"I definitely agree that people around 20-40 years old look at Chris and say “there but for the grace of God, go I.” Other demographics probably can’t understand this. If you’re over 40, you didn’t experience the ‘80s and '90s through a child’s eyes and you can’t relate to Chris in the first place. If you’re under 20, you’re young enough to think you have all the time in the world to avoid becoming this guy. But if you’re within ten years of Chris’s age, you kind of get why he’s into at least one of his obsessions, and you’re aware that this is what you could be if you don’t grow up.
In general, people of this age group have to contend with the realization that they don’t suddenly receive a suit and briefcase and know what to do, nor do they automatically get to be a rockstar who can act like a teenager forever. Becoming a mature adult is complicated, especially since the late '60s as more and more “immature” behavior has become socially acceptable. The definition of success is increasingly murky, but the definition of failure has never been more clear: it’s Christian Weston Chandler.
I think a lot of attitudes toward Chris are shaped by this all-consuming fear of resembling him. People who defend him want to believe someone else will similarly come to their own defense. People who hate him want to prove they aren’t like him in order to escape his fate. People who mock him are smugly satisfied that they could never be him–here he is less a bogeyman than a scapegoat. Forty years ago, young adults wouldn’t have this sort of bogeyman, but today’s generation gets an orbital view not only of their parents’ environment (on TV reruns) but their own (on the internet), making them much more self-aware and self-conscious. Fear of failure is much worse when two million people can see the consequences of that failure on YouTube or a wiki dedicated to failures.
Let me give some advice on how to face that fear of being Chris: focus on what makes you a
better grownup than him, not on how you’re alike. This is easy for me, because when I feel like a loser because I’m annotating a loser’s comics, I can just think about my job or my friends or my family. If you’re not so fortunate–if you’re an unemployed virgin secluded in your mom’s house, surrounded by toys–you still at least have the self-awareness to face that, which puts you ahead of Chris. You can look at your laughable self-insertion furry animu comics and say “This is too much like
Sonichu, how can I take my creative work in a better direction?” Even if you don’t come up with the answer (“put down the video games sometimes and read a real book”), being able to objectively question your own decisions is the most basic part of being an adult instead of a manchild.
" [
Source]
