Chris and the Internet

The Internet is a specialized computer programming that allows the transmission of data through long distances through a massive collection of networks connected all over the world. The Internet has grown since its first real conception in the 1980s as a means for universities to communicate with each other. It is said that nearly 2 billion people are connected to the Internet.

One of those is a fat, whiny, bigoted, misogynistic, and egotistical manchild. He is the Internet's battered girlfriend who always comes back for more.

Understanding

Chris seems to be aware that the Internet is a place where, once you put something up, anyone with access to a computer could see it. However, due to a combination of his ego and his general inability to understand others, Chris has come to the conclusion that if he puts anything on the Internet, everyone will see it; and if you direct a message to someone, only they will see it. Chris has in the past attempted to address videos to specific people, from celebrities to potential employers to internet girlfriends. Most telling is his 8 May 2010 rant, which was addressed to anyone who served on the Green County School Board in the early 1990s.

Chris sees no problem in dropping highly sensitive information over his videos — including his phone number, street address, and the secret name of the girl he desperately wanted to be his girlfriend. He doesn't understand that YouTube is a public website and not an instant messaging service, never paying attention to the deluge of comments he gets from horrified onlookers that definitively prove his "private" messages are anything but.

Chris has been on the Internet for some time, yet does not understand how to act online any more than he does in real life. While many users of the Internet contribute content, are polite and helpful, and generally follow any established rules, Chris sees all websites as vehicles to spew his self-serving version of the truth. Even worse, when given his own website, he audaciously claims that it is he who has control over the site, not the Sysop who does the work of setting it up, or the advertisers who pay for it.

Forums and bans

As with many places in real life, Chris has found himself banned from the few places he frequents online.

Chris does not normally participate in forum discussions, either due to a dislike of reading or simple egotism. When he does, he always signs his message — be it a comment on YouTube, a rant on the Adult Swim boards, or a complaint about something in LittleBigPlanet. He never follows up on these posts either, nor does he read the comments left by other users, just like on YouTube. Any retractions or responses are saved for completely unrelated posts elsewhere on the Internet.

Common sense would suggest that Chris would fare well in the Internet forums, which are havens for socially retarded, thirty-something man-children who still live with Mommy and Daddy. However, Chris has managed to fail here too. By appearing in the web as his usual nicknames or full names, and plastering Sonichu crap all over, he draws the attention of his trolls, and reacts predictably when they follow him. More importantly, if the trolls somehow fail to notice his new hangouts, he's quick to make enemies completely on his own accord, due to his ego, selfishness and complete disregard of rules.

Thanks to his screwed up conversation filter, Chris has done stupid stuff and has stuff taken down or been banned from places. However, due to his relative inactivity concerning Internet forums, he's banned from fewer places online than expected. He was banned from deviantART in the summer of 2009 for posting the uncensored version of Sonichu 9 without an NSFW tag, though he doesn't understand why—comments left on his CWCipedia talk page suggest that he is under the impression that his dA account simply vanished into cyberspace for no reason. He was also banned earlier for the uncensored version of Sonichu 8. As well, despite bouncing from one account to the next, Chris has only been banned once from YouTube. However, unlike DA, Chris has constantly made new accounts after one was taken down or abandoned. He has also had posts moderated at GameFAQs when he attempted to solicit money for special characters in ModNation Racers.

His most grievous ban to date involves Flipnote Hatena. Between 29 June and 2 July, Chris had the same Flipnote removed from the site four times because of its sexual nature, with Chris thinking it was being removed by trolls instead of the fact that a Nintendo-owned website wouldn't like that sort of thing being put on their site. Because of this and other flipnotes he had uploaded and reuploaded, the mods blocked Chris's DSi from uploading any further flipnotes. Nearly a month later, Chris resurfaced on the website and reuploaded all the flipnotes that got him banned in the first place. It is suspected that he has purchased a new DSi in order to evade the ban, adding yet another reason for the moderators to ban him from the website.

One notices a pattern in all of this—Chris is simply too lazy to read a website's terms of service, too lacking in empathy to lurk for a while and see what people generally do on the sites, or even pick up the basic common sense needed for survival in most Internet communities. He just meanders onto a website and begins to post whatever he feels like posting, reacting with shock when he crosses a line because he did not bother trying to learn its location. When protesting his ban from Wikipedia for violating one of their numerous rules, he argued that he didn't have the time to read the pages upon pages of fine print that stipulated what constituted acceptable behavior. When faced with a similar conflict on Flipnote, he failed to get the hint that something in all of those videos was violating the terms of service, uploading a video anyone could tell was inappropriate for the PG-13 website no less than four times before his DSi was blocked from the service. Undeterred, Chris purchased a new DSi (a handheld that is worth almost as much as his monthly budget) and uploaded it a fifth time.

Attempts to leave the Internet

As the saying goes, "when the going gets tough, the tough get going". However, in Chris's case, he takes this and butchers it — when trolls descend on him and torture him, he gets up and leaves. He's like a child who packs up all of his toys and goes home when things don't go his way. For many trolls, this would be a great victory — threatening to quit the Internet forever is such a common reaction to trolling it has its own ED article. However, Chris just can't stand to get away from the Internet.

His first attempt to abandon the Internet was in the aftermath of the Julie incident; tired of Clyde Cash's trolling, Chris proclaimed that he was leaving the Internet. Instead of doing that, he disappeared for all of two weeks, before creating a new account on YouTube. His second, third, and fourth attempts all seemed to have been directed by an outside force. Of course, Chris being Chris, he never made good on his word to stay off.

After he made his second announcement of leaving the Internet, he made a rant about the Cleveland Show a mere 36 hours later. He also made his fourth announcement of leaving the Internet just four days after making his third announcement, saying that the trolls have scared him from the Internet, that he is literally afraid of the Internet. Chris being Chris, he returned just one week after this grand proclamation. After talking about how he almost committed vehicular homicide, he makes his fifth announcement that he is leaving the Internet.

Nearly two weeks after his fifth abandonment of the Internet, he was spotted at Fridays After Five playing Flipnote Studio on his Nintendo DSi. He soon discovered the pictures and videos of him on the Internet and broke his exile to post his response to it all on Flipnote Hatena the next day, saying that he wishes trolls would stop spreading his bad reputation around. This shows not only that Chris is still looking out for his Internet reputation, but that he also assumes that by telling trolls "I'm leaving the Internet forever," he expects them to stop talking about him.

This would've been easy for the trolls to do, if Chris had just stopped making videos—especially ones addressing them specifically (not seeking out trolls offline couldn't hurt, either).

What Chris doesn't seem to realize is that the PSN he loves so dearly and Flipnote Studios are all technically a part of the Internet, as they consist of a network of interconnected computers/devices. Also, a quick check of his YouTube profile will usually reveal he has signed on within the last 12-24 hours, meaning he still visits YouTube daily; he's also recently taken to Twitter, Gamespot, and GameFAQs to beg for ModNation Racers codes. It's plain to see he is full of shit, and his announced departures only cover the parts of the Internet that bother him.

Will Chris ever really leave?

It's possible, perhaps even inevitable, that circumstances will enable Chris to really leave the Internet. The most likely reason would be the death or intervention of certain benefactors that keep the Internet train a-rolling. Another (slightly) less-likely possibility would be the end result of Chris's terminal slothfulness: just ceasing to care about anything except video games, toys, and his Happy Place. If pressed, Chris always claims to be "workin' on it (Sonichu/employment/the Love Quest/etc.)," but effort is anathema to Chris.

It is highly unlikely that he'll ever leave the Internet of his own volition. Chris thrives on attention just as much as he is burned by the terrible strain of effort. Like an abused spouse, he may never leave unless someone else steps in. Being the horrible people we are, we'd rather have it that he stay. And now, with the trolling efforts of field agents in play, it seems the only way Chris will ever truly leave the Internet will be through his inevitable death.