I doubt that Chris would be silent if Barb croaked.
When Bob does Chris had Barb to take care of, and he was much more normal then.(relatively!)
So he did what normal people do in a time of tragedy: Get the fuck off online.
When Barb dies, Chris has nobody. His IRL networks are worse off then when Bob passed, and he’s living in his fantasy world much of the time.
So quite the opposite, I’d expect Chris to really tard out online with his merge and fantasy stuff when Barb kicks the bucket, as well as look for as many E-asspats as he can get.