I would slightly disagree that Chris is bullied into his “metafictional performance art,” given that he was putting on his version of
The Truman Show before anyone could be bothered to harass him. Chris’s work before November 2007 is not all that dissimilar from his later efforts–in all, it is the desperate cry for attention from a young man eager to be famous for something. The main contribution of the trolls was to bring his vision into focus, giving him enemies to fight, women to court, and goals to pursue–he already had these things, but never in such abundance or regularity. I strongly believe that if the trolls hadn’t found him, he would have inevitably continued to make comics and videos until he found some other “patron.”
Anyway, there are two major obstacles preventing Chris-chan from becoming a mainstream meme on the order of Chris Crocker or Tay Zonday. I realized this in July 2009 when word got out that one of his videos appeared on
Web Soup. I found it curious that, of all the videos the show could choose from, they picked “
I Got A Fish,” which is extremely short and barely scratches the surface of Chandler’s idiosyncracies.
But when considering which video I would have chosen instead, I realized that the rest were either too explicit or too “inside” to make sense as a standalone clip. For example, I think
this video is much funnier, but it only works if you know a little about what led up to it, and I somehow doubt G4 would authorize footage of a man fondling a sex doll.
This one would be amusing to anybody, but there are hundreds of losers screaming on the internet, so unless you appreciate the context it doesn’t stand out.
Consider
this video (which an anon helpfully provided in my inbox!), where a couple of Sega interns get away with a Sonichu reference and crack themselves up. Half the reason it’s so funny to them is that they know Sonichu is wholly inappropriate for their web show; they can do little more than say the character’s name, because any further explanation would cross the line. To introduce someone to a meme you have to be able to let them in on the joke, but you can’t really explain Chris or Sonichu without being NSFW. You could say Chris is a 30-year-old who plays with toys or that Sonichu is a half-assed fan character, but that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. Chris is a weirdo who acts like a child and looks like a child molester; Sonichu is a funny animal character whose comic features extensive sex sequences.
At this point, the best chance for Chris to hit the mainstream is some sort of juicy scandal. If he went on a killing spree or managed to sneak into the White House, there’s no doubt the media would dig up his history, but that’s a pretty far-fetched. More likely, his struggles with trolls could become part of the media’s current crusade against cyberbullying, but I don’t think his story lends itself to the narrative of innocent kids being beaten or driven to suicide. To make Chris a sympathetic figure, you have to appeal to the sense that it’s wrong to coerce a guy to wear his mother’s bra without calling attention to the fact that he should have known better.
