So I am now 23 parts into a 50 part video series on the life story of Christine Westen Chandler who is thought to be one of the most scrutinized and publicly documented people on the planet. This person, who goes by Chris Chan in most circles recently came to a more public spotlight outside of the niche corners of Youtube after the revelation that this they committed coerced incestual relations with they’re dementia suffering mother.
It’s not often that that kind of headline is just the tip of the iceberg.
It seems that this person who’s grasp of reality is so loose has been on the receiving end of years of manipulation and bullying to a point where every interaction with someone outside of the elderly parents was a troll. Each troll, documenting encounters and recording them. While I’m not saying what happened to Barbara Westen Chandler is the fault of the internet – clearly her repeated assault by Chris Chan was no one’s fault but Chris Chan’s – it seems from the hours of documentary that I’ve watched that the Internet wanted a monster and so, they made themselves one.
I honestly don’t think this will be the last case of something abhorrent coming out of a desire to be seen on the internet. Chris Chan was and is obsessed with fame and sex and escapism. I’m sure they’re not the first. I was watching something recently about a streamer who killed his girlfriend because the audience dared him to just like that. How many times have we seen the rise and fall of so-called makeup influencers in the past three years? Or how about the case of Nikadao Avacado, a mukbang content creator who is suffering numerous health issues due to absurd amounts of food he eats for content.
There’s a supply and demand for grotesque entertainment as if fiction writers can’t satiate the audience anymore. There needs to be a participation and a control and an illusion of control in some way. Who is to blame? The audience or the performer when the show goes horribly wrong?
In the end, is it our increasingly hardwired desire for instant gratification of sensation that creates these things? This strange desire for control and immediate relief of impulse creating bullies out of us all, trying to put the universe into a headlock and beat it into submission.
I digress.
So Part 23 of this saga with Chris Chan sees the umpteenth attempt at finding a “sweetheart” which ends up being another wind-up and him becoming angry and racist and ragey at faceless tormentors. Whole communities sprung up to prank this one individual over and over again and the question of how this person becomes so frankly fucked up seems as plain as day. Now Chris Chan is – rightfully – arrested and their mother is in care from recent reports and people are scratching their heads asking how this happened. Surely it’s a sarcastic rhetorical question.
Then I wonder, by even asking the question myself in the first place and sitting down to watch this collation of events that I am contributing to the monster and feeding the beast. Chris Chan, who believes that the dimensions are due to merge together and the DC and Marvel heroes are to come into our reality is supposedly glad to finally be truly famous. And here I am, another passive observer feeding that mentality.
Throughout this saga, several people appear to be supportive and genuinely looking to help Chris from becoming who they are today to no avail or to be revealed as another troll. It’s stranger than fiction and created a spectacle, a circus where the audience is the ringleader and quite possibly one of the most toxic, destructive and long lasting pieces of performance art the world has ever seen.
It doesn’t take much of a hop of logic to see the correlation between this monstrosity and the losses of life that’s come from Love Island. It’s anonymity that gives people power over those who are public or unequipped to be anonymous. Even in the most secure of online relationships, the one with anonymity has the high ground in the relationship. In long distance romances, people are held hostage and damaged by the emotions and actions of someone they may never meet – hell, hypothetical emotions and actions.
As a people, we have more control over ourselves than ever before in human history yet the illusion of powerlessness creates this warped need for power over another. It’s perhaps a subconscious desire in us all to create something and it falls to the individual if that thing is a thing of virtue or vice or indifferent entirely. There is no real right and wrong, only the consequences of actions that can be defined as those three factors. Yet taking the strange and well documented case of Chris Chan as an example, what kind of world are we all as individuals creating? What kind of madness are we bringing into being for our own amusement?
Not long ago I wrote a short story about madness from ambition and reckless passions and the monsters those things unleash. I think about that story and I think to myself that when we talk about responsibility for actions, we need to really be honest with ourselves and really dig deep into those recesses. Otherwise what will the next big saga be? The world is a reflection of society and society is the culmination of institution and people. We are all responsible for it.
In the end, I have no words to express the increasing disquiet of the entire story and the callous and self serving world it reflects. Now I’m not absolving Chris Chan of their sins, far from it. They acted selfishly, with warped desire and without rational cause on twisted impulses. I hold nothing but contempt for the entire situation.
Alas, what can any of us do, in reflection to prevent something else like this happening again? Because it will happen again and again, of course it will. We can only act on the individual level and to do so, it must be a call to push for virtue, control of the self and reflection of the higher good.
There’s a strange heavy cloud that hangs over, like a humid uncomfortable brewing storm of the self unsure of what to do. I look to the words of Marcus Aurelius about those being without blame and those being without judgement of action. Yet I’m failing to see here how anyone can come away from it all feeling cleaner than the rest. Even as a passive watcher after the fact, observing, listening like its just another crime documentary…
“Hey Bat, when you’re flying, what’s the city look like from on high?”
“It looks dirty.” – Batman Gotham Knight, 2008
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