are able to develop social and emotional skills so they can cope with their disability and lead rewarding and rich lives. Yet while Chris acknowledges he has a problem, he refuses to do anything more than see the pastoral counselor at his church, who is not a professional trained in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders.

Chris is fully capable of understanding the consequences of his actions. He has a sense of morality (even if he often ignores it in favor of his own selfish interests). He would be (and has been) held accountable for his own actions in a court of law. The fact he is a racist, a homophobe, and a misogynist has nothing to do with his autism.

Chris is beyond pity

Chris's mood is all over the place, even between videos posted shortly after each other. "Thank you for your support"... "Goddamn womanizing raping trollin' stupid pickle-suited n—!"

Chris is capable of doing some very bad things when provoked, which is a quite understandable (if not acceptable) response to trolling. However, "provocation" in this case doesn't necessarily mean harassment or trolling. Merely disagreeing with Chris or asking him why he does what he does can provoke an attack, up to and including threats of violence and death. When Chris is annoyed, frustrated, or overcome by desire or lust, he's capable of doing nasty things. Moreover, when Chris loses it, he doesn't think of the consequences of his actions at all, and his expressions of outrage are completely out of proportion to the provocation — often more outrageous in themselves than whatever the trolls did.

Chris insulted little kids in card games and scared some of them away from visiting The GAMe PLACe. Mimms and Lucas, who frequented The GAMe PLACe and knew Chris in real life years before he was discovered by the internet, couldn't list any redeemable qualities he possessed.

Chris sexually harassed a woman in real life. Megan made it explicitly clear to him that his physical contact and comments to her were unacceptable, but he continued anyway, convinced that eventually she would learn to love being molested by a mentally ill man-child and become his Sweetheart From The Ground Up.

After Megan yelled at Chris for uploading a picture of him fingerbanging her to Encyclopedia Dramatica, he did not apologize, but rather explained to her (in a terribly naïve way) how a handjob works, under the misguided assumption that she merely was upset because she didn't recognize the sex act being performed, or in the hope that she would rationalize what he did on this basis. He then had the nerve to say to her, "I am hurting SOOOOO MUCH MORE than you can be." Why? Not because of the picture, but because the trolls were being mean to him. Yes, him. Based on his ED edits, he was more concerned with people thinking he was fingering his imaginary twin sister than he was with defending Megan's honor.

After each of his online relationships ends, Chris starts looking for a new sweetheart right away, even if she died. No matter the setback, his ego keeps getting bigger.

In mid-July 2009, he addressed a person named 'SonichuIzCool' on YouTube. SonichuIzCool was (was) probably the only genuine fan of Sonichu discovered to date, someone who tried to defend Chris and his comic. She was also genuinely mentally retarded. In his YouTube message, Chris called her "naïve and slow in the mind". He told her she had to "come out where [he] can meet [her]." Another side of this incident is that his YouTube account had been recently hacked, and he had managed to recover it this time, thus avoiding all of the nasty evil damage the trolls might have caused. After he posted this video, though, he got his account suspended due to his own actions.

In early November 2009, in his attempt to blackmail Clyde Cash, Chris went so far as to mock the World Trade Center terror attacks. When feeling angry at Clyde Cash, he not only thought it would be a good idea to blackmail him, but he used the destruction of two skyscrapers full of people after being hit by airliners full of jet fuel and human beings as a metaphor for how weak he thought Clyde was. When people got angry, he tried to fix things by turning the WTC towers into cake candles. To the best of anyone's knowledge, Chris was never coaxed or encouraged by an outside source to use the WTC images. He came up with this reprehensible idea all on his own.

Chris cares only for himself

Chris spends your tax money on luxuries and steals from his parents to buy video games he'll never play. He has the basic skills necessary to hold down a job, so long as it didn't require him to do much interacting with other people, and programs exist specifically to find appropriate jobs for the mentally challenged, but Chris hasn't even tried since being fired from Wendy's.

Further reinforcing his selfishness and laziness, Chris and his family strongly agree it's better for him to hole up in his room and get paid for doing absolutely nothing than to seek out the challenge of finding gainful employment in the real world. This is based on the (quite possibly untrue) assertion that Chris can earn more on disability than from a job. By taking advantage of the government through vastly exaggerated claims of an easily manageable illness which they refuse to help Chris treat, Chris's parents are assured a steady income in the form of his room-and-board payments, and don't have to worry about Chris getting in trouble with the law again when he has another breakdown in public.

Chris is not a good net citizen

“	I will have NO DISCUSSIONS GOING ON BEHIND MY BACK ON MY OWN WEBSITE WHATSOEVER!	”
Chris, on reader participation via Twitter

Chris is more concerned with spreading his own version of honest truth than being a good net citizen. He has adopted the mentality that most spammers have adopted: who cares about things like terms of service and account suspensions and masses of pissed-off people as long as his message gets through? He won't participate in the communities of the sites he posts on. This is not mere passivity in those communities, which might still be tolerable; he deliberately opposes such participation. Most people, while not bothering to contribute to communities, would not at least make deliberate efforts to hinder the community. On deviantART and YouTube, he disables all comments, probably because he knew he'd not get any praise anyway — yet this ignores the fact that open commenting is part of the nature of these sites and disabling comments should be done only if it's being clearly used for flagrant abuses of the system, like spam and votebotting. He regards YouTube purely as a video publishing venue and not as a tool for engaging in discussion with his "fans." He created his Wikipedia user page purely to spread his own message, and did not come to Wikipedia to participate in building an encyclopedia. If the site owners block him, he just comes up with another account or a sockpuppet. The thought of apologizing, getting old accounts reinstated, or the the possibility that people who block him might be trying to send him a message never cross his mind.

Chris's behavior on CWCipedia provides many more examples of his selfish attitude, such as the banner ad crisis in late 2009. He doesn't understand what it really means that the website is neither hosted nor paid for by him personally, and what sort of things the administration typically does on a website like his. He can't or won't understand simple principles like "webhost's house, webhost's rules," or "beggars can't be choosers," but instead believes that since the site has his name on it, it should be run according to his every demand.

Chris will reject your advice

What are you going to tell Chris that his favorite teacher didn't tell him 15 years ago?

Someone carefully explained to Chris why he is a sexist. In response, Chris got angry. He is only interested in a guide on how to attract women without first making any changes to himself. Most ridiculous: he denies being overweight.

Read Vivian's AIM chat. Vivian actually used to be a counter-troll, and warned Chris several times that PandaHalo was a troll. Chris fell for PandaHalo anyway. She then tried to talk some damn sense on him over AIM. But Chris proved to be so goddamn stubborn, she actually tossed the towel and became a troll out of spite. In Vivitheg's words: "i've tried for 3 hours now; it's like fighting a wall, i can't beat the wall no matter how hard i try". Not only has she long since joined the troll ranks, but Chris even began berating and sending threats to his biggest white knight ever.

Chris will reject your disclosure of the truth

• Hanna was a real life troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Lori Lopez was a real life troll, and Chris fell for it.
• PandaHalo was a troll, and Chris fell for it, despite Vivitheg's warnings.
• Julie was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Robert Simmons V was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Sarah May was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Sarah Jackson was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Blanca was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Emily was a real life troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Ivy was a troll, and Chris fell for it, despite warnings from the counter-troll that must not be named.
• Kacey was a troll, and Chris fell for it. She also married the TRUE and HONEST Christian Weston Chandler.
• Matthew, Kacey's father was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Vanessa Hudgens was a troll, and Chris fell for it.
• Shigeru Miyamoto was a troll, and Chris fell for it.

See a trend here? Do you really think he will believe any evidence you send him proving that every fan he has, and pretty much every person he has been in contact with over the past year, is a troll?

Chris asks for it, and always recovers

Hell-bent on spreading his version of the truth because he's True and Honest, Chris cannot realize that his edit warring on Encyclopedia Dramatica was practically a squeal begging for more trolling.

TMI is a tactic Chris uses that usually leads to him abusing himself. Since Chris insists on revealing the most minute details of his life to everyone he meets, the trolls always get more information to fuel further acts of trolling. White knights cannot stop our hero from being Honest.

Chris doesn't get embarrassed either. Oh, his nudes and lewd acts are all over the internet? No big deal! All adults do that kind of thing, so what's the problem?

Chris managed to fully recover from the depressing 21 October 2008 video mentioned above (and quite quickly, too) and proceeded to fail even harder for months. Likewise, despite professing great emotional distress, he bounced back from the loss of Kacey in a matter of hours. So what's the problem?

Chris made himself an outcast

High school and college are the places and moments where people are given their first and often only chance to become a functioning part of society. They gave Chris an even greater chance because he's autistic. They lent him a friendly, caring hand and opened themselves to his friendship, males and females alike. And what did Chris do? He refused, by choice, to associate with anyone who wasn't female, young, rich, white, and within the Charlottesville area.

When the Dean gave him a chance to reform his behavior, he kept going with his bullshit, and was rightly kicked out of Piedmont Virginia Community College for a full year. What did he learn from that? He learned that Mary Lee Walsh was an evil hag with a personal vendetta against him. He was given several chances to learn that his loitering and soliciting were not appropriate behavior in a public place, and what did he learn? He learned that mall cops are Jerkops, that Virginia is for Virgins, and that his Love Quest was a matter of him against the world, with the world in the role of the villain. After he was kicked out of The Game Place (where he was again given more leeway than most people ever would have gotten, out of a sense of misguided pity), he was barred from the last place in Ruckersville that was still open to him, and left with only one place: his home.

Now, it's too late for Chris. He was given a friendly hand, but he angrily bit it, and that hand will never reach out to him again. He doesn't even belong in his own home anymore. He spends most of his time in exile in his fantasy land of CWCville, the one and only place still open to him, and that place doesn't even exist.

Stress

In order to get close to Chris, white knights have to spend at least as much time and effort as trolls to get up-to-date and to thwart the troll output. They'd probably have to lie and pretend to be a girl or video game designer to even capture his attention. This combined with Chris's usual responses is enough to make any sane non-professional psychologist Crash Into Slumber.

Chris will not even read your message

The spam filter is a powerful innovation of good ol' America Online. Any e-mails sent to his private address will be deleted, probably unread, and any e-mails sent to the Mailbag, if they even get published, will be given one-word replies and ignored.

The trolling will not cease

Even if white knights get to Chris somehow, there is no endgame in which Chris will be free from trolls before his death.

In school, Chris was trolled by his classmates. He was even trolled by one of his real life friends. In college, he was trolled by friends who grew sick of his bullshit, and by girls annoyed by his "attraction methods" and rampant, unabashed sexism. If Chris quit the Internet tomorrow, he would still be trolled by a society that refuses to tolerate ignorant manchildren flouting its rules.

If everyone trying to create his next fake sweetheart suddenly got bored and quit, Chris would unwittingly seek out new trolls to take their place, and we know newfags are more than willing.

If Chris isn't assigned a custodian after his parents die, his story will probably end when he falls victim to some con artist who swindles him out of his monthly tugboat and perhaps his home.

If Chris does get assigned a custodian, he will continue his antics until the custodian kicks him out or bans him from the internet.

If the custodian bans Chris from the internet, that's Chris trolling himself.

If Chris gets institutionalized, he will attract real life trolls at the mental hospital.

If Chris does not go into an institution and instead ends up in prison due to circumstances that cannot be foreseen, he will be trolled there as well.

If the entire world reforms and decides to leave Chris alone, his own sense of victimization will override any benefit. Consider that Chris felt persecuted simply by observing males who had more success than himself. He regards legitimate assertions of authority as rank brutality. Adam Stackhouse managed to upset Chris to a degree that CWC observers rate among the most impressive to date, and he did it without even knowing that Chris existed at the time. Bleak as it is, unless Chris embarks on a program of radical self-improvement and/or learns some humility, and manages against the odds to shake off both his legions of abusers and seamy reputation, he will forever feel like a thoroughly kicked autistic.

The trolling helps Chris, and indeed others

If Chris were just some random nobody on the internet, he'd be doing nothing but playing video games and occasionally drawing unsellable comics until his parents died. Then he'd be institutionalized. He'd remain without social skills, a virgin all his life, with no job, success or future.

Instead, Chris's antics have become a cultural phenomenon that — without exaggeration — is something extraordinary, unique, and which likely won't be replicated in any shape or form for years to come. Chris has secured his place among such luminaries as the Time Cube guy and John Titor, and unlike the Time Cube guy, you can actually comprehend what Chris is saying most of the time. Chris interacting with the world through his websites and YouTube has drawn in a crowd of people who are participating in an unprecedented, continual piece of performance art of a kind that would have been unheard of only a few years ago. He brings entertainment to thousands of people all over the world, an accomplishment that most could never dream of achieving — the kind of thing that would give Dane Cook a stiffy just to consider. His internet fame is actually a sort of success in its own right, and may bring him further success. There are thousands of people out there that are so fascinated by him that they study his life on a daily basis.

One could argue that if Chris eventually "retired" from this comedy act by actually coming to terms with his problems, seeking professional help, and completely reforming (and selling media rights to his life's story to the highest bidder, like all sensible people would do), he could live the rest of his life secure and probably moderately wealthy. The troll audience would give him a standing ovation for entertaining them for as long as he did, and move on to the next piece of tragicomedy brought to us by the emerging Web technologies. We have seen far more messed-up celebrity stories already; Chris's tale is at least quite different from the norm and engaging.

What's more, the trolls provide him with an actual social outlet to learn and grow in life. Instead of being an unemployable, hideous, fat, virgin bedroom dweller that nobody has ever heard of, he's an internet-famous unemployable, hideous, fat, virgin bedroom dweller and this by itself increases his chances of getting friends and a girl. He may even end up employed, too, probably appearing in an advertisement or sponging off royalties from any biographical medium, whether it be a book, movie or TV series. He could become the next William Hung if he put half an ounce of effort into it.

Also, Chris's constant failure at life has inspired hundreds to self-improvement. Really, he's accomplishing a pretty good thing here.

Chris treats "fans" and white knights like crap

If you try to white knight him, his response is merely to block you on YouTube, AIM or any other messenger service and never respond. He accuses practically all white knights of being trolls. Quite ironic, isn't it? He screams "I'M STRAIGHT!" when you tell him up front that you're a guy. When you tell him his current "girlfriend" is actually a troll, he'll accuse you of wanting to "break up the relationship for the lulz." He'll be rude, won't listen and won't read between the lines. He will always bite the hand that feeds him, so you should just let him wallow in his own self loathing.

“	Whatever.	”
Send Chris a 400-word, well-reasoned email — get a 1-word reply back

“	You can go f*** yourself.	”
A not-so reasonable reply to reasonable criticism

Chris doesn't treat his (perceived) fans much better. Even aside from the SonichuIzCool incident mentioned above, Chris has severe problems answering questions from his fans (or trolls who pretend to be positive fans), and will often react in a hostile manner to everything he sees as negative or offensive. His Mailbag is the most obvious example. He hates being corrected, and tenaciously clings to his misinformed beliefs; his insistence that Asperger's Syndrome and autism are unrelated is a good example of this. When or if he's having a good day and manages to answer questions from fans at all, he often gives them very brief, one or two word answers that do not elaborate on anything, or outright ignore parts of the question. Not only is he terse, but he's slow to act as well; for example, it took him three days to realize that a video he uploaded was seriously broken. He also promised that a spectacular fan creation would be officially featured in the Sonichu comic — and it ultimately was, over a year later.

Most webcomics have a specific schedule that they have decided to follow. Many webcomics fail to live up to them – some less, some more; some for good reasons, some have no excuse whatsoever. Chris didn't have a set schedule for the comic for the longest time, but then agreed to update the comic on a daily basis, a schedule which even the most well-funded webcomic artists would consider particularly demanding. In February and March 2010, there have been few updates to the comic. When the inevitable complaints about schedule slip started to come, Chris snapped at his fans by saying that inspiration takes its time, forgetting that it was he who decided daily updates were the way to go. As the "Great Director Chandler", he could have the power to decide what schedule to follow, but instead, he chose to attack his fans.

Examples

Read: White knight emails

Svenka is a counter-troll.

On 6 May 2009, YouTube user xThexPinchx/NorthxStar7/ThePinchisDaBomb tried to blackmail major trolls, claiming to have information on them. He was easily called on his bluff by someone who had not trolled Chris at all. The Pinch has also threatened BlueSpike saying he has information from his friends but the thing is BLUESPIKE HAS NO FRIENDS.

The TV Tropes article on Sonichu currently has a white-knight message as the first text of the article, with a link back to this very page. The message is reproduced below:

External links

• White Knighting article at Encyclopedia Dramatica