Chris and Pity

[LordCustos3]

Chris is extremely manipulative...

Uh. Wait.
He WANTS to be extremely manipulative, but to be good at manipulating people, you need to
0) Be charming and likeable.
1) Be good at catching subtle "tells" in their body language.
2) Have a good poker face, so as not to give off "tells" of their own.
3) Have a wide/deep/broad arsenal of carefully crafted grifts, that can be deployed smoothly and "spontaneously" without it seeming like it a pre-planned pitch.
4) Be able to adapt quickly if his grift start failing.
5) Keep his cool if someone loses their temper with him.
6) Know how and when to fake compassion or seem vulnerable; know how and when to appear confident and self-assured.
7) Know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em.
Know when to walk away. Know when to run.

He is terribly inept and incompetent at all of these things; especially numbers #1 and #6. He is psychologically incapable of even learning how to do those properly.
He fails at #1 because he not only doesn't read people, he can't barely distinguish the difference between people and inanimate objects ('cuz of da autism).
He fails at #6 because his affect is so disturbed his tics and cues don't match those used by sane humans. Carrying on a conversation with him is about as nerve-wracking as carrying on one with Charlie Manson.
He's even worse at it than any average random person you could grab off a street corner.
Hell, he's worse at it than any average random 3rd grader.

So. No.
He is NOT manipulative.
To be manipulative, you have to become skilled at successfully manipulating people.
He has never succeeded in ever successfully manipulating anyone. Ever. Not even once.
Even his dopey mother sees through his tissue-thin schemes, and she barely qualifies at sentient at this point.
Chris wouldn't even be capable of manipulating a store-room mannequin.
He lacks the skills to do so.
He may even lack the capacity to learn how to acquire said skills.

His headmeats are broken.
He aint foolin' nobody.

 

[SPARKLETWAT]

I guess I'm jaded after babysitting drunks and druggies in my ER. (I'm a nurse.) They ruin their own lives with dope and wonder why they can't clean up. They don't TRY to clean up. They expect big nurse Wanda to take care of them and wipe their ass and clean up their puke so they can go out and shitface themselves again. This is Chris, but it's first world problems and he's expecting handouts.

There is a huge difference between having a dependency to a chemically addictive narcotic and just being too far too fucking lazy to do anything.

Yeah. But I get too many assholes who aren't trying to clean up. I feel bad for people who fell off the wagon and they're trying to get clean. It's another when the same guy comes in every six months with an OD.

I say the same about fat fucks who come in expecting us to unclog their arteries so they can go clog them again with more shitty food vs the guy who comes in, gets surgery, leaves and makes a real effort to get healthy.

The only living things I pity in Chris's house are the animals. They must be flea bitten and mangy by now.

 

[BillRiley]

Chris is extremely manipulative...

So. No.
He is NOT manipulative.
To be manipulative, you have to become skilled at successfully manipulating people.
He has never succeeded in ever successfully manipulating anyone. Ever. Not even once.
Even his dopey mother sees through his tissue-thin schemes, and she barely qualifies at sentient at this point.
Chris wouldn't even be capable of manipulating a store-room mannequin.
He lacks the skills to do so.
He may even lack the capacity to learn how to acquire said skills.

His headmeats are broken.
He aint foolin' nobody.

Not to be pendantic, but Chris is extremely manipulative. He's just really really really bad at it. I mean at it. He's the anti-Keyser Soze.

 

[GFYS]

Well, it's not unheard of for a woman to fall for a guy who's down on their luck, troubled, or emotionally delicate/wounded. (or honestly, sometimes even an outright loser.) In fact it happens all the time. The difference there is that there's got to be (or appear to be) something positive there just under that turbulent surface. With Chris, it's just negativity straight to the bone. (which isn't so much 'bone' as it is petrified negativity.)

I've always had a weakness for miscreants and ne'er-do-wells

But none of them poop their pants regularly, and they aspire to do more than live in their mom's house. That stupid optimism is what makes them fun... They believe they'll be soldiers of fortune, they'll win a legendary sword at a kumite, they'll be the fat guy from Storage Wars, they'll become a roadie for ICP, or Vin Diesel will randomly high five them on the street for being "hella cool." Their aspirations are all retarded, and they'll never really amount to much more than getting fired from the Walmart Automotive Department for failing a third drug test. But they at least believe in their stupid delusions enough to occasionally shut off their goddamn Xbox 360, rev up their piece-of-shit Ford Probe with "Type R" stickers, get a few wine coolers at a pool bar, get the shit kicked out of them by the bouncer they picked a fight with, and then kiss my ass and beg me to help them pay to get their teeth repaired. It's pathetic, yet cute, in a Joe Dirt sort of way.

Chris aspires to never move, while a chute pours soda and salted fat down his throat, while someone plays with his crooked little wiener, hopes his video games never stop, and wishes everyone complements him in between bowel movements. There's nothing badass about that. That's barely even living. And, again...

 

[Pikonic]

I don't pity him. He doesn't TRY to better himself. He expects the world to obey his whims and tardrages when he doesn't get his way. I don't pity that kind of bullshit.

Someone I used to troll realized how fucked up they were and has since made huge improvements in their behavior online. It took only four years for them to wake up from Chris level immaturity to someone that's actually rather sweet to talk to.

How long has Chris been getting trolled now?

DA GREATER PART OF A DECADE
Real organized trolling has been since 2008-2009

 

[LordCustos3]

Some good advice

Well, it's not unheard of for a woman to fall for a guy who's down on their luck, troubled, or emotionally delicate/wounded. (or honestly, sometimes even an outright loser.) In fact it happens all the time.

My mom had this really great piece of advice:
"Never date anyone who has more problems than you do. It just leads to frustration."

She should know. She dated my dad and that didn't end well.

 

[Pikonic]

I think the best relationship advice i got was "If you can't be happy with yourself, you can't be happy with someone else"
So Chris needs to learn to be happy single and stop thinking a heart sweet will solve his problems. Pity is great and all, but women don't want a man they have to fix when there's already happy men out there. It sounds bitchy but, as a woman, I don't need to worry about my boyfriends problems, that's his problem because I got my own shit too.
Will Chris ever learn

 

[Spatchmo]

I think the best relationship advice i got was "If you can't be happy with yourself, you can't be happy with someone else"
So Chris needs to learn to be happy single and stop thinking a heart sweet will solve his problems. Pity is great and all, but women don't want a man they have to fix when there's already happy men out there. It sounds bitchy but, as a woman, I don't need to worry about my boyfriends problems, that's his problem because I got my own shit too.
Will Chris ever learn

I disagree that pity is great. Back in middle school and high school I would actually make stuff up to try to paint myself as some kind of victim and now that I am older, I realize that was really stupid. Like if a friend or loved one dies, I would hope there would be people that would sympathize and empathize with me, but I wouldn't want them to feel sorry for me. Maybe I am just being picky about wording since pity and sympathy are kind of synonymous.

I would still rather go through my life without anyone referring to me as pitiful, though.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Re: Some good advice

My mom had this really great piece of advice:
"Never date anyone who has more problems than you do. It just leads to frustration."

I've found that if you find someone who is pretty on the level, enough so that you think to yourself "man, I better keep my own life in shape so I can earn their company"... you're going to have a lot less problems.

 

[José Mourinho]

I don't pity him. He doesn't TRY to better himself. He expects the world to obey his whims and tardrages when he doesn't get his way. I don't pity that kind of bullshit.

Someone I used to troll realized how fucked up they were and has since made huge improvements in their behavior online. It took only four years for them to wake up from Chris level immaturity to someone that's actually rather sweet to talk to.

How long has Chris been getting trolled now?

For him it could be that Chris was trolled throughout his entire life.

 

[The Nameless One]

Maybe I am just being picky about wording since pity and sympathy are kind of synonymous.

I don't want to be pedantic, since I know a lot of people make that distinction between pity as always a negative thing and sympathy as always positive, but I think that most people aren't aware of just how synonymous the words are and how much nuance there can be in their usage. Here are the definitions (from the Random House Dictionary 2013):

Pity:

noun
1.
sympathetic or kindly sorrow evoked by the suffering, distress, or misfortune of another, often leading one to give relief or aid or to show mercy: to feel pity for astarving child.
2.
a cause or reason for pity, sorrow, or regret: What a pity you could not go!
verb (used with object)
3.
to feel pity or compassion for; be sorry for; commiserate with.
verb (used without object)
4.
to have compassion; feel pity.
Idioms
5.
have / take pity, to show mercy or compassion.

Sympathy:

noun
1.
harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.
2.
the harmony of feeling naturally existing between persons of like tastes or opinion or of congenial dispositions.
3.
the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.
4.
sympathies.
a.
feelings or impulses of compassion.
b.
feelings of favor, support, or loyalty: It's hard to tell where your sympathies lie.
5.
favorable or approving accord; favor or approval: He viewed the plan with sympathy and publicly backed it.
6.
agreement, consonance, or accord.

Though if we look at this usage note:

Sympathy, compassion, pity, empathy all denote the tendency, practice, or capacity to share in the feelings of others, especially their distress, sorrow, or unfulfilled desires. Sympathy is the broadest of these terms, signifying a general kinship with another's feelings, no matter of what kind: in sympathy with her yearning for peace and freedom; to extend sympathy to the bereaved. Compassion implies a deep sympathy for the sorrows or troubles of another coupled to a powerful urge to alleviate the pain or distress or to remove its source: to show compassion for homeless refugees. Pity usually suggests a kindly, but sometimes condescending, sorrow aroused by the suffering or ill fortune of others, often leading to a show of mercy: tears of pity for war casualties; to have pity on a thief driven by hunger. Empathy most often refers to a vicarious participation in the emotions, ideas, or opinions of others, the ability to imagine oneself in the condition or predicament of another: empathy with those striving to improve their lives; to feel empathy with Hamlet as one watches the play.

TL;DR: Sympathy has the potential to be the shallowest way of feeling toward somebody, since it's just a general state of being in agreement with someone else's feelings, tastes, or opinions; while pity is the feeling you get when you recognize that someone is suffering undeservedly.

To put it into relevant terms, I think most people--trolls included--are sympathetic with Chris's desire to be successful in life and to find a romantic partner, but very few people actually feel pity towards him when his plans for these things don't work out. For example, no one (except maybe the ass-patters) would say, "What a pity that your attraction sign didn't work out!" -- they would say "That was a stupid idea, and you should have known better." The key point is that you can't have pity without sympathy, but you can have sympathy without feeling bad for somebody. I don't think there's anything wrong or unhealthy about your friends and family feeling bad when they discover that something bad has happened to you.

 

[Silvana]

To put it into relevant terms, I think most people--trolls included--are sympathetic with Chris's desire to be successful in life and to find a romantic partner, but very few people actually feel pity towards him when his plans for these things don't work out. For example, no one (except maybe the ass-patters) would say, "What a pity that your attraction sign didn't work out!" -- they would say "That was a stupid idea, and you should have known better." The key point is that you can't have pity without sympathy, but you can have sympathy without feeling bad for somebody. I don't think there's anything wrong or unhealthy about your friends and family feeling bad when they discover that something bad has happened to you.

Beautifully put. If we could say of Chris, "what bad luck! He's a good and decent person, his ideas are good and he worked so hard to achieve his goals", we should feel a strong sense of compassion. If, on the other hand, we could say, "well, Chris' ideas are retarded, but he means well and tries so hard", or even "Chris is sloppy and retarded, but his heart is in the right place", we should be more inclined to feel pity.
But here's the problem - Chris is NOT a good person, his ideas are retarded beyond belief, and he's lazy and sloppy. This is why it is almost impossible to feel pity for him - he doesn't give a shit. (Granted, Anna and her ilk claim to feel pity, but then they are either in a state of blissful ignorance as to Chris' true nature, or else dishonestly using him for their own ends.)

 

[José Mourinho]

Even if everyone has pity for Chris and tries to help him, he'll most likely brush off the advice and continues to either gain pity or complains.