The guy is mentally damaged. Possibly irreparably broken. On top of that, he's had sociopaths tormenting him for almost a decade now. I think this Chris Chan thing is entering its death spiral just because the two polar forces of Chris not understanding how damaging he is to himself and the sociopaths who torment him pushing him ever further to the edge will eventually achieve entropy and someone will have to die.

I don't know if he's in a death spiral; people have been predicting Chris' demise for years now, but for all his flaws, he really is a tough, resilient motherfucker. I think he'll pull through.

The torment thing is perfectly true, though. In the latest e-mails, he confirms what poe has been suspecting - he's wielding pepper spray now on account of his stalkers. Honestly, he's showing remarkable restraint, if I had that many gangstalkers I'd be carrying a handgun.

My guess, my hope, is that his lawyer will keep him out of prison in exchange for some serious mental health counseling. If Chris could get into some kind of art therapy program, preferably outpatient but given the seriousness of his charges it'd more than likely be part of an involuntary commitment, I think he'd thrive.

"... a secret place that only Chris knows."

You make it sound like he's some kind of whimsical wood gnome, well, wal-mart gnome.

He is! Sort of. Less of a kindly old Wal-Mart gnome and more like a dark and impish Fae, a boggart or a gremlin maybe, but same basic idea.

King Arthur people have said what you just said for over 5 years, and you're totally blowing the effect internet trolls have on him out of proportion. Nobody tricked Chris into doing this stuff, he does it on his own. He's had trouble fitting into society since he decided he wanted a girlfriend at community college 10 years ago and got kicked out. He's been to court for trying to run somebody over for not letting him play Pokemon in his retail outlet. He just got arrested for spraying pepper spray in a crowded mall store. Nobody made him do this shit but himself. Stop trying to create a villain in the Chris Chan narrative, you sound like you believe this man's bullshit.

You obviously don't know what a human piece of shit Chris Chan is to be saying that. "Autism" is his excuse for everything, when really he's just a terrible person who has pretty much ruined everything good in his life. Sure, people fuck with him unnecessarily, but left alone, he would still be out there doing the same things. The trolls just give him an excuse really.
And wishing death upon people is a bad habit, I suggest you rethink it.

JBF's right, but I have felt your sentiment, Asian Hick. From the Wiki:

"CWCki is a wiki dedicated to Christian Weston Chandler. Its mission is to serve as the ultimate repository of information about Chris to inform the Internet at large of Chris's singular grotesqueness."

Normally I skip the CC videos on here, but since working with folks with developmental disabilities is my job I've decided to become more active in this conversation, as it went from trolls to possible arson to crimes in the real world. A couple of my clients remind me of Chris, and not just because they're into Sonic and Pokemon.

What little I know of Chris, he seems to be an autistic individual raised by people that were totally unprepared to deal with the challenges of doing so. This, combined with the fact that there has been a ten year organized effort to encourage the worst sort of behavior from him makes me wonder what reasonably could be expected of Chris Chan.

The best of us would go completely nuts if they were harassed for a decade.

And I fail to see how his behavior justifies the harassment or makes his "fans" anything but human garbage.

I'm sort of on the fence. I get that he's been harassed and raised by unprepared folks. And I do have some sympathy for him. But he clearly knows that pepper spraying people isn't cool (evidenced by him _threatening_ to use it). Maybe a mix of bad circumstances and taking advantage of those bad circumstances to get away with stuff.

From the wiki: "2015 is the seventh year of organized trolling."

The idea that Chris-chan is in some sort of gang-stalking purgatory of his own design is wearing a little thin in the face of most of a decade of people fucking with him with a level of organization that would put most Kickstarter campaigns to absolute shame.

ultimately, chris continues to put himself out there on youtube, basically asking for taunting. it's the only attention he knows, so he seeks it. and he isn't making an effort to produce anything desirable, skilled, or interesting beyond stick figure Sonic drawings, so he isn't approaching his tormentors with something they would be genuinely impressed with.
i just don't see much tragedy here, autistic or not. there's comical tragedy, sure. but i don't feel sympathy beyond a marginal level is necessary. the guy's making absolutely no effort on his part to improve his life beyond hiding in sonic fandom.
otoh, i grew weary of the chris-chan debacle years ago. seeing these videos on the poetv front page is pretty boring... poetv needs a new target of ridicule

I don't feel sympathy for Chris. I don't. Between trying to run over that game shop owner with his car, creeping out women, pepper spraying retail clerks, terrorizing his school's dean, etc. he's burned through any amount of forgiveness or tolerance people might have for him.

You're a huge fucking idiot asian hick.

Is it possible for you to conceive that Chris likes his "fans" and gets a great deal of pleasure from being abused by them? As you may have noticed, a good deal of them are just like him. Occasionally a fool will come along and try to "help" chris, but he quickly bites the hand and sends it on it's way.

Modern performers have teams of people to produce them, trying desperately to come up with the kind of shocking things Chris does on a daily basis. His technique, of allowing complete access and creative collaberation with his fans, has produced some remarkable results.

I can't think about Chris without thinking about Warhol and his Factory. Chris is sort of the male version of Valerie Solanis. But really, he's his own thing.

There's not really a coherent narrative I'm hearing from you guys. According to Jet Bin Fever, "left alone, he would still be out there doing the same things" while Oscar Wildcat claims he's in some kind of insane creative collaboration with his tormentors. Which is it? It just sounds like ad hoc excuses for engaging in fucked up behavior (on the part of the trolls) to me.

I think the most likely explanation is that an autistic man (I seem to be the only one bringing up the fact he has a neurological disorder that specifically impairs his ability to interact with other human beings) has been fucked with for so long and has so little normal human interaction that he acts out for attention because that's all he knows. Then his trolls spend time condemning him and documenting his foibles and go back to fucking with him all over again. I still haven't heard a compelling reason why the trolls engaging in this game aren't human garbage.

I do take back what I said about wishing them death. That's a little much. Instead I wish all their family, friends and co-workers knew and understood that their hobby was fucking with someone who has a mental condition for their own amusement.

Mr Wildcat: how do you mean? So like the trolls would be Warhol, charming arrogant poseurs with no true vision, and Chris would be Solanas, the cruelly exploited nutcase who finally cracked and went on a perfectly understandable killing spree?

I can see that. I've always thought of CWC as being his own unique mixture of Ed Wood, John Waters, and Harvey Pekar, and personally I think you're selling him waaayyyyy short by comparing him to those half-rate clowns at the Factory, but Solanas would make sense.

Like Warhol, he appropriates consumer culture garbage ( like sonic the hedgehog ) into his own weird, hermetic universe ( better than Warhol, IMO ). Andy will always have his Cambells soup can, Chris will alway have his Sonichu. He's sloppy in approach, caring more about the statement and the shock than technical prowess. But really he's one of the Factory people, because he's an actor and not a director. Valerie seems a close match, the long insane diatribes, the propensity to violence, the questionable sexuality, etc etc.

Does this seem so strange to you, Asian Hick? That he enjoys and encourages the trolls, and that his "work" is strongly influenced by them? This thing of throwing a DSM at someone and that explains everything is a modern phenomena and sheds little light on the subject. In fact, it just serves to cut off discussion. He's crazy and people are fucking with him. End of story. Well, he's got a following that most celebrities would give their left tit/nutsack for and he's got hella name recognition. How does that fit into your DSM?

Mr Hick: one the greatest things about Chris-Chan is that there *is no* coherent narrative! Chris is a deeply challenging artist, and his body of work elicits as many opinions as there are people to view it.

Like many postmodern+ artists, CWC likes to explore his audience's complex relationship towards art. However, because of the absolute sincerity, and the direct, unbridled rawness of his work, Chris takes things much MUCH farther than any of his sheltered, academically-trained peers could even dream of doing. Chris' work explores the audience's role not just in *interpreting* art, but in shaping it, creating it. It is Social Art, Art 2.0, and you, Mr Hick, YOU yourself are participating in his art, right now!

How cool is that?

You're perfectly entitled to think everyone on the Wiki should die, of course, but maybe you could look at it from a different perspective? Not as a dumping ground for cruelty, but as a repository for all this wonderful creative work which Mr Chandler has produced over the years?

I dunno, Mr Wildcat, you'd have to strip Warhol of a helluva lot of pretense before that old man would approach even HALF of what Chris is now!!! Warhol was a cynical, sneering hipster, a competent but otherwise boring artist who made his career by playing off his easy charm and his talent for ironic bullshittery. Chris is the complete opposite. Chris is an aspirational artist, a valiant Romantic who makes up for his complete lack of talent and social grace with a wellspring of earnestness and sincerity. If Warhol was a symptom of art in decay, then Chris is the sort of Post-Stuckist rebel to whom the future belongs.

Homer, don't diss Warhol. He's my favorite artist.

I believe Chris would still be like this even if he were unknown to the internet. His pretroll comics are filled with stories based on his real life misadventures with police, deans, and store managers. Homer and I discussed this earlier and really he is no more violent than he was then, the only difference is the can of pepper spray. Granted Chris claims he totes the spray because of the trolls, but the crusade against Sonic's blue arms is 100% Chris.

Warhol? Really?! I don't believe you. No bucking way.

Bringing up Warhol always seems to generate discussion. No one is really able to peg down who he really was. He was also a wrestling fan. He facinates me and I find his much of his work to be very fascinating.
I love your art well.

I wonder if chris had stayed away from the internet, if he wouldn't be more comparable to someone like Henry Darger.

I don't know if you guys are trolling/joking or what, but some of you might be getting just a tiny bit carried away with this CWC as Warholian performance artist thing.

Homer, you convinced me, He's the Klaus Nomi of our time.

Potrod, how would you define "art"?

Hey Homer, can you make a painting of Chris Chan as Klaus Nomi? I would love to see that.

@Infinite Zest, I've been in a center that allows people with disabilities to come in and have a safe enviroment to freely interact. There is some rough interaction and some unruly bits, but for the most part it's very positive and a lot of people do well. I think the biggest problem isn't Autism. I think the biggest problem that's over looked with the phrase "It isn't Autism" or "It's just an excuse" is what it's like to have a social impairment. I think the biggest problem is that it's easy to dismiss the excuse of it's their impairment when in fact that most if not all of the circumstances are by-products, not directly related to the impairment. It's why "It isn't 'social impairment'." is an extremely big, conservative red herring.

@TheMilkShark: And you're completely dismissing the fact that despite the impairment, Autistics DO need to socialize. ANYONE with a social impairment, bi-polar, schizophrenia, MPD, needs to socialize and they DO need to in order to learn. THEY do need to because dealing with such an impairment often obliterates any social structure and perceptions they have. They even WANT to socialize out of awareness of their position in society just so they can learn. Even people who have everything will want to socialize out of their regular circles JUST to see what's out there AND even THEY can be just as oblivious to the nature of time when it comes to socializing. Chris-chan is a fucking tragedy mixed with his parents, internet vigilantes, toxic behavior and thought, but lumping him as competent with his thoughts is completely regressive. Especially since others like U-dawg may end up drawing further and further into himself to avoid any emotions and stress and end up doing more damage around them than being benign. I have no doubt if he does that he'll think that people around him changed for the worse, not him and a protruding social entropy from his regressive tendency. He's already have had people think he was ungrateful for receiving a gift.

If there's anything to take away from the disabled, is that we learn a lot more from socializing than we realize and the fact that people who are socially competent on the surface frequently put them and/or parts of them on the wrong level is a huge warning sign of how much empathy there really is for them.

I hate all these people who try to defend the mentally ill by dehumanizing them into drooling meatbags incapable of being treated with anything resembling nuance.

A lot of the horrible evil vile repgunant losers observing Chris-Chan speculate about him in actual human terms, with the autism being one of many factors that influence his behavior. They make a least a token effort to correlate his illness to his actions, but otherwise see him as a strange, wonderful human being, with all the complexities that entails.

Then we get these noble, sensitive scolds like asian hick trying to empower Chris with HE'S JUST A BIG RETARD. WHY WOULD YOU EVER ASSOCIATE WITH A RETARD. THOSE THINGS DON'T EVEN CONTROL THEIR OWN BRAINS.

@Sexy Duck Cop, where did Asian Hick say or imply that? It's a sentiment that exists but I don't think that's the direction Asian Hick is going for.

Some points about Chris:

- Bob and Barb never had any sense of "buy-in" to the autism diagnosis. Neither truly believed that autism exists, but Bob saw a way to capitalize on it (free Social Security? SCORE!) and Barb saw a way to keep her son within arm's reach at all time. The majority of the "fault" for Chris is not with the trolls, it's purely Bob and Barb. The combination of laziness/greed and self-excuse became the potent key to Chris' later lifestyle.

- There is no "real" Christopher Chandler. He changed his name at the declaration of an animatronic bear. He became obsessed with the world of video games out of pure happenstance of winning a contest. His parents have been using him as a meal ticket for 30 years. The trolls became an audience, and even though it's a negative, self-defeating audience, it's still exactly what he's been demanding from the world since he started his "love quest". He's deliberately passive. He's never actually TRIED to do anything unique or original, there is nothing there to create with. Until the fire, Chris had a little world to escape to, where he was 100% in charge and anything that bothered him could be annihilated. Sonichu existed as a way for him to ignore the outside world. When the fire happened, suddenly he came face to face with a world that was no longer of his creation. And worse, he had been defending himself with the little CWCville world for so long that he had allowed the rest of the world in. The little barrier that CWCville provided was stripped away, and the real Chris was exposed to the world. Because there is no "real" Chris, and he has no true personality of his own, he's now at the whims of whatever the trolls expect to see. If they tell him he's a transsexual, now he's a transsexual. He's been stripped of anything notionally solid about himself. Sonichu WAS Chris. The fire took away Sonichu. Now there is no Chris.

- It should be stated that the influence of the trolls is grossly exaggerated. This is a guy who set out on his "love quest" by himself, with no audience. He wanted to be loved on sight with no active contribution of his own. He didn't want to do any foot work or participation. He simply demanded a perfect, flawless romance and what he found was an Internet that fell in love with him exactly as he demanded. Let's all remember a similar character here: Goronchev. When Goronchev decided it was over, it became over. Chris has never declared it "over". He keeps wanting to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be universally beloved, but he doesn't seem to understand that he IS, just not for the reasons he set out for them to be. We know more about the life of Christian Weston Chandler today than we know about the life of George Washington. He's succeeded at precisely what he set out to do. Don't pity him.

That's an interesting theory, CG; however, Chris gave up on Sonichu long before the fire (the trolls and the YT drama killed his motivation by 2009/2010). The fire destroyed Lego CWCville and much of his old art, but he'd already left his creative period far behind, a casualty of stress, depression, and constant harassment.

You're also giving way too much credit to trolls over Chris' transsexual turn. First, Chris has always had barely contained gender-queer tendencies; any credit the trolls can take for that is simply limited to giving him the push he needed to be honest with himself. Second, if Chris' personality really *were* as fickle and malleable as you suggest, then the "positive" trolls and white knights would have long ago turned him into a sauve, competent John Galt figure. As you say in the very next section, the influence of the trolls is grossly exaggerated - nowhere moreso than the Tomgirl saga.

Chris has gotten everything he's ever asked for. He just asked for the wrong things.

The Sonic that Chris defaced with his blue sharpie is an investment grade Work.

Part of me hopes that if Chris goes to jail, attempts to keep tabs on him will be found out and the wiki and trolling history end up making the mainstream media.

Yeah, fave'd for the comments. Personally, I can't look directly at CWC without becoming suicidally depressed, but I do enjoy reading people compare him to Warhol.