It's so fucking wild to me that someone would look at what's become of Chris' life and then immediately think "Yeah man I really want to permanently embed my name into this history". It's like being jealous of all the people who have their names listed on the 9/11 memorial
@@carlosemilio5180 Yeah. There's an episode where there's a school fire and everyone has to evacuate, Arthur was afraid his dad died. One of the kids stayed home and felt left out and jealous over everyone talking about it and pulled the fire alarm for attention. Which is appropriate, wanting to be part of some tragedy is kinda childish, so are people like the ideas guys and isabella
I feel like the point that needs to be made is this is not just a story, or an internet fable. This is someones life. This stuff actually happened. It’s comedic looking at it from afar when Chris does it to themselves but there were people who would look for Chris Chan and mess with them. Chris is no hero mind you, but to be fair there are no heroes in Chris Chan’s story. Only Victims and Villains, and sometimes it overlaps.
To clarify on the page that was made to trick Chris, it was actually a bait page made by Clyde Cash claiming the wi-fi receiver of the PS3 was actually tracking bug. The hope was that any user that was actually Chris would be dumb enough to comment on this, which Chris did under the JenkinsJinkies persona. Once the trolls on the cwcki were sure this was Chris, (which Chris helpfully confirmed by creating the surreal Coffee Place article) Jinkies was directed to a fake troll forum called Trollin’ Train which contained a (also fake) bounty list for trolling accomplishments against Chris. The top bounty was 9,001 dollars for the destruction of the PS3 which Chris very ignorantly thought they could claim, which is what led to the PS3 destruction videos. This all sounds like a bunch of bullshit writing it out lol.
@@shukterhousejive Liquid Chris is the best saga, from a more innocent time, before it all became truly insane and cruel. And it honestly seemed to get under Chris' skin in a way that nothing else seemed to. Also, wasn't BlueSpike the one directly before Liquid too? It's like we got a taste of how sadistic this could become, then there was the last "good" Liquid saga before it all went wrong.
Honestly feel like the best way to tackle a Chris Chan doc at this point is to put it into the context of how our social systems routinely fail vulnerable people.
At what point are people responsible for their own actions? When are we going to stop looking at someone who r*ped their dementia ridden mother and say "ah yes, this is a failure of society and not the individual, the individual bears absolutely no responsibility for this". I'm over it. People deserve to be blamed. He could've got help, people tried to help, but he chose to largely remain the way he is.
@@vangoghsseveredearhe didn't get any help from bullying. His parents were terrible, and actively refused to get special treatment for him, forcing him into a regular school, and refusing to get professional mental help. Chris chan highlights a lot of problems than mentally ill people face, and how parents can just refuse to get help, to save their ego.
@islandboy9381 Yes, apparently, because Chris is "Trans," he must be completely innocent of all crimes because trans people are completely innocent babies who must be protected
“We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. 'No one sees the barn,' he said finally. A long silence followed. 'Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.' He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others. 'We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.' " Thus also to Chris-Chan
Man, you're right about the earlier internet having more respect for "look but don't touch" rules. I was on Portal of Evil back in the day, and they took that VERY seriously as part of the board culture. Anyone caught doing it would be savaged. I'm curious when, exactly, that changed.
All the people ostracized or banned from places that enforced rules like that congregated in the few places that didn't. Once that happened they all just egged each other on and validated each other's desire to roll around in the shit, so to speak.
The takeaway from all the Chris-chan nonsense shouldn't be "how could we have stopped this?", it should be "how can we make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else?"
It was Chris’s fault that people harassed them. They were grossly racist and homophobic, and had assaulted women multiple times. And it was all public.
I do think the sympathy for Chris grew especially during the Idea Guys/Sockness "saga" where Chris was getting notably worse mentally (This is where the dimensional merge lore started) in 2017. There were clear bullies and Chris was not the instigator in most of these instances
I think it all started after Bob died and the house burnt down. People suddenly realized their own mortality and that Chris probably wasn't gonna be around forever. Of course then the gamestop incident happened. But yeah I have never heard anyone defend the ideas guys. Trolling was always sadistic and messed with CWC's loose grip on reality, but this entered extortion and physical territory that you can still see the influence on to this day
Personally I lost a lot of sympathy with how hard Chris has gone in on the the dimensional rift bullshit. It's a very clear escape mechanism to avoid dealing with anything remotely close to the real world. Chris was failed terribly by his parents and after Bob died the majority of his troubles were self inflicted, from hitting the one dude with his car to pepper spraying the GameStop employee, with most trolling having not much impact on whatever lead to those major life decisions.
I think it's worth noting that a ton of people who were bullying chris chan or documenting things about her were themselves autistic. One person got so vile and obsessive about it that eventually, christorians started digging into that person, and finding out that they too were autistic, and possibly the reason they were so obsessive is because they looked at chris like a dark reflection of themselves that blissfully highlighted all the parts of themselves they were embarrassed about. So naturally some christorians kept documenting and stalking that person until they all slowly realized that *almost all of them were too, autistic, bullying another person because they felt they were looking at a dark reflection of themselves*. It's self-loathing all the way down. I don't necessarily think the modern day documenting is any different. It's not as contemptable but documenting the life of a person is never a neutral or objective act.
I wonder if part of the fascination is people being Autistic themselves and developing a hyperfixation on them, or even being a bit like "Oh shit, this could be me" (like worrying about it) and thus causing the fascination, which could also be how the hyperfixation starts.
Whenever I read the comments on a Chris Chan video the comments are full of people going "I'm autistic, and this could have been me if I'd had worse parents". I think Chris is a sort of horror story for autistic people. And a cautionary tale of what can happen if you completely lose your self awareness.
i strongly suspect this is the case, at least for some people. i don't know if i'm autistic (fwiw i'm definitely adhd) but in the past i've been similarly obsessed with a wide range of different subjects. similar in that, notably, i'm an archivist as a hobby and i like to document and archive (in excruciating detail) stuff like some youtube videos / series or like pre-release video and screenshots of certain older video games. i've never done any work related to Chris-chan though (i considered it once but decided against it)
Tbh I think the fascination comes from the fact that the entirety of Christory is just THAT bizarre. Whenever you think you've seen everything, something as crazy or even crazier happens. The fact that Chris also responded very, VERY poorly to trolls caused them to keep coming up with elaborates plans to make Chris do something dumb.
In reference to wanting a documentary about the people who trolled Chris, there actually is a documentary series called "beneath the bridge" about Chris's various trolls, although I think it was discontinued as the last upload was three years ago
Glad too finally hear about people talking about Sachumo, I feel like he deserves a lot of credit for only being a highschooler, and putting together a really well-thought well rounded documentary about Chris it seems like the popular thing to do nowadays is to make a documentary about Chris. That’s very half hearted and I think it doesn’t do the whole story justice, if there’s any justice to be had in the Chris Chan saga.
my biggest issue with most of the chris-chan “Documentaries” is that they’re more interested in just reading the cwcki than, you know, being a documentary. I can count on one hand the number of good faith interviews we have with Christine, which is pretty dire for the alleged “most documented person in history”
You're right, but, to be fair, getting a good faith interview is basically impossible at this point for the exact reason(s) that people want to make documentaries about her. Especially considering that she herself is referencing the documentaries at this point, the value of interviews is,while still there, severely diminished.
Not sure there's much to be gained from interviews really, she oscillated between posting her whole life and opinions on the internet to not wanting to talk to anyone due to fear of trolls.
@@Wohlfe the CountDankula interview gave us the insane revelation that Chris thinks that Ted Bundy was framed and is also half Sonichu, so that was something
Good faith interviews with anything involving Chris is never in good faith. Those who are looking to interview Chris are exploiting Chris’s nonsense and mental illness and feeding into Chris’s delusions that he is world famous for his terrible comic when in actuality Chris is only famous for his nonsense, but he is too empty headed to understand that. Chris in interviews is unreliable for testimony because Chris is a pathological liar who warps stories to place themselves in positive light, not even sure what planet he is on and has no sense of understanding basic questions.
This channel needs more recognition, I have been watching Bernie for 2 years and Cybershell for over 7 years and when this channel uploads, its like the highlight of my day to listen to the podcast while working out.
God I love this podcast. I never knew I needed two nerds discussing internet stories all while maintaining a mature tone and an objective perspective. Definitely recommending this series to my homies.
I think I agree with Bernie with the sentiment that chrischan is "The ultimate endpoint of internet downward spiral" but I also think it has it has a lot to do with communication and for the first time, a global or united culture. In other words, there were probably Chrischan's throughout history, a story about a strange person you knew that you couldn't understand, or stop talking about. I'd argue that Chris isn't the product of his time, the spectacle surrounding him is the product of his time, Chris just happened to be unlucky enough to be born into the spectacle of the 21st century.
I wish that Sonichu was the only thing Chris-chan was known for. I wish so much that there was just this unfathomably shitty comic that inexplicably blew up in popularity and everyone could laugh at how bad and silly it was without having to think about the life of whoever drew it. Everyone who was involved in the whole debacle, especially Chris, would have come out so much better if that had been the case
The thing about it that makes it about far more than Sonichu is the things Chris had started gaining attention for which were unrelated. The whole Love Quest arc had some random people posting about it stumbling across it in the wild then of course there was all the stuff that Chris would just throw out there to the point you would imagine not a single event went by in his life he didn't tell the internet. On top of that all he's legit proud and thinks Sonichu is some incredible work of art, that it has millions of fans and the like but for some reason only the trolls seem to be vocal about it.
Love these podcasts, it's really unique to talk about these old internet moments both with the level of research expected of modern RUclips but also the empathy and care that felt more rare at the time
There was a documentary series about the trolls. It was called "Beneath The Bridge". The guy also used to do covers of Chris' various songs but all those have been deleted from the channel along with many other videos. I think the Beneath The Bridge videos are still there though.
Just so you guys know, this is my favourite podcast, and one of my favourite youtube channels. The idea of netlore is just so interesting and the topics you guys choose are really unique and fun to listen to. I also like how your videos inform on the same level of a video essay without having the whole 'video essay' feel. Instead it's just two guys talking about a random obscure internet topic. Keep it up, and I'll def sub to a Patreon if you ever set up one!
@@Amahankage2004 I feel that's not really a fair comparison. Sure, Twitter IS objectively a hellscape of a site, but at least in it's inception it wasn't conceived as a way to document or keep tabs on a random weirdo on the internet. I do agree a site like that would have popped up without Chris regardless though, I mean hell Encyclopedia Dramatica is about the same tier of internet gossip insanity and that predates KF by at least three years.
@@Amahankage2004 Except Twitter has lot more purpose then ruining people's lives. There's thousands of different communities doing own things and most of it is harmless. But KF was made for one purpose: stalk and make fun of and ruining people's lives until they go total spiral or self-delete themselfs. Also I know that kind of site would have happen regardless, but it doesn't change that KF exists because of this.
Definitely my biggest problem with Genos vids after like part 50 it’s like 95% tweets and Facebook post. And like y’all said I get that it’s supposed to be definitive history of christory but half the time I’m skipping or just bored at those parts because their is no real substance to them they just fill like filler
There is no other podcast out there quite like this one. Big thanks to you guys for spotlighting and providing critical commentary on these often overlooked but incredibly culturally important topics. Keep it up and I’ll keep listening!
The art for this episode is next level, I feel like it honestly is weird for people to do a chris-chan documentary since the extensive one is still ongoing and too large to compare to. Like you can't cover chris-chan in 30 minutes you're either in for the long haul or not at all. The only other one I've watched would be the Ben Saint ones focused only on Sonichu since the Geno Samuel ones are mostly focused on Chris, and it has it's own issues as most everything with chris-chan does. Chris-Chan is one of the most interesting things on the internet, and the aspect of the internet's ongoing reaction is like it's own thing you could study for so long.
I don't think I can ever have sympathy for Chris-chan, not after the last "arc" in the story, but do recognise how the trolling didn't help and more than likely made Chris-chan worse, but man what happened was extremely fucked up and kinda changed my few.
Same. Every time I read into the details of Chris Chan in the past, I just can't be sympathetic. Almost everything is purely selfish, egotistical and manipulative. I can't separate that from Chris' poor upbringing, autism, and online trolling. Especially the codependency with the internet. IIRC there were a lot of people who tried to help Chris (principally convince him to get off the internet), but he shut all of them out of his life. The end result of his completely delusional behavior and actions were a result of secluding himself with people who were obviously telling him what he wanted to hear and manipulating him along the way.
@@mlgfurry Gibi is both stupid and confident which makes him infuriating. He's done several mistakes throughout the Chris saga like accidentally helping Bella throw someone under the bus. He also seems like he has some autism spectrum traits. It all reeks of someone who enjoyed the gamergate era like Boxxy, Jim Sterling, and so on.
@@FilthyTea personally, I don't like Gibi because his content can be summarized by "Chris bad and problematic" as if he tries to have a higher moral ground against Chris or something. Plus, many people who covered Chris chan extensively turned out to be just as bad as him, just a bit more functional (Dillin Thomas being the prime example). Not sure if that's the reason though.
The worst gibi has done was that when news just got out of chris and barb's...relationship, he took bella's story at face value and it wasn't until a little later when Bella was revealed to be a horrible person and it made gibi look like an idiot for taking bella's side. The cwcki also just doesn't seem to like gibi that much and a lot of people just take the cwcki as fact when there's clear biases in it.
if you guys make a patreon for netlore i will seriously consider subscribing to it, this is some great stuff. i’m not even really a podcast person but this is one of the few that actually grabs my attention
I was part of a closed-registration forum that trolled Chris in 2009 called the PVCC. I was one of the minor members (Mainly providing graphic design, I made the CWCki logo for example) but it was interesting seeing the inner-workings of how others planned to troll Chris - It was all about the weird spectacle back then, Cybershell's right on the money. Though I found I quickly grew out of the LOLcow phase and haven't followed Chris-chan since like 2013. Which is why it's wild to me that she's still talked about and relevant to Internet culture 10 years later, like I seriously thought this small forum would be the only people that cared about Chris. ...And then the CWCki forums spawned KiwiFarms, a site I wish was knocked off the face of the planet. That's life!
I was on PVCC too. We might even be friends on Facebook lmao. I don't really keep up with anyone else from the forum but I did talk to Liquid a while back and met up IRL with another member a couple of years ago for the nostalgia.
Talking about not knowing much about trolls, there's one that caught my attention exactly because of that reason. It was Emily, the one who had a date with Chris and Bob and was taken by the Pickle later. We don't know who she actually is, only that she lives in the same town or county as Chris (she later stated she bumped into him and worrying he'd recognize her, but that didn't happen). There was an effort put into covering her identity, just like with the other early trolls. Also, kind of a "hot take", but Liquid Chris isn't the best troll, he's just the least bad (or the most entertaining) one.
The first twelve episodes of the Geno Samuel doc has the absolute best arch, I really recommend at least watching the first 12 they go all the way up until the blue spike reveal
Chris Chan's story is much like Sonichu. Initially it was about Sonichu, but it very quickly became about Chris Chan. Funnily enough, the troll we know the most about is Liquid Chris and what he's up to now.
While I think it’s okay to document Chris’ life, it’s an awful idea to interact with Chris whatsoever for 2 reasons. 1. They’re Chris 2. You don’t want your legacy to be controlled by the CWCki or Farms, because they’ll obsess over you more than your own family.
i still have hope in my heart that on his deathbed, chris is gonna go: "uughh, my actual name is Jake, im a method actor from Jersey, you have been trolled"
"The reason we care is because other people care" Me, not interested in Chris-Chan, but watching anyway because Netlore is awesome: "Yeah, that sounds about right."
It's just bullying rebranded as "trolling." Chris-Chan is a terrible person who has done terrible things, but none of that justifies neurotypical people manipulating, gaslighting, and harassing an autistic person for over a decade for their own amusement. Or people making 70-part "documentaries" about Chris-Chan's every facebook post like they're observing an animal in a zoo.
8:51 It's so true that there are a 100+ other Chris Chans out there. I find it interesting to hear about people like that and some I know of will never get the attention that Chris had. I believe there are several reasons to it. To become a "Chris Chan" on the internet, you need: -Unsupervised/unlimited access to the internet. -Know how to upload things to the internet -Reply to hate comment and make "reply" videos targeting them. -Incredibly gullible. -Use copyrighted material, change it a bit, and claim it as original. (That's usually how people find them) -Have a r@cist/s@xist/selfish/egotistic mindset. (Gives people a moral reason to bully them) -Commit a crime (Gives people a big reason to hate them) -Always believe you are right and never wrong. If you're wrong, it's other people's fault. -Have an obsession -Telling everyone everything about your life Having all 10 of those traits is really rare. I've seen "lolcow" type people becoming admirable because they never react to hate comments and they don't have hateful beliefs. I'd say most "Chris Chan" type people have about 3-4 of those traits. Usually it's just "Have an obsession", "Using copyrighted material", and "Know how to upload things to the internet". But sometimes you still get people that have all 10 of those traits, Cyraxx and Daniel Larson.
Cyrax has all those characteristics, but he doesn't have the magnitude of autism that Chris has. Also, Chris didn't get taught any of the coping mechanisms most autistic kids do. Chris' biggest problem is his inability to discern someone with good intentions, and trolls. If he hadn't been so relentlessly trolled, I doubt if anybody would have heard of him. All those years, the only coping mechanism he had, was Sonichu. Imagine.
@@theMoporter True! He could also qualify for "Use copyrighted material, change it a bit, and claim it as original." because, you know, the whole "Grabbing a historical failed artist dictator, changing him, and then pretending he was him in a previous life". Tho, I don't think he technically committed any crimes. I might be wrong. So he might qualify for 9/10 of those traits.
@@Lilybun But Chris isn't violent. Nor has he ever shown any interest in kids. Chris' behaviour hasn't 'escalated' he's autistic. Like, really, really autistic. He's not bi-polar. And Chris isn't ''most people''. He's an emotional toddler. His actual real life superpowers are stamping his feet, holding his breath until his face goes blue and . . . sulking? Is sulking a superpower? Whether it is or not, Chris poses very little actual risk to anyone. It's scarier to see how people are trying to make out he's some kind of monster, and he isn't. He's just a big, smelly retard who identifies as an electric Hedgehog Pokemon deity. He aligns his chakras with crystal ffs! He didn't know who Billy Mays was. He has the social skills of a backwards, timid six or seven year kid. And he doesn't seem to have been socialised at all for long periods of his childhood. He learned about women from Bob. Who was hardly much of an expert, seeing as how he got stuck with Snorlax. And Barb taught him how to be mommy's special little man. And very little else.
I had heard awhile ago about a Netflix documentary on Chris Chan being in the works, which I was moderately excited for, but hearing Bernie's take here has made me think about whether or not it's a good idea.
since i had to see the picture of where she cut open her gooch for a DIY sex change, I find it hard to believe she would be joking. I think for a lot of people it started out laughing at sonichu; I found out from spazkid's fucked flash series about him and you can imagine what it would be like to find that with no context and as a child lol. So then the rabbit hole started from there. I think it is definitely to do with being into sonic and generally just the voyeurism of someone so unbelievably strange getting worse and worse. Never understood people who got involved tho, shout out dstecks for making a sonichu review and then breaking down in the final episode to apologise for being mean to someone in high school.
7:39 Ben Saint is a hypocrite, he said in the lecture "don't violate the prime directive, don't interact with Chris" and then tried to get involved with Chris.
I think the best Chris-chan documentary is the one by TheGamerFromMars, since it's greatly condensed into only 5-hours across 4 videos which will tell you everything you need to know about Chris as a person and why they became such an Internet phenomenom More importantly, that documentary is very unbiased: it actually has a small interview with Chris before *the incident* and it never tries to paint them in a negative light like so many others do (despite of what happened shortly afterwards, and the documentary kinda coming out to ride on the buzz of their arrest), but rather present the facts as they were and let people draw their own conclusions on how they feel about Chris-chan: sometimes you might sympathize with them, sometimes you will feel very sorry for the people around them, sometimes you will find the whole situation depressing and sometimes you will find Chris being a detestable individual besides their mental illness due their unwillingless to ever get better in life
Fwiw as someone who was watching this person from basically the start, while the wiki popped up initially as a troll, it relatively quickly became a home to multiple people who were sympathetic towards and tried to protect Chris. None of the actions of the trolls are really excusable but Chris really was their own worst enemy.
Tbh, the "protectors" are nearly as bad. They instantly made White Knighting their personality. It wouldn't have lasted without obsessive, patronising curators who documented all her self-report and ways to get on her nerves. If they wanted to help, they'd have been trying to stop her updating them.
All I'm hoping for the future is that something like this doesn't happen again, because I have a terrible feeling that the internet is gonna become too connected for its own good and no one's gonna be safe. I'm surprised something cataclysmic like the dark web leaking into the actual internet hasn't happened yet. It's so insane how different the internet was 10-15 years ago.
imo i think stuff like this already happens on a semi-regular basis (albeit almost always on a smaller scale and usually with somewhat less dire and horrific consequences) specifically i mean: when a group of people on a site like 4chan or kiwifarms decide to stalk and harass someone on the internet. and sometimes the harassment gets extreme (doxxing their home address, sending death threats, etc). i think part of the reason we think of them differently is because Chris-chan happens to be by far the most famous example of such an occurance. i'd imagine that introduces a sort of bias, i.e. i'd imagine there are more cases of this phenomenon (some maybe of similar severity) that we just don't hear much about, or that don't get enough attention for the stories to spread to the wider internet and the public conscious.
The dark web by definition can't "leak into the actual internet" because they are two different things for two different purposes. To give an analogy, it would be like being scared of drug cartels selling their products at walmart. The reason black markets exist is to get away from the rules of normal markets, and the reason the dark web exists is to avoid being a part of the surface web. dark web users aren't bogeymen, they're human beings. If you're scared of them being a part of the regular internet, don't be, because they've been here the entire time.
The list of most documented people in history can be summarized as follows: 1. The Prophet Muhammad (see Islamic hadith literature and all the little unpleasant details it records) 2. Chris-chan (because of course) 3. Samuel Pepys (whose extensive diaries still don't tell us if he liked his fanta with an extra ingredient)
I find the discussion about potential trolls and acting as if they're suddenly being tempted to harass Chris because of the documentation and urge to be included to be weirdly off base with jumping to a ton of conclusions. It's the similar fear mongering used for untold generations by pointing out the extremes while pretending they're the norm rather than the exception. It's like looking at Christory as if it all happened in the span of like a year when obviously that isn't the case.
We will never see another individual like Chris and the whole "keeping track of their life" ever again, or at the very least not for a long time... Crazy to think about.
I was just reminded of the time i was talking about chris w a friend of mine while back when the chris arrest happened and i was explaining why i felt iffy about christory and christorians after learning about the people who would directly egg chris off to do stuff, and i mentioned how it reminded me of how, true crime fans started to kinda step over the lines where it went from just talking about some kinda interesting cases, to trying to interview victims' families, to like, people trying to involve themselves in active investigations like the Gabi Petito case, thinking they were going to have an important footnote in it. Also, i appreciate the pronous unsage, another thing that made me uncomfortable about christory stuff would be the ammount of transphobia or transphobia apologia i've seen. I dont think we'll evert truly know how genuine they are about their identity, but i've witnessed/heard people use chris-chan as an excuse ''oh, its okay to misgender trans people I dont like or when theyre bad people'' or as *the* evidence that all trans ppl are just dangerous mentally ill people.
the only lesson I could manage from learning about this when I was 16 was to stop learning about it because fixating on drama/internet shit too much is how you become more like Chris Chan
The actual first, real in depth look at CWC that i saw was the, now defunct "It came from the internet". It was several podcast episodes going over CWC and their many exploits. I want to mention, this was before the Sachumo doc had aired. It Came From The Internet, formally on the Random Assault Podcast, youtube channel. These episodes are still available, they were moved to the main host's personal channel Odie Esty.
Geno's documentary could definitely get that guy a job. Not to say that it's all high quality all the time, but the sheer amount of content and research required to produce it is honestly insane, even by modern standards. I can't think of any amateurs (and relatively few professionals) that have put *that* much work into recording one person's life. This is like over 50 hours of video all together and it's *still* going.
He's essentially just reading from already-existing resources like the wiki or the farms. I wouldn't call the videos "research" the way you'd normally use the term because very little is original, or even originally *compounded* (as in, most stuff is pulled, in order, verbatim, straight from the sources he's using). I'd liken it to praising someone for being an author/writer, when their channel is one of those "spooky stories from Reddit" video pits. I can sort of admire the work ethic and regularity, but it's just putting already-existing work in an easily-digestible format. A counterexample of someone I genuinely respect as a researcher and for making original and engaging work on RUclips would be Fredrik Knudsen; his Down The Rabbit Hole series is fantastic.
@@GuyDude-hk8uyThat's a fair point, it was definitely more... let's say properly synthetic in the beginning than it is now. I wouldn't put him on the level of, say, PopArena or Knudsen, or hell even Defunctland in terms of *quality* of work. Like you say, more of a nod to the literal work and the fact that it's all on Chris.
Having not watched this video yet, i always get these videos about her in my reccomended, and I see something like "part 52" and then I see it's an hour and a half long video and I just have to wonder what these peoples lives are like that talking about one weirdo on the internet is their only hobby.
If you're talking about Geno Samuel's documentary, this guy has a life and other hobbies. Making the doc is like his job or something (I'm not sure about that, feel free to correct if I'm wrong)
Actually, the fact is Chris was found over 15 years ago, not by a documentary, but by a few scattered forum posts just a few people happened to have some overlap in visiting, connecting seperate communities together to expose him to those who would screw with him for years to come. So, to put any of this on Geno is asinine. Chandler wasn't scrubbed from the internet at any point before Geno made his doc: all of it was still out there, even more than was around when Chandler was initially found, increasing the likelihood that if people with ill intent found Chandler once, they would again, documentary or no. All people have their own agency to make and do of information they stumble across as they will. Geno isn't in control of other people's agency.
I don't think it's that cut and dry. Sharing information isn't a neutral act. If I tell a thief when a rich snob is going to leave their house unguarded then even if I'm not omitting the crime myself I've become an accomplice when they decide to break in. Someone else could have told them, or they could have just observed things themselves and figured it out on their own, but if I am the source of info then I am not a mere bystander. As Cybershell pointed out, despite trying to be as neutral as possible, proclaiming to an audience of millions that someone is the most gullible person in the world and will believe anything you tell them is of course going to get some bad actors to try and target them. Intentional or not, malicious or not, it's a direct line of cause and effect between Geno making his documentary and his fans harassing Chris. That said, I don't know how much I personally can blame him. I wish that he had never made his videos, but I don't think he acted maliciously. I think he knew what the risks were of giving Chris another spotlight and acted despite that, but I can't bring myself to say he was wrong to do so.
@@Trivial_Man No, it really is that cut and dry. You can't both blame Geno for making the doc as the reason Chris gets trolled and ignore the fact he was trolled when he was absolutely unknown (that's called cognitive dissonance). And going to need a LOT of citation for "his fans harassing Chris" claim. Watching the documentary doesn't make someone Geno's "fan." You are attributing a LOT of motive and a LOT of malice to take this stance, and TMDNWU, toobz. By the way, nice job starting out with a false equivalency. Really undermines everything you wrote from there on out. "If I tell a thief" Oh so you know he was a thief then, as opposed to you telling a random person and them just turning out to be a thief? See, that little difference there? That's called nuance (that thing you're pretending you're approaching the topic with). Geno didn't approach people he knew had ill intent and hand them over hours of documentary. "If I am the source of the info then I am not a mere bystander" doesn't hold much when you already assumed the person you approached is a thief, now does it? You dug your own "at fault" grave there. Your analogy poses you directly approaching something with ill intent; Geno released it to the masses, with no control over who it would reach, when, and what they would do with it. Of course you can't bring yourself to say Geno was wrong. Because he wasn't. Just like he wasn't at fault.
@@e.m.dubois5463 I'm not going to address this whole thing, but why do you assume in my alleged false equivalency example that I knew the person was a thief? The intent was that they were a random person that I told and that they then turned out to be a bad actor. I guess apologies for not spending more time setting the stage. Also the citation for introducing trolls via his documentary is in this video. One of them mentioned that a guy wanted to be part of Christory and reuploaded some of Geno's videos while they were down and started messing with him. Also a cursory glance at the cwcki for Geno lists others influenced by him.
It is kinda interesting how Sonichu has become almost a footnote in Chris’s history. I guess I’m a “new”er fan where I discovered them in I wanna say 2014 when the blue arms thing was happening, but even then I learned about the comic first and how Chris weaved in their life (therefore making it unreadable to anyone who wasn’t tuned into their escapades lol) throughout it. Don’t really see people talk about the comic as much as Chris but like y’all said, they don’t really draw a ton anymore. I will say that people becoming more “sympathetic” to Chris’s life is a double-edged sword in that yes it’s very bad that people stalked and bullied a clearly low functioning autistic person for decades but then also people are trying to defend Chris when she’s just a really horrible person imo
@@WyattporterThere’s many aspects of her life that would be better/ wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t egged on, especially a certain recent event that got her put in jail for a year, but stuff like wishing death upon anyone who opposed her or blaming everyone in her life for all her misfortunes/ accusing them of being homosexual, being a pathological liar, murdering kittens several different times due to pure negligence and several attempted assaults and murders on people is really bad and all her. There’s some blame from the parents but it gets to the point where someone probably just is not a good person
@@Wyattporter oh for sure, the idea guys definitely didn’t help mental health at all, but most of the issues Chris presents (personality, social interaction, health, so on) already existed, the trolls only amplified those thoughts by surrounding Chris in an echo chamber.
@@unlimited-edge yeah, I agree with both of you. If she had been left alone she would have just turned out as a garden-variety Internet weirdo. I think it’s a sad story all around.
I've wanted entertaining Chris Chan content for a long time, and audibly shouted "WHAT" in my bedroom when I saw this in my recommended. First of all, I love the background art! Sachumo making his documentary for a high school project stumbled into "how can I paint this negative internet figure in a positive light," and GenoSamuel was the first time someone asked, "how can I make a Netflix-length documentary of this internet figure?" The latter was a self-fulfilling prophecy; GenoSamuel thought he was removing clips but unknowingly made it long to shock outsiders as "the most comprehensive history."
It's so fucking wild to me that someone would look at what's become of Chris' life and then immediately think "Yeah man I really want to permanently embed my name into this history". It's like being jealous of all the people who have their names listed on the 9/11 memorial
There's an Arthure episode about that
@@xibalbalon8668the guy from pbs?
@@carlosemilio5180 Yeah. There's an episode where there's a school fire and everyone has to evacuate, Arthur was afraid his dad died. One of the kids stayed home and felt left out and jealous over everyone talking about it and pulled the fire alarm for attention.
Which is appropriate, wanting to be part of some tragedy is kinda childish, so are people like the ideas guys and isabella
I feel like the point that needs to be made is this is not just a story, or an internet fable. This is someones life. This stuff actually happened. It’s comedic looking at it from afar when Chris does it to themselves but there were people who would look for Chris Chan and mess with them. Chris is no hero mind you, but to be fair there are no heroes in Chris Chan’s story. Only Victims and Villains, and sometimes it overlaps.
Except the Sonichu,
Its athing I see with most lolcow stories. Everyone isnto blame for chrises downfall
Okay 🥱
Adam Stackhouse is my hero.
Cybershell is like a fast talking encyclopedia, he's a very smart guy but also he talks at 100 words per minute
Literally sounds like he's on cocaine
Ben Shapiro if his interests were Sonic and weird internet stuff
adderallshell
Cybershell wiki% speedruns.
It's the sonic autism
To clarify on the page that was made to trick Chris, it was actually a bait page made by Clyde Cash claiming the wi-fi receiver of the PS3 was actually tracking bug. The hope was that any user that was actually Chris would be dumb enough to comment on this, which Chris did under the JenkinsJinkies persona. Once the trolls on the cwcki were sure this was Chris, (which Chris helpfully confirmed by creating the surreal Coffee Place article) Jinkies was directed to a fake troll forum called Trollin’ Train which contained a (also fake) bounty list for trolling accomplishments against Chris. The top bounty was 9,001 dollars for the destruction of the PS3 which Chris very ignorantly thought they could claim, which is what led to the PS3 destruction videos.
This all sounds like a bunch of bullshit writing it out lol.
Man, I remember when over 9000 was peak memes
It's a close tie between this and the Miyamoto Saga for funniest Chris story
@@shukterhousejive Liquid Chris is the best saga, from a more innocent time, before it all became truly insane and cruel. And it honestly seemed to get under Chris' skin in a way that nothing else seemed to. Also, wasn't BlueSpike the one directly before Liquid too? It's like we got a taste of how sadistic this could become, then there was the last "good" Liquid saga before it all went wrong.
Nice profile pic brother, SH3 for the win
I have seen the video where Chris destroyed his PS3. I never knew the backstory was so complicated lmao.
Honestly feel like the best way to tackle a Chris Chan doc at this point is to put it into the context of how our social systems routinely fail vulnerable people.
At what point are people responsible for their own actions? When are we going to stop looking at someone who r*ped their dementia ridden mother and say "ah yes, this is a failure of society and not the individual, the individual bears absolutely no responsibility for this".
I'm over it. People deserve to be blamed. He could've got help, people tried to help, but he chose to largely remain the way he is.
@@vangoghsseveredearhe didn't get any help from bullying. His parents were terrible, and actively refused to get special treatment for him, forcing him into a regular school, and refusing to get professional mental help.
Chris chan highlights a lot of problems than mentally ill people face, and how parents can just refuse to get help, to save their ego.
@@fazzeaibragChris also refused legitimate help from others for a large portion of their adult life, or do we blame that on parents/internet too?
@islandboy9381 Yes, apparently, because Chris is "Trans," he must be completely innocent of all crimes because trans people are completely innocent babies who must be protected
@@fazzeaibragYou think r*pe should be legal we get it
“We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
'No one sees the barn,' he said finally.
A long silence followed.
'Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.'
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.
'We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.' "
Thus also to Chris-Chan
Whats this excerpt from?
@@malikoniousjoe White Noise by Don Delillio
Energies + Jack = Enerjack?
KEN PENDERS REFERENCE???
I thought that read like White Noise. Fantastic book, easily one of my favorites from college
Man, you're right about the earlier internet having more respect for "look but don't touch" rules. I was on Portal of Evil back in the day, and they took that VERY seriously as part of the board culture. Anyone caught doing it would be savaged. I'm curious when, exactly, that changed.
All the people ostracized or banned from places that enforced rules like that congregated in the few places that didn't. Once that happened they all just egged each other on and validated each other's desire to roll around in the shit, so to speak.
The takeaway from all the Chris-chan nonsense shouldn't be "how could we have stopped this?", it should be "how can we make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else?"
In fairness asking how this could have been stopped also would help with answer how we could avoid this happening to anyone else.
It was Chris’s fault that people harassed them. They were grossly racist and homophobic, and had assaulted women multiple times. And it was all public.
Dont have kids at an extremely late age and, if you do, monitor them at all times
Exacute furries and the mentally unfit. Haha just kidding.....
@@XSlimSxadyX oh no hims a raeeecist
I do think the sympathy for Chris grew especially during the Idea Guys/Sockness "saga" where Chris was getting notably worse mentally (This is where the dimensional merge lore started) in 2017. There were clear bullies and Chris was not the instigator in most of these instances
I think it all started after Bob died and the house burnt down. People suddenly realized their own mortality and that Chris probably wasn't gonna be around forever. Of course then the gamestop incident happened.
But yeah I have never heard anyone defend the ideas guys. Trolling was always sadistic and messed with CWC's loose grip on reality, but this entered extortion and physical territory that you can still see the influence on to this day
No one ever brings up the fact that KF stopped the idea guys or that Null was supporting Chris for a while there.
Personally I lost a lot of sympathy with how hard Chris has gone in on the the dimensional rift bullshit. It's a very clear escape mechanism to avoid dealing with anything remotely close to the real world. Chris was failed terribly by his parents and after Bob died the majority of his troubles were self inflicted, from hitting the one dude with his car to pepper spraying the GameStop employee, with most trolling having not much impact on whatever lead to those major life decisions.
Chris Chan feels like a roaming legendary Pokemon in Virginia
Except instead of running away on the first turn, he explains Sonichu lore until YOU want to run away
*’Chris Chan can be found Roaming in the wild’*
@@jaximilian1962 except you don't catch him, unfortunately he catches you
Shiny sex offender
@@jaximilian1962 So he Roars you away?
I think it's worth noting that a ton of people who were bullying chris chan or documenting things about her were themselves autistic. One person got so vile and obsessive about it that eventually, christorians started digging into that person, and finding out that they too were autistic, and possibly the reason they were so obsessive is because they looked at chris like a dark reflection of themselves that blissfully highlighted all the parts of themselves they were embarrassed about. So naturally some christorians kept documenting and stalking that person until they all slowly realized that *almost all of them were too, autistic, bullying another person because they felt they were looking at a dark reflection of themselves*. It's self-loathing all the way down.
I don't necessarily think the modern day documenting is any different. It's not as contemptable but documenting the life of a person is never a neutral or objective act.
All of kiwifarms is self hatred
I wonder if part of the fascination is people being Autistic themselves and developing a hyperfixation on them, or even being a bit like "Oh shit, this could be me" (like worrying about it) and thus causing the fascination, which could also be how the hyperfixation starts.
Whenever I read the comments on a Chris Chan video the comments are full of people going "I'm autistic, and this could have been me if I'd had worse parents". I think Chris is a sort of horror story for autistic people. And a cautionary tale of what can happen if you completely lose your self awareness.
i strongly suspect this is the case, at least for some people.
i don't know if i'm autistic (fwiw i'm definitely adhd) but in the past i've been similarly obsessed with a wide range of different subjects. similar in that, notably, i'm an archivist as a hobby and i like to document and archive (in excruciating detail) stuff like some youtube videos / series or like pre-release video and screenshots of certain older video games.
i've never done any work related to Chris-chan though (i considered it once but decided against it)
Tbh I think the fascination comes from the fact that the entirety of Christory is just THAT bizarre. Whenever you think you've seen everything, something as crazy or even crazier happens.
The fact that Chris also responded very, VERY poorly to trolls caused them to keep coming up with elaborates plans to make Chris do something dumb.
One thing I can say for sure is outcasts can be fascinating and someone can identify with an outcast.
Oh 100% that's how it was for me lmao
In reference to wanting a documentary about the people who trolled Chris, there actually is a documentary series called "beneath the bridge" about Chris's various trolls, although I think it was discontinued as the last upload was three years ago
Thank you.
link?
@@rotomfan63bruh youtube has a search feature
@@rotomfan63
Most recent episode, 3 yrs ago ruclips.net/video/aXDnI4pZDXM/видео.html
You think?
I know this is only the 5th episode, but I honestly love the chemistry you guys have.
Every time a new netlore episode drops it’s a whole event
Double Cybershell content in one day holy fuck truly blessed
Glad too finally hear about people talking about Sachumo, I feel like he deserves a lot of credit for only being a highschooler, and putting together a really well-thought well rounded documentary about Chris it seems like the popular thing to do nowadays is to make a documentary about Chris. That’s very half hearted and I think it doesn’t do the whole story justice, if there’s any justice to be had in the Chris Chan saga.
First Ken Penders, and now this nightmare. Cybershell is really risking his life.
When there isn't a new episode of Netlore, people should be asking themselves "Hey, where's Netlore?"
Hi Goblin
@@BoWs1rJr how did you find me.
@@BasicallyGoblin I love cybershell and this podcast alot, I just happened to find you randomly lol
I'd give anything to live in the timeline where people knew about Sonichu but never looked into Chris-Chan at all.
my biggest issue with most of the chris-chan “Documentaries” is that they’re more interested in just reading the cwcki than, you know, being a documentary. I can count on one hand the number of good faith interviews we have with Christine, which is pretty dire for the alleged “most documented person in history”
You're right, but, to be fair, getting a good faith interview is basically impossible at this point for the exact reason(s) that people want to make documentaries about her.
Especially considering that she herself is referencing the documentaries at this point, the value of interviews is,while still there, severely diminished.
Not sure there's much to be gained from interviews really, she oscillated between posting her whole life and opinions on the internet to not wanting to talk to anyone due to fear of trolls.
@@Wohlfe the CountDankula interview gave us the insane revelation that Chris thinks that Ted Bundy was framed and is also half Sonichu, so that was something
@@glurgbarble7268 CountDankula 🗿
Good faith interviews with anything involving Chris is never in good faith.
Those who are looking to interview Chris are exploiting Chris’s nonsense and mental illness and feeding into Chris’s delusions that he is world famous for his terrible comic when in actuality Chris is only famous for his nonsense, but he is too empty headed to understand that.
Chris in interviews is unreliable for testimony because Chris is a pathological liar who warps stories to place themselves in positive light, not even sure what planet he is on and has no sense of understanding basic questions.
This channel needs more recognition, I have been watching Bernie for 2 years and Cybershell for over 7 years and when this channel uploads, its like the highlight of my day to listen to the podcast while working out.
27:37 lmao
EDIT: I also unironically love cybershell's "Weird sonic goblin thing" avatar in the thumbnail, all drawn crappy. I love it.
God I love this podcast. I never knew I needed two nerds discussing internet stories all while maintaining a mature tone and an objective perspective. Definitely recommending this series to my homies.
terrified at how well politebaby managed to recreate chris’ art style for the background. it’s like a peek into a slightly worse alternate timeline
I think I agree with Bernie with the sentiment that chrischan is "The ultimate endpoint of internet downward spiral" but I also think it has it has a lot to do with communication and for the first time, a global or united culture. In other words, there were probably Chrischan's throughout history, a story about a strange person you knew that you couldn't understand, or stop talking about. I'd argue that Chris isn't the product of his time, the spectacle surrounding him is the product of his time, Chris just happened to be unlucky enough to be born into the spectacle of the 21st century.
How has nobody noticed that one of the composers for Pizza Tower left a comment here for all this time?
Edit: Love your work, dude.
I could genuinely listen to Cybershell talk about anything for HOURS
I could listen to you guys talk for hours feel free to not have to cut yourselves short
I wish that Sonichu was the only thing Chris-chan was known for. I wish so much that there was just this unfathomably shitty comic that inexplicably blew up in popularity and everyone could laugh at how bad and silly it was without having to think about the life of whoever drew it. Everyone who was involved in the whole debacle, especially Chris, would have come out so much better if that had been the case
The thing about it that makes it about far more than Sonichu is the things Chris had started gaining attention for which were unrelated. The whole Love Quest arc had some random people posting about it stumbling across it in the wild then of course there was all the stuff that Chris would just throw out there to the point you would imagine not a single event went by in his life he didn't tell the internet. On top of that all he's legit proud and thinks Sonichu is some incredible work of art, that it has millions of fans and the like but for some reason only the trolls seem to be vocal about it.
Is that not just what Tails Gets Trolled is, though?
@@alfiehicks1 Yes. So obviously you can see why I want another
@@alfiehicks1Tails gets trolled is a masterpiece though
@@alfiehicks1tails gets trolled is good though. Also the people that make it deliberately keep a low profile
Love these podcasts, it's really unique to talk about these old internet moments both with the level of research expected of modern RUclips but also the empathy and care that felt more rare at the time
There was a documentary series about the trolls. It was called "Beneath The Bridge". The guy also used to do covers of Chris' various songs but all those have been deleted from the channel along with many other videos. I think the Beneath The Bridge videos are still there though.
Hi nin
@@pepesilvia8033 Hi
Just so you guys know, this is my favourite podcast, and one of my favourite youtube channels. The idea of netlore is just so interesting and the topics you guys choose are really unique and fun to listen to. I also like how your videos inform on the same level of a video essay without having the whole 'video essay' feel. Instead it's just two guys talking about a random obscure internet topic.
Keep it up, and I'll def sub to a Patreon if you ever set up one!
IMO, The worst thing that this whole saga did was the creation of Kiwi Farms.
Assuming that a similar site wouldnt have existed without chris, or like other sites arent worse, twitter has ruined more people than kiwifarms.
@@Amahankage2004 I feel that's not really a fair comparison. Sure, Twitter IS objectively a hellscape of a site, but at least in it's inception it wasn't conceived as a way to document or keep tabs on a random weirdo on the internet. I do agree a site like that would have popped up without Chris regardless though, I mean hell Encyclopedia Dramatica is about the same tier of internet gossip insanity and that predates KF by at least three years.
@@Amahankage2004 Except Twitter has lot more purpose then ruining people's lives. There's thousands of different communities doing own things and most of it is harmless. But KF was made for one purpose: stalk and make fun of and ruining people's lives until they go total spiral or self-delete themselfs.
Also I know that kind of site would have happen regardless, but it doesn't change that KF exists because of this.
Definitely my biggest problem with Genos vids after like part 50 it’s like 95% tweets and Facebook post. And like y’all said I get that it’s supposed to be definitive history of christory but half the time I’m skipping or just bored at those parts because their is no real substance to them they just fill like filler
There is no other podcast out there quite like this one. Big thanks to you guys for spotlighting and providing critical commentary on these often overlooked but incredibly culturally important topics. Keep it up and I’ll keep listening!
The art for this episode is next level, I feel like it honestly is weird for people to do a chris-chan documentary since the extensive one is still ongoing and too large to compare to. Like you can't cover chris-chan in 30 minutes you're either in for the long haul or not at all. The only other one I've watched would be the Ben Saint ones focused only on Sonichu since the Geno Samuel ones are mostly focused on Chris, and it has it's own issues as most everything with chris-chan does. Chris-Chan is one of the most interesting things on the internet, and the aspect of the internet's ongoing reaction is like it's own thing you could study for so long.
I don't think I can ever have sympathy for Chris-chan, not after the last "arc" in the story, but do recognise how the trolling didn't help and more than likely made Chris-chan worse, but man what happened was extremely fucked up and kinda changed my few.
Same. Every time I read into the details of Chris Chan in the past, I just can't be sympathetic. Almost everything is purely selfish, egotistical and manipulative. I can't separate that from Chris' poor upbringing, autism, and online trolling. Especially the codependency with the internet. IIRC there were a lot of people who tried to help Chris (principally convince him to get off the internet), but he shut all of them out of his life. The end result of his completely delusional behavior and actions were a result of secluding himself with people who were obviously telling him what he wanted to hear and manipulating him along the way.
Just in time for the gym sets. Now I can fuel myself with rage at Gibi.
What did gibi do?
@@mlgfurry Gibi is both stupid and confident which makes him infuriating. He's done several mistakes throughout the Chris saga like accidentally helping Bella throw someone under the bus. He also seems like he has some autism spectrum traits. It all reeks of someone who enjoyed the gamergate era like Boxxy, Jim Sterling, and so on.
@@mlgfurrythat’s what I’ve been wondering. Everyone seems to hate the guy but I’m not sure as to why.
@@FilthyTea personally, I don't like Gibi because his content can be summarized by "Chris bad and problematic" as if he tries to have a higher moral ground against Chris or something. Plus, many people who covered Chris chan extensively turned out to be just as bad as him, just a bit more functional (Dillin Thomas being the prime example). Not sure if that's the reason though.
The worst gibi has done was that when news just got out of chris and barb's...relationship, he took bella's story at face value and it wasn't until a little later when Bella was revealed to be a horrible person and it made gibi look like an idiot for taking bella's side. The cwcki also just doesn't seem to like gibi that much and a lot of people just take the cwcki as fact when there's clear biases in it.
This podcast is seriously great, always exciting seeing a new episode out. Kudos.
if you guys make a patreon for netlore i will seriously consider subscribing to it, this is some great stuff. i’m not even really a podcast person but this is one of the few that actually grabs my attention
Yeah no, Cybershill is not to be trusted with Patreons...
Remember last time?
this is literally the only podcast i want to listen to
I was part of a closed-registration forum that trolled Chris in 2009 called the PVCC. I was one of the minor members (Mainly providing graphic design, I made the CWCki logo for example) but it was interesting seeing the inner-workings of how others planned to troll Chris - It was all about the weird spectacle back then, Cybershell's right on the money. Though I found I quickly grew out of the LOLcow phase and haven't followed Chris-chan since like 2013.
Which is why it's wild to me that she's still talked about and relevant to Internet culture 10 years later, like I seriously thought this small forum would be the only people that cared about Chris.
...And then the CWCki forums spawned KiwiFarms, a site I wish was knocked off the face of the planet. That's life!
>she
@@dirtytarquin6383 Begrudgingly I do respect Chris' pronouns. I do it for other transgender people, so I do it to be consistent across the board
I was on PVCC too. We might even be friends on Facebook lmao. I don't really keep up with anyone else from the forum but I did talk to Liquid a while back and met up IRL with another member a couple of years ago for the nostalgia.
@@dirtytarquin6383 >meme arrows on RUclips
Very cringe.
Talking about not knowing much about trolls, there's one that caught my attention exactly because of that reason. It was Emily, the one who had a date with Chris and Bob and was taken by the Pickle later. We don't know who she actually is, only that she lives in the same town or county as Chris (she later stated she bumped into him and worrying he'd recognize her, but that didn't happen). There was an effort put into covering her identity, just like with the other early trolls.
Also, kind of a "hot take", but Liquid Chris isn't the best troll, he's just the least bad (or the most entertaining) one.
I know exactly who Emily is. I used to talk to her on Skype :)
Still waiting on that Sonichu Bonus Episode, cowards
The first twelve episodes of the Geno Samuel doc has the absolute best arch, I really recommend at least watching the first 12 they go all the way up until the blue spike reveal
This is one of my favorite podcasts, I just wish you guys recorded more frequently.
Netlore vids always make my day better. Keep it up guys ❤
Chris Chan's story is much like Sonichu. Initially it was about Sonichu, but it very quickly became about Chris Chan. Funnily enough, the troll we know the most about is Liquid Chris and what he's up to now.
While I think it’s okay to document Chris’ life, it’s an awful idea to interact with Chris whatsoever for 2 reasons.
1. They’re Chris
2. You don’t want your legacy to be controlled by the CWCki or Farms, because they’ll obsess over you more than your own family.
i still have hope in my heart that on his deathbed, chris is gonna go: "uughh, my actual name is Jake, im a method actor from Jersey, you have been trolled"
If all the other video series are Chris Chan history, this podcast is Chris Chan historiography.
"The reason we care is because other people care"
Me, not interested in Chris-Chan, but watching anyway because Netlore is awesome: "Yeah, that sounds about right."
Hell Yess my favorite sonic RUclipsr talking about my favorite sonichu RUclipsr
It's just bullying rebranded as "trolling."
Chris-Chan is a terrible person who has done terrible things, but none of that justifies neurotypical people manipulating, gaslighting, and harassing an autistic person for over a decade for their own amusement.
Or people making 70-part "documentaries" about Chris-Chan's every facebook post like they're observing an animal in a zoo.
New Netlore episode I am literally jumping for joy
8:51 It's so true that there are a 100+ other Chris Chans out there. I find it interesting to hear about people like that and some I know of will never get the attention that Chris had. I believe there are several reasons to it. To become a "Chris Chan" on the internet, you need:
-Unsupervised/unlimited access to the internet.
-Know how to upload things to the internet
-Reply to hate comment and make "reply" videos targeting them.
-Incredibly gullible.
-Use copyrighted material, change it a bit, and claim it as original. (That's usually how people find them)
-Have a r@cist/s@xist/selfish/egotistic mindset. (Gives people a moral reason to bully them)
-Commit a crime (Gives people a big reason to hate them)
-Always believe you are right and never wrong. If you're wrong, it's other people's fault.
-Have an obsession
-Telling everyone everything about your life
Having all 10 of those traits is really rare. I've seen "lolcow" type people becoming admirable because they never react to hate comments and they don't have hateful beliefs. I'd say most "Chris Chan" type people have about 3-4 of those traits. Usually it's just "Have an obsession", "Using copyrighted material", and "Know how to upload things to the internet". But sometimes you still get people that have all 10 of those traits, Cyraxx and Daniel Larson.
Cyrax has all those characteristics, but he doesn't have the magnitude of autism that Chris has. Also, Chris didn't get taught any of the coping mechanisms most autistic kids do. Chris' biggest problem is his inability to discern someone with good intentions, and trolls. If he hadn't been so relentlessly trolled, I doubt if anybody would have heard of him. All those years, the only coping mechanism he had, was Sonichu. Imagine.
Felix Cypher has to be up there. The internet is pretty clear that they do not want him around, though.
@@theMoporter True! He could also qualify for "Use copyrighted material, change it a bit, and claim it as original." because, you know, the whole "Grabbing a historical failed artist dictator, changing him, and then pretending he was him in a previous life". Tho, I don't think he technically committed any crimes. I might be wrong. So he might qualify for 9/10 of those traits.
The fact that chris-chan hasnt killed people or gone to jail for cp or something is what most people with similarly escalated behaviour can't avoid.
@@Lilybun But Chris isn't violent. Nor has he ever shown any interest in kids. Chris' behaviour hasn't 'escalated' he's autistic. Like, really, really autistic. He's not bi-polar. And Chris isn't ''most people''. He's an emotional toddler. His actual real life superpowers are stamping his feet, holding his breath until his face goes blue and . . . sulking? Is sulking a superpower?
Whether it is or not, Chris poses very little actual risk to anyone. It's scarier to see how people are trying to make out he's some kind of monster, and he isn't.
He's just a big, smelly retard who identifies as an electric Hedgehog Pokemon deity. He aligns his chakras with crystal ffs! He didn't know who Billy Mays was. He has the social skills of a backwards, timid six or seven year kid. And he doesn't seem to have been socialised at all for long periods of his childhood. He learned about women from Bob. Who was hardly much of an expert, seeing as how he got stuck with Snorlax. And Barb taught him how to be mommy's special little man. And very little else.
I listened to the entire thing during my walk as usual and would like to say I am audience and I would like you to continue this series thanks
A new Netlore episode and CyberShell video on the same day? Damn are we eating good.
I'm not sure you can look at Chris-Chan as anything but completely insane at this point
I had heard awhile ago about a Netflix documentary on Chris Chan being in the works, which I was moderately excited for, but hearing Bernie's take here has made me think about whether or not it's a good idea.
since i had to see the picture of where she cut open her gooch for a DIY sex change, I find it hard to believe she would be joking. I think for a lot of people it started out laughing at sonichu; I found out from spazkid's fucked flash series about him and you can imagine what it would be like to find that with no context and as a child lol. So then the rabbit hole started from there. I think it is definitely to do with being into sonic and generally just the voyeurism of someone so unbelievably strange getting worse and worse. Never understood people who got involved tho, shout out dstecks for making a sonichu review and then breaking down in the final episode to apologise for being mean to someone in high school.
Mom dad get in here more Netlore
7:39 Ben Saint is a hypocrite, he said in the lecture "don't violate the prime directive, don't interact with Chris" and then tried to get involved with Chris.
Ben saint is a lolcow himself, he is no better than bluespike or clyde cash
also he enabled chris and he is a white knight
I really dislike that man. Not only did he interact, he was an enabler and unfunny about it.
I love this podcast. Cybershell, lower your dextro dose by 10mg you're flying bud.
I think the best Chris-chan documentary is the one by TheGamerFromMars, since it's greatly condensed into only 5-hours across 4 videos which will tell you everything you need to know about Chris as a person and why they became such an Internet phenomenom
More importantly, that documentary is very unbiased: it actually has a small interview with Chris before *the incident* and it never tries to paint them in a negative light like so many others do (despite of what happened shortly afterwards, and the documentary kinda coming out to ride on the buzz of their arrest), but rather present the facts as they were and let people draw their own conclusions on how they feel about Chris-chan: sometimes you might sympathize with them, sometimes you will feel very sorry for the people around them, sometimes you will find the whole situation depressing and sometimes you will find Chris being a detestable individual besides their mental illness due their unwillingless to ever get better in life
Chris chan is definitely a tragedy more than a celebrity
Fwiw as someone who was watching this person from basically the start, while the wiki popped up initially as a troll, it relatively quickly became a home to multiple people who were sympathetic towards and tried to protect Chris. None of the actions of the trolls are really excusable but Chris really was their own worst enemy.
Tbh, the "protectors" are nearly as bad. They instantly made White Knighting their personality. It wouldn't have lasted without obsessive, patronising curators who documented all her self-report and ways to get on her nerves. If they wanted to help, they'd have been trying to stop her updating them.
@@theMoporter fair, >tfw the best option was to just walk away and not get involved in the trainwreck
All I'm hoping for the future is that something like this doesn't happen again, because I have a terrible feeling that the internet is gonna become too connected for its own good and no one's gonna be safe. I'm surprised something cataclysmic like the dark web leaking into the actual internet hasn't happened yet. It's so insane how different the internet was 10-15 years ago.
imo i think stuff like this already happens on a semi-regular basis (albeit almost always on a smaller scale and usually with somewhat less dire and horrific consequences)
specifically i mean: when a group of people on a site like 4chan or kiwifarms decide to stalk and harass someone on the internet. and sometimes the harassment gets extreme (doxxing their home address, sending death threats, etc).
i think part of the reason we think of them differently is because Chris-chan happens to be by far the most famous example of such an occurance. i'd imagine that introduces a sort of bias, i.e. i'd imagine there are more cases of this phenomenon (some maybe of similar severity) that we just don't hear much about, or that don't get enough attention for the stories to spread to the wider internet and the public conscious.
I mean pretty much everything you said is happening now lol
The dark web by definition can't "leak into the actual internet" because they are two different things for two different purposes. To give an analogy, it would be like being scared of drug cartels selling their products at walmart. The reason black markets exist is to get away from the rules of normal markets, and the reason the dark web exists is to avoid being a part of the surface web.
dark web users aren't bogeymen, they're human beings. If you're scared of them being a part of the regular internet, don't be, because they've been here the entire time.
It's awesome listening to them speak about the subject on a deeper level and their macro analysis of it
The list of most documented people in history can be summarized as follows:
1. The Prophet Muhammad (see Islamic hadith literature and all the little unpleasant details it records)
2. Chris-chan (because of course)
3. Samuel Pepys (whose extensive diaries still don't tell us if he liked his fanta with an extra ingredient)
I find the discussion about potential trolls and acting as if they're suddenly being tempted to harass Chris because of the documentation and urge to be included to be weirdly off base with jumping to a ton of conclusions. It's the similar fear mongering used for untold generations by pointing out the extremes while pretending they're the norm rather than the exception. It's like looking at Christory as if it all happened in the span of like a year when obviously that isn't the case.
Great episode! Hope you guys advertise these more on your future videos, since that Ken Penders one was so successful
chris-chan lore is so fucked up that we now literally have a documentary about the numerous chris-chan documentaries
We will never see another individual like Chris and the whole "keeping track of their life" ever again, or at the very least not for a long time... Crazy to think about.
And I hope it stays like that
It's about time Cybershell talked about Chris Chan.
My first exposure with Chris was around 2009. Back then I read about him off of encyclopediadramatica.
Good episode as usual, fellas. I'd love to hear you guys cover Ulillillia or his books.
I was just reminded of the time i was talking about chris w a friend of mine while back when the chris arrest happened and i was explaining why i felt iffy about christory and christorians after learning about the people who would directly egg chris off to do stuff, and i mentioned how it reminded me of how, true crime fans started to kinda step over the lines where it went from just talking about some kinda interesting cases, to trying to interview victims' families, to like, people trying to involve themselves in active investigations like the Gabi Petito case, thinking they were going to have an important footnote in it.
Also, i appreciate the pronous unsage, another thing that made me uncomfortable about christory stuff would be the ammount of transphobia or transphobia apologia i've seen. I dont think we'll evert truly know how genuine they are about their identity, but i've witnessed/heard people use chris-chan as an excuse ''oh, its okay to misgender trans people I dont like or when theyre bad people'' or as *the* evidence that all trans ppl are just dangerous mentally ill people.
Finally someone else sees the parallel between True Crime and kiwifarms lolcow stuff. They are similar genres
My favourite show, hyped af every time yall drop an episode 🎉
the only lesson I could manage from learning about this when I was 16 was to stop learning about it because fixating on drama/internet shit too much is how you become more like Chris Chan
The actual first, real in depth look at CWC that i saw was the, now defunct "It came from the internet". It was several podcast episodes going over CWC and their many exploits. I want to mention, this was before the Sachumo doc had aired.
It Came From The Internet, formally on the Random Assault Podcast, youtube channel.
These episodes are still available, they were moved to the main host's personal channel Odie Esty.
You nailed the thumbnail art!👍
This is literally the only podcast I enjoy, please make more
im so glad i found this channel
I've listened to these episodes twice, love love love this podcast!
Geno's documentary could definitely get that guy a job.
Not to say that it's all high quality all the time, but the sheer amount of content and research required to produce it is honestly insane, even by modern standards.
I can't think of any amateurs (and relatively few professionals) that have put *that* much work into recording one person's life. This is like over 50 hours of video all together and it's *still* going.
He mainly reads from the various CWCwiki's that are about. I know one of them lists things in order of events.
He's essentially just reading from already-existing resources like the wiki or the farms. I wouldn't call the videos "research" the way you'd normally use the term because very little is original, or even originally *compounded* (as in, most stuff is pulled, in order, verbatim, straight from the sources he's using).
I'd liken it to praising someone for being an author/writer, when their channel is one of those "spooky stories from Reddit" video pits. I can sort of admire the work ethic and regularity, but it's just putting already-existing work in an easily-digestible format.
A counterexample of someone I genuinely respect as a researcher and for making original and engaging work on RUclips would be Fredrik Knudsen; his Down The Rabbit Hole series is fantastic.
@@GuyDude-hk8uyThat's a fair point, it was definitely more... let's say properly synthetic in the beginning than it is now.
I wouldn't put him on the level of, say, PopArena or Knudsen, or hell even Defunctland in terms of *quality* of work.
Like you say, more of a nod to the literal work and the fact that it's all on Chris.
Fredrik Knudsen did a documentary on them too, he did a Down the Rabbit Hole video on them years ago.
That DtRH video was the first time I've hear anything about Chris-Chan.
Thank god thank you for continuing to do these
I often picture in my head an image with two paths, dark and light, Chris Chan and Cybershell, of where sonic related autism can take you
Chris is the Elephant Man of this era
Chris Chan a man so infamous that he is in an episode of sonic boom where they make an Orange Soda joke
Every time this channel upload. My humanity get restored
Having not watched this video yet, i always get these videos about her in my reccomended, and I see something like "part 52" and then I see it's an hour and a half long video and I just have to wonder what these peoples lives are like that talking about one weirdo on the internet is their only hobby.
If you're talking about Geno Samuel's documentary, this guy has a life and other hobbies. Making the doc is like his job or something (I'm not sure about that, feel free to correct if I'm wrong)
Just started video, I"m terrified of the nonsense I'm about to hear.
Actually, the fact is Chris was found over 15 years ago, not by a documentary, but by a few scattered forum posts just a few people happened to have some overlap in visiting, connecting seperate communities together to expose him to those who would screw with him for years to come. So, to put any of this on Geno is asinine. Chandler wasn't scrubbed from the internet at any point before Geno made his doc: all of it was still out there, even more than was around when Chandler was initially found, increasing the likelihood that if people with ill intent found Chandler once, they would again, documentary or no. All people have their own agency to make and do of information they stumble across as they will. Geno isn't in control of other people's agency.
I don't think it's that cut and dry. Sharing information isn't a neutral act. If I tell a thief when a rich snob is going to leave their house unguarded then even if I'm not omitting the crime myself I've become an accomplice when they decide to break in. Someone else could have told them, or they could have just observed things themselves and figured it out on their own, but if I am the source of info then I am not a mere bystander. As Cybershell pointed out, despite trying to be as neutral as possible, proclaiming to an audience of millions that someone is the most gullible person in the world and will believe anything you tell them is of course going to get some bad actors to try and target them. Intentional or not, malicious or not, it's a direct line of cause and effect between Geno making his documentary and his fans harassing Chris.
That said, I don't know how much I personally can blame him. I wish that he had never made his videos, but I don't think he acted maliciously. I think he knew what the risks were of giving Chris another spotlight and acted despite that, but I can't bring myself to say he was wrong to do so.
@@Trivial_Man No, it really is that cut and dry. You can't both blame Geno for making the doc as the reason Chris gets trolled and ignore the fact he was trolled when he was absolutely unknown (that's called cognitive dissonance). And going to need a LOT of citation for "his fans harassing Chris" claim. Watching the documentary doesn't make someone Geno's "fan."
You are attributing a LOT of motive and a LOT of malice to take this stance, and TMDNWU, toobz.
By the way, nice job starting out with a false equivalency. Really undermines everything you wrote from there on out. "If I tell a thief" Oh so you know he was a thief then, as opposed to you telling a random person and them just turning out to be a thief? See, that little difference there? That's called nuance (that thing you're pretending you're approaching the topic with). Geno didn't approach people he knew had ill intent and hand them over hours of documentary. "If I am the source of the info then I am not a mere bystander" doesn't hold much when you already assumed the person you approached is a thief, now does it? You dug your own "at fault" grave there. Your analogy poses you directly approaching something with ill intent; Geno released it to the masses, with no control over who it would reach, when, and what they would do with it.
Of course you can't bring yourself to say Geno was wrong. Because he wasn't. Just like he wasn't at fault.
@@e.m.dubois5463 I'm not going to address this whole thing, but why do you assume in my alleged false equivalency example that I knew the person was a thief? The intent was that they were a random person that I told and that they then turned out to be a bad actor. I guess apologies for not spending more time setting the stage.
Also the citation for introducing trolls via his documentary is in this video. One of them mentioned that a guy wanted to be part of Christory and reuploaded some of Geno's videos while they were down and started messing with him. Also a cursory glance at the cwcki for Geno lists others influenced by him.
There are probably millions of people like Chris Chan in this world and but only one was unfortunate enough to get the spotlight
He's normal compared to me, minus the uh...incest. And the transgenderism. And the overt autism.
Funny how Sachumo made such an interesting and nuanced documentary and then made cringe comps after that which he deleted
Seems I’m not the only one who remembered that, quite a display of the duality of man
Glad to see your posting kinda regularly now
It is kinda interesting how Sonichu has become almost a footnote in Chris’s history. I guess I’m a “new”er fan where I discovered them in I wanna say 2014 when the blue arms thing was happening, but even then I learned about the comic first and how Chris weaved in their life (therefore making it unreadable to anyone who wasn’t tuned into their escapades lol) throughout it. Don’t really see people talk about the comic as much as Chris but like y’all said, they don’t really draw a ton anymore. I will say that people becoming more “sympathetic” to Chris’s life is a double-edged sword in that yes it’s very bad that people stalked and bullied a clearly low functioning autistic person for decades but then also people are trying to defend Chris when she’s just a really horrible person imo
He’s been a horrible person for a LONG time.
I don’t feel she would have been nearly as horrible if she wasn’t stalked and harassed for decades. Just my two cents.
@@WyattporterThere’s many aspects of her life that would be better/ wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t egged on, especially a certain recent event that got her put in jail for a year, but stuff like wishing death upon anyone who opposed her or blaming everyone in her life for all her misfortunes/ accusing them of being homosexual, being a pathological liar, murdering kittens several different times due to pure negligence and several attempted assaults and murders on people is really bad and all her. There’s some blame from the parents but it gets to the point where someone probably just is not a good person
@@Wyattporter oh for sure, the idea guys definitely didn’t help mental health at all, but most of the issues Chris presents (personality, social interaction, health, so on) already existed, the trolls only amplified those thoughts by surrounding Chris in an echo chamber.
@@unlimited-edge yeah, I agree with both of you. If she had been left alone she would have just turned out as a garden-variety Internet weirdo. I think it’s a sad story all around.
I've wanted entertaining Chris Chan content for a long time, and audibly shouted "WHAT" in my bedroom when I saw this in my recommended. First of all, I love the background art! Sachumo making his documentary for a high school project stumbled into "how can I paint this negative internet figure in a positive light," and GenoSamuel was the first time someone asked, "how can I make a Netflix-length documentary of this internet figure?" The latter was a self-fulfilling prophecy; GenoSamuel thought he was removing clips but unknowingly made it long to shock outsiders as "the most comprehensive history."