2014-Oct-14 - Thetan's Email

[A Random]

I would give my left nut to be able to earn the amount Chris is on a regular basis, especially as it is doing something related to something he loves, cares for dearly, and has created himself.

Chris consistently refuses to do less than the barest minimum possible and is going to whine and moan all the way until it's done. Ideally, everything about Sonichu would just be taken from his mind directly and turned into a comic with the idealest graphics [not that Chris really cares considering how it would look as bad as his own art] or become clones of Pokémon Yellow/Sonic Adventure But With Sonichu.

He's lazy. In the end, if someone wants to assign a Warhammer 40k patron to Chris or whatever, he's the incarnation of Sloth, above everything else.

 

[DeadMansHand]

In the US very little income is not taxable on a federal level. Some people who use eBay a lot have mentioned they do issue a 1099 form. A 1099 is when 'shit just got real'. Thats eBay telling the government, 'hey I paid this guy this' by issuing a 1099 and the government will expect that to addressed in your taxes (either paid for, written off, whatever).

I mentioned this in one of the other threads, but here it is. The Fed changed the law a few years back and set requirements for online billing services like PayPal. If a person has over 200 transactions AND has over $20,000 in gross sales, PayPal (not Ebay) has to send the seller a 1099 and report to the fed. If your business does less than those numbers, you're on the honor system.

Chris will not break $20k, although he might have over 200 sales.

(Source: My employer does a lot of ecommerce stuff as part of our business, so we occasionally have to relate this info to clients.)

 

[Holdek]

If I was to buy items cheap and sell them on EBay for a profit, netting myself £80,000 a year (because it would be pimp shit) then would those earnings be liable for taxation and would I be considered as a self employed sole trader? Even if I had never registered as self employed?

Yes.

Will Chris have to declare his earnings from EBay with the tax office?

No.

Is there a distinction between selling unwanted shit on EBay, and purposefully producing goods to sell?

Depends on how much you do it.

Forget the EBay fees, is Chris going to have the tax people slapping him with an invoice at the end of the fiscal year?

No.

Would you hire Chris?

Thats all I want to know.

You're looking at the question as a Christorian, though. If you're employer at a glass-sorting facility, you neither nor know care about . And such.

 

[Zeorus]

And stating that Chris is incapable, literally not capable, of having a job where he earned $25,000 a year...when he has a college degree?

Just to point out.....he has an AAS. Associate's degrees are basically worth jack shit in the job market these days.

 

[Mister Lister]

I wonder how odd it must be to go from seeing Chris as some poor autistic guy who gets bullied by the world at large, to the laughable and self destructive Chris we all know and love.

It would be curious to know if the Chris we all see slowly creeps up on a person until it finally becomes clear, or if it suddenly just hits home in a single unwashed wave.

Changing your opinions about someone you like or pity doesn't come easy. I wonder if people who have changed their mind about Chris look back on all his actions they defended and perceived in a better light and suddenly think "What the fuck was I doing?".

I wish we could hear more from folks who have made the shift.

 

[Holdek]

Associate's degrees are basically worth jack shit in the job market these days.

Depends on the field. They are often worth more than liberal arts bachelors if they are in technical or healthcare fields.

 

[Butterballs]

Depends on the field. They are often worth more than liberal arts bachelors if they are in technical or healthcare fields.

he has an associate's degree in CADD use, which he got 10 years ago and hasn't used since. it's worth less than the paper it's printed on. even if he could get a job in a relevant field at some point, he couldn't get one now. it also took him 6 years to get, which is something that employers will take note of.

i feel like any discussion of his potential job prospects that hinges on "BUT HE HAS AN ASSOCIATE'S DEGREE!" is doomed from the start. we're as well just ignoring it completely for the purposes of threads of that nature.

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I would give my left nut to be able to earn the amount Chris is on a regular basis, especially as it is doing something related to something he loves, cares for dearly, and has created himself.

Chris won't be earning this amount on a regular basis. At best, he'll come up with a few new ideas that will net him some income for a while - making more comics is the most obvious one - but eventually the earnings will dwindle to a trickle again. He's done pretty well so far, admittedly, but the market for Chris' unique brand of outsider art is strictly limited.

I wonder how odd it must be to go from seeing Chris as some poor autistic guy who gets bullied by the world at large, to the laughable and self destructive Chris we all know and love.

It would be curious to know if the Chris we all see slowly creeps up on a person until it finally becomes clear, or if it suddenly just hits home in a single unwashed wave.

Changing your opinions about someone you like or pity doesn't come easy. I wonder if people who have changed their mind about Chris look back on all his actions they defended and perceived in a better light and suddenly think "What the fuck was I doing?".

I wish we could hear more from folks who have made the shift.

You may wish to see Vivian Gee's correspondence with Chris to watch the process in detail, or alternatively the Tomboys and Tomgirls of Virginia forum shows the beginnings of Chris alienating a community. It usually seems to be a gradual process, where Chris treats the friendship as a one-sided thing where everyone has to do things for him, or he demands sympathy and patience while ignoring advice, or he attempts to turn them into a ground-up sweetheart. Eventually the friends get tired of his shit and abandon him or, in extreme cases, turn troll. The ones who remain friends tend to stay at a distance (as per the asspatters on Facebook).

 

[drmccoy]

Bob predicted all of this. The man keeps getting smarter every-goddamn-day even though he's been dead for a grand number of years. He knew that Chris would be unable to function properly and probably saw it coming early on in high school. After taking four years (or was it five?) to finish a two year degree (and getting kicked out and being required to see a shrink) and getting fired from a menial, low wage fast food job that most disabled people could actually hold, Bob just threw in the towel. And I honestly really don't blame him. He was in his late '70s, tired and should have been enjoying retirement, not raising a son that was expelled for a year from the local CC for "cursing" an administrator.

I know people criticize the guy but in reality this is probably the best option for society and Chris. It keeps Chris off the streets as another problem for Virgina's broken social services to handle and keeps him from being in trouble with the cops far more than he has been. Whether people like it or not, Chris's situation is pretty much what SSDI is for.

 

[Holdek]

he has an associate's degree in CADD use, which he got 10 years ago and hasn't used since. it's worth less than the paper it's printed on. even if he could get a job in a relevant field at some point, he couldn't get one now. it also took him 6 years to get, which is something that employers will take note of.

i feel like any discussion of his potential job prospects that hinges on "BUT HE HAS AN ASSOCIATE'S DEGREE!" is doomed from the start. we're as well just ignoring it completely for the purposes of threads of that nature.

Oh yeah, I was just talking generally, not about Chris' Honor Roll accomplishments.

After taking four years (or was it five?) to finish a two year degree.

Heh, five if you don't count the year he was suspended. From start to finish though it was six years.

Really Chris had no business being in college, even community college. He was basically socially promoted out of high school.

 

[timtommy]

Chris consistently refuses to do less than the barest minimum possible and is going to whine and moan all the way until it's done. Ideally, everything about Sonichu would just be taken from his mind directly and turned into a comic with the idealest graphics [not that Chris really cares considering how it would look as bad as his own art] or become clones of Pokémon Yellow/Sonic Adventure But With Sonichu.

He's lazy. In the end, if someone wants to assign a Warhammer 40k patron to Chris or whatever, he's the incarnation of Sloth, above everything else.

He has two choices. One is to continue to live on the tugboat. The other is to try to augment the tugboat with a job. That job would involve him spending a good chunk of his time each week doing unpleasant work. That job would give him extra some money, but it wouldn't fundamentally change the income bracket he is in. It seems fairly easy to understand why Chris and others in a similar position would not put much effort in to working.

It is a public policy Catch-22. On the one hand, we want to make sure people don't starve/freeze. On the other hand, the more we make sure people don't starve/freeze, the more we create incentives for people who don't have higher earning potential anyway not to work. Chris is a good illustration of this societal dilemma. Because a) it is easy to see that without the tugboat, he would be very vulnerable to things like homelessness but b) with the tugboat his decision not to work, however you might feel about it morally, is very rational.

Depends on the field. They are often worth more than liberal arts bachelors if they are in technical or healthcare fields.

The key thing is certifications. A lot of community college programs either lead directly to a certification or are pretty much a two year prep course for some sort of state recognized certification test. Certifications can have a lot of value. Associates degrees have almost no value, except that they are sometimes tied to a valuable certification.

Here is the thing about community colleges, based on my experiences teaching at a couple of them. There are a lot of dumb/lazy students. A good chunk of any class will never show up to class or read the textbook, and their assignments or exams don't contain any complete sentences, remotely correct answers to factual/mathematical questions, or evidence of having absorbed materiaal. But they can't all fail. So except for the bottom part of that group, they get Cs and Ds. I am not trying to disparage all community college students; I meet a lot of students who were smart and/or interested in the material and/or motivated. A majority of the students fall into at least one of those categories. I have had a lot of positive experiences teaching at community colleges. But 25-35% of community college graduates have no business calling themselves any wiser or more qualified for a job than they were when they started. They graduate by learning how not to be the F student in the group of C,D, and F students and by just continuing to enroll in classes until they have accomplished enough.

 

[Lefty's Revenge]

The writer of this email has a pretty bizarre perspective. The latest Chris video was indeed extremely pathetic, but surely that would make most people feel more sorry for him, and not less.

I have a family member who has a fairly severe case of Multiple sclerosis and multiple health problems all brought on by about 20 years or so of drug abuse. She lived in a nursing home in town and has to use a wheel chair to get around. We personally flew her down to and got her into this establishment. She can stand with the help of walker and thats about it. She can't bathe herself, wipe herself etc. Me and my parents had to leave town for about 3 days to visit my uncle who had cancer. A few days before we left she had gotten a check from a life insurance policy from her recently deceased step father for about $14,000.

Over those three days we were out of town she:

-Flew out a drug addict from our hometown that has consistently taken money from her to the nursing home which is in a whole nother part of the country.
- Disrupted any and everything staff and residents alike were doing to introduce "her baby."
- Cursed out the better part of that same staff that bathes and clothes her on the regular basis as well as multiple residents.
- Cursed out her roommate, one of the sweetest women you'd ever want to meet because according to that drug addict she "didn't like how she was looking at her." Nevermind that they were in the woman's private room.
- After cursing everyone out informed everyone she was leaving and never coming back. Called a cab that she couldn't get in(crackhead wouldn't help her of course). So she eventually threw herself into the backseat on some Randy Savage shit. Shes morbidly obese by the way. My dad, uncle and an EMS worker all had to work together to lift her into a car once. So theres no way the cabbie could have gotten her in.
- Paid for the cabbie and a hotel suite in town for three days.
- Went on a 3 day shopping spree which included a diamond ring which was reported to be in the 1000s somewhere.
- Once she had been there for the better part of a day, realized she couldn't bathe herself. So she called another cab, which she threw herself into again to take her back to the nursing home she had just cursed everyone out at so she could take a shower. She would repeat this cycle for the three days we were away.
- All of this ended with her sending the drug addict back home and her returning to the Nursing home claiming that drug addict was "too picky."

She had spent not a little, not some, not even most. But all of the $14,000 she received over that time period on mostly useless shit, was kicked out of the nursing home, taken off of Medicaid and transferred to a facility way the fuck up in god-knows-where and hour and a half away from where we live.

I say all that to say this. I've had my share of witnessing IRL antics and suffice it to say when we got back home "sympathy" was not one of the emotions we felt when we heard what happened.

I don't know how well or how long this person has known Chris or how close they were/are. But its very much possible to witness someone act in a manner that is clearly not mentally sound and still not feel pity for them. Especially if its been going on for a while.

 

[BigAltheGreat921]

I actually don't blame folk for defending Chris at first because the concept of somebody with autism being bullied by assholes on the internet is perfectly believable in this day and age. As has been shown time and time again, you can't really be told about Chris' more undesirable personality traits, you have to see them for yourself.
It's no fluke that Chris stands alone among other lolcows when it comes to volume of the documentation of his antics.

That's why I don't think Chris could easily be described to the general population--they'll just see him as a helpless autistic being harassed online. You're right when you say people have to find Chris on their own because explaining his wrongdoings would be long and cumbersome. And also I believe the general public isn't well-versed (nor really cares) about Internet culture, at least, not yet.

 

[Morbid Boredom]

You may wish to see Vivian Gee's correspondence with Chris to watch the process in detail, or alternatively the Tomboys and Tomgirls of Virginia forum shows the beginnings of Chris alienating a community.

Both Vivian Gee and the TaToV were fabrications. Yes, we see Chris acting like a tool, but both were going to turn on him as part of the endgame, anyway.

 

[Butterballs]

That's why I don't think Chris could easily be described to the general population--they'll just see him as a helpless autistic being harassed online.

Spoiler: exposition

When I started following this stuff in the early days, this is where I was. I was like, "what the heck, why are so many horrible people harassing this poor, obviously sick guy?" Especially when you know a little about how weeny people can be online/how forced lolcows can be, at first exposure to Chris in the early days I was inclined to white knight. It seemed like some guy who was a bit weird was just being relentlessly trolled by the worst 12 year olds on ED.

Then everything else happened (Liquid onwards, really), and as I read up on some more detailed backstory I sort of punched through revulsion to morbid curiosity. Much like a lot of comrades here, I don't wish harm on him, and would be the first at the party celebrating his success in life if he somehow achieved any. I just can't look away from the ongoing car crash that is his decision making process and life.

I assume to people that know him, it's even more extreme revulsion for the trolls at first (they probably don't think to google him/do extensive research at first blush for a passing weird acquaintance) and an even more horrifying dawn of revelation when they realise what the deal is. We all have someone in our lives who we were warned about but excused away a lot of their worst behaviour until it became impossible to ignore.

What's really interesting to me is the motivation of people who keep defending his actions. Do they know? Are they trolling? Have they just swept everything under the ?

 

[Gene Parmesan]

No, he was fired from Wendy's.

I stand corrected. For my point, it's a distinction without a difference because you can just as easily say:

"Of course he fucking got fired from Wendy's, because he is lazy, would rather not work and ultimately didn't have to work."

 

[Meowthkip]

It's likely hyperbole on the part of the writer, aimed at just how nutty Chris' interests have become. Chris has yet to fuck anything created by the Jim Henson Company.

Miss Piggy is safe then.

For now.

 

[trip2themoon]

I don't know how it works in the States but here if you are on Disability Living Allowance and you have a separate income and don't disclose it God help you if they find out. They will stop your money and make you pay back anything you were overpaid by. It seems strange to me that he has the Tugboat indefinitely, over here people regularly have to go for assessment to see if they are still eligible, our government is trying to kick as many people off DLA as possible. Recently a man who'd had a lung removed was deemed fit for work by the assessors, despite the fact his own doctor said he was unfit for work.

 

[Beef Thunderpants]

Would you hire Chris?

Thats all I want to know.

If I had a company or store large enough that I could give a person like Chris a Walmart greeter or mailroom job or something, maybe. Knowing what I know about Chris I'd be hesitant, because I worry it would just be a matter of time before he went too far with a female employee or customer. It seems that Chris just comes off as a weirdo to the general public, but I think if he was regularly around females he might be more open with his sexual proclivities, or just creeping them out in general. I think once people found out about Sonichu, the whole thing would be over and I'd have to get rid of him.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

If I had a company or store large enough that I could give a person like Chris a Walmart greeter or mailroom job or something, maybe. Knowing what I know about Chris I'd be hesitant, because I worry it would just be a matter of time before he went too far with a female employee or customer. It seems that Chris just comes off as a weirdo to the general public, but I think if he was regularly around females he might be more open with his sexual proclivities.

No way would I take the chance of making Chris a greeter. Do you really want him to be the first employee your customers interacted with? Chris has absolutely no social filter, questionable hygiene, poor coping skills, a short temper, and is passively misanthropic. Way too risky to throw him out into a position where he would have to be around people. Mail room, however, would totally be doable. It's away from crowds and loud noises which could cause him to freak out. The main concern you would have then would probably be making sure he doesn't wander off to nap or whatever.

Anywho, this is getting far off topic. The email is certainly interesting in that I get the sense that whoever wrote it has been following Chris for longer than a year. His eBay shenanigans and bizarre rants about soulginas were just the straw that broke the camel's back. Of course, this is all just the public stuff we're seeing from Chris. Who knows what the fuck he has been saying to people in private?