Chris and the Internet

The proper response to a virgin with rage on the Internet.

The Internet is a specialized computer program that allows the transmission of data over long distances through a massive collection of networks connected all over the world. The Internet has grown immensely since its first real conception in the 1980s as a means for universities to communicate with each other; it is said that nearly 2,000,000,000 people are connected to the Internet today.

One of those is a fat, whiny, bigoted, misogynistic, egotistical manchild, 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

Some people see dicks everywhere on the Internet. Chris tends to see these instead.

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, simple egotism or both. 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 of 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 had 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. 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. When his "article" on Wikipedia deleted and his talk page there got trolled, his account was indefinitely blocked, although the blocking admin mistakenly thought that he was a sockpuppet of a troll and not the genuine article.

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 realizing 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 briefly blocked Chris's DSi from uploading any further Flipnotes. When his ban expired, Chris resurfaced on the website and reuploaded all the Flipnotes that got him banned in the first place. (The entire situation wasn't helped by try-hard trolls flagging his animations in a desperate attempt to have an impact.)

One notices a pattern in all of this — Chris has a tendency to not read a website's terms of service or gain an understanding of websites he uses. 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.

Attempts to leave the Internet

This is what Chris means when he says he going to "go outside and enjoy life."

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 Encyclopedia Dramatica article.

Of course, his PS3 is still hooked up to the internet (where he plays videogames, reads game forums and logs into YouTube), so he never really leaves for good, he merely changes his outlet. When Chris talks about quitting the internet, he means ceasing video and comic production, and no longer tangling with trolls.

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).

Chris finally left the internet "for good" on 22 November 2010. While Chris has managed to refrain from making something that would attract the attention of the trolls for an unsurpassed period of time, he has not been completely able to repress his urge to spread his ego over the tubes, and thanks to his PS3 with web connection and keyboard controller, he still makes the occasional effort to make the world realize his greatness. As he has not had access to a working computer since the end of the Jackie saga, he is unlikely to have read the emails he has received.