Chris and remorse

Every so often, one of the horrendous things Chris continually does catches up with him, and he is forced to apologize. These apologies, like most of the other times Chris tries to come off as emotional, often feel very forced and insincere, leading many trolls to wonder if Chris is even capable of feeling remorse.

It's not out of the question. A common trait of autism is a lack of empathy, meaning it's likely that Chris has a difficult time trying to understand what other people feel. Just as time and time again he's shown himself unable to understand others' feelings of loss or sadness, he seems equally incapable of understanding how his actions could possibly hurt or anger others. When he is expected to show remorse, it often seems as though he is just going through the motions, making the absolute minimum effort to get whoever he has upset to stop pestering him, so he can go back to his oblivious existence playing PS3.

Concept of Wrongdoing

Developing an understanding of right and wrong is an important part of a child's development. Very young children don't actually take into consideration what is ethically the right or wrong thing to do. They base their actions on whether they are punished and rewarded, before they eventually internalize a consistent value system and learn to police their own behavior. Chris seems to be stuck in the earlier, childlike state. If something makes him feel bad, or if experience tells him he'll get in trouble for doing something, it must be wrong. If it makes him feel good, or looks like it could have potential rewards, it must be right. Other considerations, such as what his supposed faith prescribes or how this will affect other people, simply do not rank.

An excellent example would be how Chris managed to destroy his relationship with Megan. Chris was at war with Encyclopedia Dramatica, who were, among other things, calling him gay. In an attempt to disprove their allegations, Chris uploaded a certain image to the website, apparently under the belief that that sort of information overload would get them to shut up. When the denizens of ED assumed the image was of Crystal, Chris was quick to correct them. At no point did he even consider Megan's feelings. When she called him out, Chris didn't realize he had done anything wrong, and assumed she was upset simply because she didn't watch enough porn.

“	I understand. You may or may not have had much exposure to sexual images as I've had, so the idea of a "hand job" (which was the act drawn there) as part of outtercourse (versus intercourse) was a surprise to you. I'm sorry.	”
Chris, not getting it at all.

As such, Chris isn't really capable of remorse or a sincere apology. The natural precursor to an apology is the internal realization that one has done something wrong, a realization that Chris's childish, self-centered mindset will not allow him to reach. In his mind, he's done something "wrong" only when the people around him react negatively. Furthermore, as a rule, he assumes that their reaction is just the result of some misunderstanding, reasoning that if he was just given the chance to explain what he was trying to accomplish, they would understand, and all would be forgiven.

Motivation to apologize

I'm sorry, now give me money.

As explained above, Chris's logic when it comes to matters of right and wrong is almost wholly reactionary. His rationale for apologizing follows the same pattern. He issues them only when made fully aware that he won't get what he wants unless he at least tries to appear genuinely remorseful.

Every apology Chris has ever made can be immediately connected to something Chris wants, and thinks he'll get if he says the magic words "I'm sorry". We almost never have to guess what that thing might be, he almost always mentions his desired goal in the same paragraph, sometimes even in the next sentence.

“	I wish to apologize to Michael Schneider for that mistake I made over nine months ago that got me kicked out of The GAMe PLACe... I miss my Friday nights over there… and also... y’all are the only place in town that has, uh, Eye of Judgment cards.	”
Chris, apologizing in order to buy stuff.

“	I apologize for the past unformalities[sic] and emotional outbursts in past communications... I ask for 25% of all money... you have and will have made from all [the audiobooks] you have put together and sold.	”
Chris, apologizing for sending Vivian a fucking death threat.

This is what Chris actually believes.

Because Chris's apologies spring from this simplistic cause-and-effect mentality, things tend to get interesting when whoever he's issuing them to tells him that all is not well, and that he is not forgiven. In one notable case, he admitted to ungentlemanly conduct regarding his feud with Asperchu. It was a fairly obvious attempt to get certain ads removed from the CWCipedia, but, notably, he announced his intention to kill off the character of Simonla Rosechu, in accordance with her creator's wishes. He didn't act quickly enough, and CWCipedia was taken down from the web altogether. Although his anger was understandable, Chris revealed in his next video that he had never intended to kill Simonla in the first place, and that the apology was not TRUE and HONEST. We had all suspected, but it's nice to get confirmation once in a while. After CWCipedia returned, he did indeed kill Simonla, but only under pressure, and in the most contrived, dull, yet very lulzy way possible.

The one apology that arguably highlights Chris's insincerity the most is his in-comic apology to the Asperpedia Four, which takes place while condemning them to death. The cognitive dissonance this creates would be overwhelming to any sane person, but for some reason, Chris thought that this ludicrous non-apology apology was both okay and that the recipients would accept it as genuine.

This can also be seen in Chris's misadventures with The Wallflower. When the shit hit the fan and she cut off all ties with him, he made his usual pathetic display of sorrow, making it very clear in the process that he only wanted her for sex. When his apology failed to work as planned, Chris became very angry and spiteful, and started demanding that she apologize for hurting his feelings.

Common traits of a CWC apology

Explanation

One recurring element in Chris's admissions of guilt is an explanation of why he did whatever he's apologizing for. The way these speeches are worded often indicates that Chris believes that if we just understood his intentions, we would all agree with him, and that nobody would be offended.

A famous example appears in the Captain's Log, Stardate April 28th, 2009 video. Chris explains that yes, he videotaped himself performing a selection of disturbing sex acts, but it was all for his sweetheart Ivy, and this evidently renders his actions understandable and acceptable. Supposedly speaking to a young child who was shocked by his behavior, he tells her that his behavior was perfectly reasonable because he is both adult and human. This combination of warped logic and an even more warped world-view was a crucial component of his breakthrough to mainstream infamy.

Another good example would be the time he used the worst terrorist attack in American history for an exceedingly bad joke. After learning that Kacey came from a military family, Chris did what was expected of him and made a public apology. However, he was more concerned with continuing to slander Clyde Cash and assuring us he was a good American (although he didn't know the words to his own national anthem) than with actually expressing remorse and making an attempt at recompense.

This looks like a good idea.

“	The joke was mainly directed to how WEAK Clyde Cash was only, I had no idea or intention of offending anyone, other than Clyde, on such a massive world-wide level.	”
Chris's written apology.

Within the same video, he changed the photoshop he'd done of the World Trade Center towers into birthday candles. That he saw no problem in presenting an image of the two buildings on fire and repeatedly calling them weak while he asserted that he was a good American proves that he completely missed the point of what he was supposed to be apologizing for. He was far more concerned with sullying Clyde's name than with any blowback or offense his comments might have caused.

Rationalization

Chris is incredibly self-righteous. In his mind he is the only decent man left in the world, and everybody else is an evil jerk. This mindset gives Chris all the justification he needs to mistreat others, because as far as he's concerned they're all the bad guys, standing in the way of his heroic quest.

This "everything I do is right" mindset shows through when he is forced to talk about his prior transgressions. Chris might offer a half-assed apology, simply to conform to the wishes of whoever he's talking to, but it will often be accompanied with a long explanation as to why he had to do it.

“	I was wrong... I pretended to be him yet he was the liar. I'm the real deal... So on that one part I was wrong for the right reasons.	”
Chris, almost admitting wrongdoing.

He exhibited this self-righteous attitude many times in the Liquid Chris saga: because he is the TRUE and HONEST Christian, this gave him the right to attempt to steal Liquid's girlfriend by pretending to be him, and then gloat about it once he apparently achieved his aim. Once again, Chris saw no wrong in this. Since Liquid wronged him by trolling him in the first place, anything he did in response was entirely justified.

Retraction

Chris, believing that his actions are always right, nearly always has to be pressured into making any form of apology at all. Most, if not all, of his apology messages are motivated by the people he physically desires (be they obvious troll or otherwise) or desires to appease, rather than the public outcry he causes, and certainly not by any true sense of guilt. A retraction of an apology is just as hollow as the apology itself, in that Chris is quite happy to lie to save face or gain something he wants. For instance, Chris finally 'sincerely' apologized to Alec and Mao for his actions to them on 2 March 2010. However, only a month later, on 8 April, he was talking to Jackie and, in an attempt to gain sympathy from her, claimed that Alec was "trying to one-up [him] for months now".

When trolls hacked his PSN accounts, Chris made a near public apology. A blatant attempt to get his PSN account back, the apology was, of course, chock full of lies and insincerity.

One of his favorite ways to smite his invisible internet enemies and real-life foes alike is to lay a Curse-ye-ha-me-ha upon them; thinking that he has powers akin to something more along the lines of Wicca, Voodoo, or Goku from DBZ than with the Christianity he practices. He only issued the Curse-ye-ha-me-ha Retraction after his latest e-girlfriend told him that he shouldn't have used the Curse-ye-ha-me-ha in the first place..

Considering that he quickly returned to his ways of cursing, threatening, and insulting his enemies, the sentiment obviously didn't stick.

Shifting blame

When Chris isn't trying to justify the trouble he causes, he usually resorts to blaming others. The most famous example is him blaming ED for the end of his friendship with Megan, even though it was because of a picture he himself thought up, drew, and then uploaded to his article. Chris had it literally screamed at him in Mumble 3, but then, as now, he still doesn't know the true reason. The best anyone has ever been able to extract from Chris is that he came on too strong. While technically true, this is a vast understatement which fails to capture the massive amount of fault which lies with Chris (that is to say, all of it).

The Wallflower

Chris went to great lengths to keep the knowledge of The Wallflower away from the slanderous trolls of the Internet. However, he foolishly credited her by her screen name during one of his sycophantic Little Big Planet levels and the trolls used that to find her Facebook page... which then lead to a massive dump of info about her on the CWCki. When she was later linked to said CWCki, and horrified at the amount of information available about her, she requested that the CWCki admins remove the information since she really had very little to do with Chris and didn't deserve such a descriptive page about her. (Note: naturally, since her request seemed reasonable, the CWCki admins complied and replaced all references to her with a pseudonym.)

Frightened and disgusted by what she had found, she broke off all contact with Chris, including even casual association. She also clarified to the CWCki admins that they had never dated, never had any kind of relationship beyond casual association, and before her introduction to the CWCki she really didn't know much about him at all. Chris, however, not to be deterred, proclaimed many times that they had been on several dates, and "Shared DNA", along with enjoying a kiss and massage. Since this would have been Chris's "real" first kiss (aside from "Chloe", a lie), it was considered important by obsessive CWCki editors to see if he remembers it later (the Wallflower CWCipedia page article was written on April the 19th). Naturally... leaked e-mails from Jackie show that by the 10th of April, nine days before making this highly suspicious claim, Chris had either momentarily forgotten that he had never been kissed, something that would have been a monumental occasion in his life, lied on his CWCipedia about being kissed, or lied to Jackie about not being kissed (though that is very unlikely). Either way, he still lied about the kiss, although it's possible he's basing his story on a gross exaggeration of the truth (the two sharing a drinking straw is the current troll favorite for this).

With ALL the above in mind... in the month following their "breakup", Chris would go on to blame The Wallflower for having an internet presence at all. In Chris's warped view of things, the reason that she broke up with him was because, by allowing herself to have a Facebook page and other information, she enabled herself to suffer because of Chris's actions. Chris mentioned that he was ready to accept an apology from her at their social group meeting, when the reality was he should have been the one offering most sincere groveling for allowing his reprehensible behavior to be published.

Forgetting

Aside from directly shifting the blame by lying, Chris has been frequently known to 'forget' important, critical details of his life, typically ones that make him look bad. When Jackie was flirting with him by e-mails and found out about the CWCki, she asked Chris about cheating on Ivy with Vanessa, the full details of which are documented right here. Chris, of course, claimed flat out that the whole thing was a troll deception and that Jackie shouldn't believe it. When Jackie informed Chris she found a video of him admitting it and confessing, Chris claimed he "forgot" this "portion".

On October 27th in 2008, Chris nervously announced he had found his one true sweetheart; Chloe. Many things immediately leapt out at the trolls as being lies, including his previous announcements on an IRC chat. Due to Chris's unreliable short-term memory and inaction on the part of trolls, after the 27 October video Chloe was never mentioned again in a video by Chris. A little more than a year later, in Mailbag 13, rather than simply admit he was lying, Chris claimed "I currently have no recollection of a Chloe", even though she was supposedly the woman he had his first real kiss with.

In Mumble 6, the troll army called out Chris on his statements regarding transgendered women. Chris claims that he forgot his previous statement, which may or may not be completely honest. In any event, Chris has discovered that (real or otherwise) a faulty memory is a socially acceptable way to dodge probing questions about ones past lies.

Index of Chris's apologies

Below is an abridged list of Chris's various apologies for his many, many misdeeds. Small apologies may have been missed here and there, but these are the big ones.

• When Megan called Chris out on his reprehensible actions regarding the porn he drew of her, he first copy-pasted "Megan, I'm sorry for hurting you." fifteen times in an e-mail to her, then went into detail about how a handjob works, figuring that sexual frustration and ignorance were the root causes of her anger. Projecting, much?
• After Chris was banned from The Game Place, he tried several times to get unbanned. The first was a video where Chris apologies just so he can buy more junk. The second was where he prepared a script, stashed a camera in his pocket, then walked into The Game Place to confront Michael Snyder, claiming he had changed and apologizing for his actions. After Michael flatly refused to listen and called the cops, Chris berated him on religious grounds then called him a Jew.
• After threatening Vivian's life when she made better audiobooks than he did, Chris apologized to her... then made a demand for a cut of her "profits", the two sentences separated by only a single dot.
• In I am Alive, Chris apologizes for his ungentlemanly conduct in regard to Asperchu. This was a transparent attempt to get the homo ads removed from the CWCipedia and his behavior subsequent to this apology proved he meant nothing he said in the video.
• In Sonichu 10, Chris apologized to the Asperchu Four while simultaneously having them brutally executed, including having one of them killed by a toddler.
• After filming himself performing sex acts for Ivy, Chris apologized for his actions but structured his apology to state that his behavior was, in fact, completely normal and that Ching Chong shouldn't feel bad for watching it.
• In Matthew 5 27, CWC Confessions, Chris apologized for cheating on Ivy.
• After mocking the worst act of domestic terrorism in United States history, Chris made a subsequent apology video... which featured the Twin Towers as candles on a birthday cake, complete with multiple gouts of flame flying from the top.
• When Kacey discovered Chris had pretended to be the other, better Chris in order to get a travel visa to China, Chris apologized by way of his video "I Love You Kacey", where he claimed he "...was wrong for the right reasons."
• Chris finally 'sincerely' apologized to Alec and Mao for his actions to them on the 2nd of March. However, only a month later on the 8th of April he was talking to Jackie and, in an attempt to gain sympathy from her, claimed that Alec was "trying to one-up [him] for months now".