Containment What If?

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Here's a question: what is the most miniscule possible change you could make to Chris, as a person (without changing events before 2000), that would have prevented Classic Chris from ever becoming famous on the internet?
 
themarchivist2 said:
Here's a question: what is the most miniscule possible change you could make to Chris, as a person (without changing events before 2000), that would have prevented Classic Chris from ever becoming famous on the internet?
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If you're asking for an external force or event post-2000 that would have prevented Chris from rising to prominence, then I don't think there is one, but if your questions is more existential, then I have some ideas.

Chris took to the internet because his mind linked fame with success. That was fairly common for the time (and still remains today) -- most people think that fame = wealth, but peruse the Forbes list of wealthiest individuals, and you'll find a bunch of names you've never heard of before (unless you're an avid reader of Forbes, I suppose). Because Chris wanted to be a famous cartoonist, he put not only his work online but also himself. He reveled in all the attention he was getting -- even the negative attention -- because he assumed that he had legions of fans for every troll he encountered.

Things would have been totally different if he had a different outlook. If Chris had a healthy case of social anxiety or even just a concept of shame, he would hate putting himself out there for all to see. Or if he had read about cartoonists like Gary Larson who hardly made any public appearances but were still successful and beloved, maybe he would have emulated that.
Whatever the case, if he didn't want so badly to be a celebrity, he wouldn't be the king of lolcows today -- just a local weirdo / village idiot type. He'd still be a slow-in-the-mind, of course, but there are plenty of low IQ retards out there bumbling through life mostly anonymously. He may have still gotten into some of the same messes (e.g., getting kicked out of community college, harassing anyone who gets close to him, getting banned from The Game Place, setting his house on fire), but we wouldn't have had the trolling sagas, and nobody outside of Ruckersville would have known him.
 
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