What do you guys think pushed Chris into becoming the trainwreck he is now, nature or nurture? Was he always doomed, or could things have gone differently if his life had played out another way?
Chris was the result of the perfect storm of nature, nurture, and timing.
Nature
We all know about Chris' autism. It is a defining feature of his personality. And that definitely affected his way of experiencing the world. His brain just works differently, so he can't reason in the same way that the rest of us do.
Of course, there are plenty of people all over the autism spectrum who function just fine, which brings me to my next point...
Nurture
Bob and Barb really did a number on him. They didn't give him the special education and accommodations he needed in order to learn effectively -- and not just learn school subjects but to learn how to behave in society. I'm blown away by some of the bizarre things that Chris said and did in front of his parents that got no pushback from them whatsoever.
Maybe they were just burned out. They were old, after all. And Chris' half-siblings seemed to have turned out fairly well. One is a successful doctor, another had a normal government job, and while a bit kooky even Cole isn't a lunatic like Chris (though the others didn't have Barb's DNA, so we can look back to Nature there).
Whatever the case, they enabled his nonsense. They allowed him to loll around, being big enough nuisances to just get him shuffled through school, permitting him to fail out of even his minimum wage Wendy's job, and enabling him to live in a perpetual state of adolescence.
Timing
This one isn't mentioned as much, but it's vitally important for turning Chris into the king of lolcows that he is.
Chris came around at exactly the right time. He was an open book online at a time when the internet was novel.
If he came around just a few years later, then he'd be lost in a sea of social media try-hards. Now everybody dumps their whole life online, and every wannabe celebrity is trying to "go viral". As crazy as Chris is, he'd be a lot harder to notice on today's internet.
And if he hit the scene just a few years earlier, the internet wouldn't yet be at a state where he'd be capable of easily posting all his nonsense and interacting with strangers. He'd just be the town oddball. Every town had at least one -- the weird mentally challenged guy or member of the goofball family that everyone sees from afar and just avoids. He'd be lost in obscurity.
Chris was lightning in a bottle. The combination of his genetics, his upbringing, and his era all came together to make him what he is, and we'll never see anyone quite like him again.
