Sympathy for Chris?

[Slidey Boi]

I have mixed feelings about him, as I'm sure others on here do. I lament the loss of the optimistic boy seen in 'Song of Christian' when he was 18, or the confident 'wise' Christian seen in his 2008 'important message' video. His interactions online, both with trolls and enablers, would have a profound effect on him effectively making him a husk of his former self.

On one hand, we have the obvious incest thing and his general laziness and selfishness. Also, as many have said before, he could have disengaged with the trolls and dramatically reduced their ability to cause him harm.

However, I believe he never had a chance to handle his challenges gracefully. While I dislike the autism card as an excuse, I do believe his autism and complete ineptitude when it comes to social interaction did leave him with no other choice in his mind than direct confrontation when dealing with trolls. He would eventually learn, but it took a long time, and he was still able to be duped. One example of his progress is when his 'niece' tried to contact 'uncle Chris' but he was very skeptical and made it clear that he wouldn't say much until she confirmed the gift that he had given her, something no troll could know. Indeed, she was never able to satisfy this.

When considering he was already lacking confidence and 99% of every interaction he had with other human beings were extremely negative, often trust-betraying, its no wonder he retreated into the comforts of his little room. There, he spiraled into his own strangeness irreversibly. Endlessly indulging various fixations to the point that he lost all touch with reality. First it was his imaginary world being real, then the dimensional merge, then his healing stones and magic, then he was actually literally the Messiah.

I wonder what would have happened to Chris had he not had access to the internet at home, what if he was meant to go outside more. I don't see him doing a lot of the things he ended up doing, including his mom. The one person who still accepted him, would of course be the natural object of his affection.

"He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet? Do we seek out things to covet? No. We begin by coveting what we see every day." -Silence of the Lambs

 

[Red Dog]

As much as the internet contributed to Chris having creepy fetishes (which lead to trooning out), I don't think it made him a predator. Chris already had a tendency of trying to touch girls he knew in ways that they didn't want to be touched from what Meghan said, as well as a propensity for violence, seen by him pepperspraying one employee and trying to assault Snyder with his car. All of these things happened offline, the former before he came to the internet's eye and the second when there was a dry spell of content, and don't seem to have been influenced by his online life at all. Putting him in a position of power over a woman was going to end up like this no matter what. You'd have to strip Bob and Barb's entire environment to get a non-rapey Chris and at that point you might as well have a 100% different person.

After he raped his mother, that just made it impossible for me to sympathize with him in the slightest, although it's understandable why other people wish that younger Chris could've been redeemable.

 

[【ＶＯＩＤ】]

This is early Chris. Notice how the obvious solution to his problems doesn't even enter his head as responding to the trolls was the root cause of all his issues and when Bob comes in to tell him to stop being a tard he can't even consider the possibility that Bob is right.
"I'm making a video telling people in my power to take it all down" (paraphrase)

He never stood a chance and the only thing that could have helped him would have been taking his computer away. I feel a lot of sympathy for Chris subjectively, but on an objective level his fate was sealed the moment he won that sweepstakes. It was like the invisible hands that organize the universe saw all the puzzle pieces spill out of Chris's pockets that day on the news and decided that not one piece would go unaccounted for; domino effect, a train without a conductor following the tracks to a predestined disaster.

Who couldn't be sympathetic? but at the same time...