RedHanded - Episode 308 - Christine 'Chris Chan' Chandler: Lifelong Lolcow

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Graphic Sonic fanfiction, a botched DIY sex change, incest and relentless psychosexual trolling are just some of the hallmarks of Christine Weston Chandler's story. As one of the most documented people in history – with 2,500 Wiki articles covering everything from school reports to her parents’ friends – her almost biblical tale leaves little to the imagination. Yet most people have never heard of her. Despite decades of online abuse, manipulation, and even extortion, the majority of those who do know about the infamous ‘Chis Chan’ see her as little more than an internet joke. Yet her real life is one of the most saddening and downright bizarre we are ever likely to cover.Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Hooray! Hooray, indeed. This is fucking horrible. There's no other way of putting it, really. Nope, so let's just get started. Because I am incredibly hungover.

And I'm not at all mentally, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, physiologically prepared to talk about some of the things we have to talk about today. But talk about them, we must. We did it to ourselves. Let's do it so I can go eat some lunch and have a cold shower and cry in a corner somewhere. So these days, we're all busy documenting our lives on social media. To say it's become ubiquitous is to not say very much at all. But have you ever wondered who the most documented person ever in human history might be? This is wild.

Uh-huh. Because you might let your mind wander to the likes of politicians, religious leaders, or Kim Kardashian. But it's been widely theorized that that title of most documented person ever in human history is held by one Christine Weston Chandler, or Chris Chan. While the Wikipedia article on our favourite Jesus of Nazareth comes to around 47 A4 pages, if you were to sit and print it all out for some reason, and that of John F. Kennedy is around 55, there exists a CWC wiki, which is a full online encyclopedia separate to Wikipedia, dedicated solely to Christine Chandler's life.

It has over two and a half thousand individual articles, many of which are several pages long. The long-running YouTube documentary series, Chris Chan, A Comprehensive History, has, at the time of recording, 74 episodes, all of which are at least 40 minutes long and have millions of views. Most, if not all, of the sea of information out there is documented as a sort of running internet joke, where the punchline itself is how comprehensively Chris Chan's life has been exposed and manipulated. But despite all of this, most of you listening will have never heard of her. The case we're going to cover today is one of the most complicated that we are ever likely to cover, so prepare yourselves to dive headfirst into a tragic

tale of decades-long internet trolling, recycled semen, lol cows, sex acts with an anime body pillow, extortion, and, to top it all off, incest. And it's all filtered through the murky waters of 4chan, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and Kiwi Farms. This week, we're going to have to sift through the reams of information out there on Chris Chan,

strip away all of the meta-ironic internet memery, and expose the actual story that is the savage, relentless online bullying of one deeply vulnerable person. And it's one that led to an increasing loss of her grip on reality. What we've done here is a rundown of one of the most deeply disturbing, saddening and downright bizarre stories that the internet has to offer. Christine Chandler was born biologically male in February 1982. Her parents, Barbara and Robert Chandler, were both alcoholics and were aged 40 and 54 respectively when Chandler was conceived.

They had married quickly to get out of previous relationships, and Chandler's early home life left a lot to be desired. From an early age, the child showed signs of neurodiversity. She struggled to talk, and her first word was monkey, a mispronunciation of mummy. Aged just a year and a half, Chandler began being left in the care of a local teenager while her parents went out drinking in the evenings. This teen struggled to deal with

Chandler's quirks and would often end up scolding the toddler. After one particularly traumatic incident in which the babysitter locked Chandler in her room, she went selectively mute, refusing to talk again until the age of six. By the time Chandler was talking again, she'd already been diagnosed with autism. And it was at around this time that she was allowed to start using the family computer. Shortly after this, Chandler began attending primary school. Due to the significant challenges posed by her autism, she struggled from the start and regularly found herself falling behind her peers.

On top of this, her behaviour was becoming a real issue. She was getting in trouble, thanks to her inability to concentrate and pick up on social cues. And despite her being diagnosed as severely autistic, Chandler's parents refused any kind of special education, insisting that she stay in the public school system. And on top of that, they all moved around a lot, and Chandler struggled to make new friends, wherever she ended up. By the time she was in high school, she was effectively living in isolation.

She had no friends or consistency. Chandler found stability in cartoons on TV instead. She spent most, if not all, of her free time watching shows like Pokemon, The Simpsons, and her favourite of all, Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic became a fascination for Chandler, who spent most of her time imagining a universe in which she and the speedy hedgehog could interact. Just before high school, Chandler won a Sonic-themed TV phone-in competition

to go on a $1,000 spending spree at her local toy shop. And from this moment on, Sonic the Hedgehog became a staple part of Christine's day-to-day life. And for a short while, things started looking up for Chandler. Her time at Manchester High School in Virginia is one that she's always looked back on, positively. There were way more pupils at this high school, making it easier to socialise and not stand out. So Chandler was able to develop a small friendship group and even became the waterboy for the

school's basketball team. Through the intense fascination with documenting Chandler's life, which would start over a decade later, we've even been able to see her 11th grade high school report cards and grades, which all points to someone doing far better than most people had expected and also points to just how intrusive all of this became. High school also led to Chandler's lifelong passion for creating comic books, specifically her own semi-original idea, Sonichu. Sonichu came into being during a high school English class during which Chandler was asked to create a story using her own original characters. To do this, you probably have guessed,

Chandler combined her first love, Sonic the Hedgehog, with her equally passionate love of the Pokemon Pikachu. It's classic. It's classic how kids write stories. They're just like, these are the things I like, I'm going to smash them together and mildly plagiarise everything. But that's how you learn. Sonichu became quickly much more than just a high school project for Chandler. By the time she graduated in the year 2000, Sonichu had become a multi-episode comic series,

one that she used to vent and express herself. That same year, Chandler enrolled in Pedermont, Virginia, Community College, settling on a course in computer-aided drafting

and design, which seems appropriate considering what she's interested in. Online, a lot is made of Chandler's time in college and the various reasons that it took her significantly longer

than expected to graduate. However, given that the majority of the information we have about this time of Chandler's life comes from internet trolls, who would later dictate a deeply unpleasant decade of her life, we're going to steer clear of over-analysing this particular part. What we can say for sure is that during her time at college, Chandler began, for the first time, seriously looking for a romantic relationship, which she refers to as the love quest. Now, the love quest was the first time that Chandler began to become known to a much wider audience. She started wandering around the local college campus wearing a handmade plasticine sonnet shoe medallion and holding a sign that read 21 and single white male

seeking acute 18 to 21 single female companion. If any men read this huge sign, mind your own business. Inevitably, this grabbed the attention of many of the students and quickly became a bit of a running joke on campus, especially because Chandler made sure to approach and proposition various girls who wandered past, and allegedly even wandered into the student halls going door to door. This didn't go down well with the college itself, and Chandler was quickly banned from her LoveQuest canvassing campaign. But that didn't stop her. Chandler moved the LoveQuest to the local mall instead,

and it was here that they really started to become well-known within the wider community. At the same time, Chandler began what would become a lifelong habit of oversharing online. In 2004, she registered her own Sonichu-themed website. There, she would post scans of her hand-drawn comics, post journal entries, and generally start to archive various aspects of her life. I think up until this point, what you have is like a really sad story of somebody desperately trying to make a human connection with other people. Through the love quest, which obviously to other kids, other people in this college is going to come across really weird, which

is why it caused so much tension. And also through, you know, the desperate attempt to upload all of their work onto this website was to make a connection with somebody. And unfortunately, it all just backfires on Chandler. So all of this continued and, if anything, increased in 2005, when Chandler graduated from college, and unable to hold down a steady job, she dedicated her life to the website. And although the love quest wasn't going particularly well, Chandler was undeterred, and the plan rolled on. And she made quite a few failed attempts at finding a romantic partner,

including a girl around the same age called Megan Schroeder. Chandler and Megan had met at a local tabletop gaming shop, and Chandler quickly became infatuated. She began to include Megan after this in new episodes of the Sonichu series, and made various attempts to win her over. However, Megan was not keen on dating Chandler, who as far as she could see at this point couldn't offer much more than poor social skills and a sonichu medallion. Eventually, Chandler tried a Hail Mary attempt at winning Meghan's heart. And this is an interesting tactic. Is it? Yeah, basically Chandler gave Meghan a hand-drawn picture of herself penetrating Megan with her fingers and giving a thumbs up. I can't cope.

Yeah. Now, needless to say, that's when things really fell apart between the two of them. I mean, it's very threatening. Yeah. I mean, and that's how Megan would have taken it. So Chandler also uploaded this picture to the Sonichu website. And it was around this time that Chandler's website was discovered by a user on the forum, Something Awful. And for the first time, but certainly not the last, Chandler started to attract the wrong kind of internet attention. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry.

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I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Very quickly, the page was spread over websites like 4chan and Reddit. And before long, certain parts of the internet were completely obsessed with Chandler. It's like going viral, but back in the day.

Mm-hmm. Christine Chandler's website was an endless treasure trove of hundreds of pages of Sonichu comics, which had begun to feature incredibly graphic sexual images between various characters, as well as journal entries from Chandler recalling her various interactions with students and security guards during the love quest. It's like she sees what is getting more attention

and more human connection and interaction and then leans into it without realising that that is going to be massively to her detriment yeah because she can't pick up on the social cues that's exactly what i was gonna say she cannot i mean far be it from me to diagnose anyone with symptoms but like probably isn't that good at distinguishing between positive and negative attention yeah and i think definitely what you see here is, and you know, she's already been diagnosed with autism, like that is a known part of this story. But it's not only just the need for that interaction, that human connection, it's also the inability to see the consequences

of this level of oversharing and how that's going to directly negatively impact you. But, you know, a lot of people do that on the internet, just not to this level. Soon, Chandler, or Chris-Chan, as they'd been nicknamed by the fascinated onlookers, had their own page on Encyclopedia Dramatica, a website that's basically the evil twin of Wikipedia. It was a place where people could upload a page on anyone and anything, and know for a fact that it would never be taken down. Chandler's page quickly became the most viewed in the website's history, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of people knew who she was. As soon as Chandler found the article dedicated to her on Encyclopedia Dramatica, she started making several changes to her own page,

trying to edit out parts of the article which were untrue or painted her in a bad light. But, presumably excited at the prospect of internet fame, she also added to the entry. She posted five new drawings of herself onto the site, as well as adding vast amounts of intimate details to her page, which previously hadn't been known to the community. And this began what people have since called the Trolling Saga. And it's called a saga because it was a 10-year period in which Christine Chandler's life became an endless source of entertainment for online trolls.

At first, Chandler, who at this point was in her late 20s and incapable of living without the care of her mother and father, did enjoy the idea of being famous. In fact, after adding to the article on her on Encyclopedia Dramatica, Chandler's campaign of oversharing online only intensified. She was not only uploading lewd and sexual comics to the Sonichu website, but also began filming what she called public service announcements, which Chandler uploaded to YouTube. These videos included everything from updates on their love quest to intimate and often graphic updates on

their sexual proclivities, including engaging in the act of recycling their own semen. And what that means, I'm just going to leave it to you to think about. I don't want to know. It's too late. It's already in everybody's head and my stomach is churning. So these videos were also usually filled with her ill-informed and often downright offensive views on things like race and sexuality in which Chanda referred to black and gay people exclusively using slurs and there's no two ways about it chris chan as we will go on to see throughout this entire episode is absolutely a victim there is no doubt about that absolutely a victim but they also had a long history of outwardly bigoted especially racist statements and i think a lot of people kind of use that and this person's like way they presented their bigoted views on

social media as saying it's fair game for why it's okay to troll them to go after them and why it's funny and why that person doesn't deserve any empathy or sympathy etc i am not in that camp because i'm like if it's left up to the mob to decide who is fair gameable and go afterable and you know trollable and why that's funny and not morally bankrupt where do you draw the line because the next day they're coming for you because you they disagree with the view that you have so i just think once again like vigilantism like anything like that it's not for people to decide who can be tormented online and even though this person is also putting that information out there this person was incredibly vulnerable not a great person no had a lot of

horrible views and opinions that they aired doesn't make it okay what happened to them no i completely agree but these outrageous videos were absolute gold dust to the desensitized users of 4chan and something awful they quickly identified chandler as a lolcow, which basically means an endless source of entertainment through trolling. Chandler's less-than-perfect views, and in some cases deliberately offensive comments, meant that most people did see her as fair game, and things very quickly got incredibly out of control.

We simply can't cover every single time that Christine Chandler was trolled. There are countless occasions, ranging from the absurd to, quite frankly, the horrific. However, we're going to try and give you a brief overview and an understanding of the sorts of things that Chandler was exposed to on a daily basis. First and foremost, Chandler was almost immediately doxxed, which, if you don't know, means a huge amount of her personal information began to appear online without her consent. Things like her home address, social security number, details about her parents, her school reports, and even her medical records were all leaked online, with the aim of learning more and more about Chris Chan. And soon, people started to get in contact with Chandler under the pretense of starting a romantic relationship. The first came from three

separate trolls who spoke to Chandler via instant messenger and over the phone under the shared pseudonym Blanka Vice. Blanka of course never existed but the trio of trolls spoke to Chandler for months convincing her that Blanka was a fan of the Sonichu comics who'd fallen in love with her. Over time, this trio sent pictures to Chandler of various women claiming to be Blanca, and they developed what Chandler believed was a long distance relationship. So tragic. It is. So eventually the trolls asked for a symbol of Chandler's love for Blanca, and what they wanted was Chandler's first handmade Sonichu medallion. By now besotted with blanker, Chandler obliged. But a few days later, a video was uploaded to YouTube,

and it showed the user cutting up, setting fire to, and then urinating on the handmade token, before sealing it inside a jar of pickles, Chandler's most hated food. This video, along with all of the text and phone exchanges between Chandler and quote-unquote Blanca, then went viral across various forums that had become obsessed with Chandler. And although it felt like the cruel climax to this out-of-control online bullying campaign, unfortunately, this particular situation was just the beginning. In early 2009, a second troll, a 13-year-old boy with the username Blue Spike, began communicating with Chandler via voice chat. Just as the previous trolls had done

with Blanka, Blue Spike posed as a potential love interest, this time called Julie. Over the course of several months, the troll, the 13-year-old, remember, developed an intimate online relationship with Chandler, who, once again, believed that she and Julie were long-distance lovers. On a number of occasions, the pair even engaged in phone sex. Blue Spike also convinced Chandler to record themselves engaging in sex acts with an anime body pillow while moaning the name Julie during orgasm. Clips of this were then of course spread around 4chan and something awful and people began shouting the name Julie while imitating orgasm in mockery of Chandler.

But she was still completely unaware. This all hit its lowest point in March 2009 when Blue Spike convinced Chandler to hand over the login information to her PlayStation Network account. With this information, Blue Spike then began a voice call with Chandler and several other trolls under the guise of Judy's evil twin brother, Max. This entire voice call is still available online, although for reasons that will become abundantly clear, we wouldn't recommend that you seek it out no again like obviously blue spike knows exactly what he's doing he knows that he's 13 chandler by this point like we said

is in their late 20s if this came to light in a criminal sense at the time it's going to be very difficult for you to prove that you did not know that child was 13 years old, no matter how they're presenting themselves online, and could have got you into quite a lot of criminal trouble. So yeah, it's just like risk factor on top of risk factor on top of risk factor involved in this case. So Max, Julie's evil twin brother, who'd seized Chandler's account information, then offered her a choice. Max told Chandler that she had to pick between the fictional Julie and her PlayStation account.

Max said that if Chandler wanted to speak with Julie again, then Chandler had to let Max sell their account information on eBay. And if they wanted their account back, then they'd have to send Julie abroad so that she and Chandler could never speak again. Now Chandler, understandably confused, debated her options before coming to the conclusion that Julie was more important. But Max said that it was too late

and that if Chandler wanted either of them back now, she had to prove herself. So after another 10 minutes of back and forth with Blue Spike, asking Chandler to say a string of degrading phrases, the troll then ordered Chandler to ejaculate on their handmade plasticine sonichu medallion. Chandler informed Blue Spike, who she still believed was her long-distance girlfriend's evil twin brother Max, that she couldn't because she was too nervous to ejaculate. Blue Spike then offered her a final ultimatum.

She could either burn the Sonichu medallion or cut it into pieces and insert it into her rectum. So Chandler attempted to insert the medallion while still on the voice chat. At this point, several of the other trolls who were on a separate call with Blue Spike began to berate the 13-year-old for going too far. However, Blue Spike didn't stop. Instead, he told Chandler to burn her house down.

Chandler refused, so the young troll then sent her an invite to a call with a few others, saying that Julie had some fans that wanted to speak to her. And once on the call, Blue Spike, posing as Julie, then told Chandler that she had something important to say. After some build-up and back and forth between the pair, Blue Spike said the following, This whole time, Chris, you've been having sex with a 13-year-old boy, you sick fuck.

And this incident was a low point even for 4chan, the community who had become obsessed with Christine Chandler. Blue Spike was ostracised from the group, and they moved on to what they felt were more light-hearted forms of trolling. Although it does have to be said, Chandler was still always the butt of the joke. The most high profile of these incidents was when an early YouTuber, known by the alias Liquid Chris, began making videos of themselves impersonating Chandler. This video began as a kind of homage to the now infamous Chris Chan and quickly gained momentum within the Chris Chan community.

It's all so confusing. I know, I can't keep up. I'm just like, what is happening? Who are these people? And we have to remember, this predates a lot of stuff, right? We're talking about, like, the 2010s. The 2000s to the 2010s. That's when we're talking about this period of time.

And it was, although it doesn't feel like a long time ago, very much in the early stages of this kind of social media interaction and stuff. And it was a completely, I'm not saying it's completely different, we don't still have trolling but it was weird it was fucking weird then and you can see it in this whole interaction it's absolutely bonkers and this entire story makes me feel really dirty yeah i feel like as we're talking about it and i'm saying these things i know we've covered cases in which like fucking people get murdered obviously but i feel like i need to go and have a shower because it's so horrible i feel like i've just been like transported back to like two girls one cup one man one jar exactly era of the internet and what

was that documentary that came out a few months ago or maybe last year and everybody was obsessed with it the most hated man on the internet it's very like that so anyway let's get back to the story because it wasn't long before a simple impersonation became yet another incident of no holds barred trolling because in june 2009 liquid chris created a youtube video with an almost identical username to chand's. And then he began uploading videos saying that they, Liquid Chris, were the original Chris Chan and that Christine Chandler was actually the imitator. This is just so fucking confusing.

And this went on for a number of weeks, with Chandler responding to each video on her own YouTube channel in an effort to deny the claims being made by Liquid Chris. Now, at points like this, it's impossible to tell whether Chandler quite understood the joke and what her opinion was of Liquid Chris's channel. Because either way, she agreed to make a collaborative video

in which she and Liquid Chris battled for the title of the real Chris Chan via the video game SingStar. Now, obviously, Liquid Chris knows exactly what he's doing. Piggybacking on the coattails of this Chris Chan obsession and is doing it, I'm sad to say, in a very smart way. But how much, like we said, Chris Chan understands when she takes part in things like this collaboration is anyone's guess. These more mundane attempts at baiting Chandler into a reaction continued for the next two years. And it included another high-profile incident

in which the trolls pretended to be long-retired Premier League football player and ex-host of Match of the Day, Jimmy Hill, and put out a statement saying that he was the original creator of the Sonichu comic series. And these were intersected by yet more people posing as potential love interests, although with nothing quite as unhinged as the incident with Julie. Then, in 2011, away from the screen, Chandler's home life took a serious blow. Chandler's father Robert, who was 50 when Chandler was born, died at the age of 84. And despite having found his child's autism challenging,

Robert had been a stable force in Chandler's life. He'd been one of the few who'd somewhat grasped the campaign of bullying that had taken place. And so the loss of her father, Robert, had a significant effect on Chandler's mental health. In the weeks after, Chandler reported the cause of death as stress from the campaign of trolling. Because yes, she was still posting videos sharing every single thought she had online. But the actual cause of death for Robert has never been announced,

so we actually don't know why he died. Probably because he was 84, I would say. Now it was also around this time that Chandler, who'd always up until this point identified as male, began to discuss the idea of being trans in earnest. At the same time, it became clear that the mental barriers between reality and Chandler's imaginary world began to crumble, as Chandler began to post at length about an upcoming collision between her universe and the universe of Sonichu. Chandler's father's death also posed a significant turning point in the internet's obsession with Chandler. Just days afterwards, a group of trolls made contact with Chandler during a recorded phone call. This phone call, which has never been released,

stopped even these opportunistic trolls in their tracks. Struck by the serious reality of Chandler's life and her increasingly unhealthy mental state, they ended the call, and the three-year initial phase of trolling came to an end. The Chris Chan wiki, which has been running since 2008, was temporarily shut down. Traffic was redirected to a simple memorial page for Robert.

At this point, the majority of the trolls on 4chan and the various other forums obsessed with Chandler agreed to leave her alone for good. I mean, that's how bad it got. Yeah. That trolls on 4chan were like, this is too far. Yeah. Most trolls simply moved on to other projects, if you can call them that, while a few decided to try and repair some of the damage done by talking positively about Chandler and providing financial support to her and her family. For the next six years, she was left quietly to upload new episodes of Sonichu and PSA videos. The trolls stuck to their word. Chris Chan became a public figure to watch from afar, rather than someone to interact with.

But they didn't stop watching. It was during this time the majority of the 2,500 articles on Chris Chan were created and uploaded to the CWC wiki page. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led

to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983,

there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime,

The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Now, as nice or as relatively normal as all of this sounds like it was returning to, insofar as Chandler's life was concerned, this time was not without incident. First and foremost, Chandler began to document her transition from male to female.

That included details of a botched and graphic DIY sex change attempt that she'd made at home. Then, on the 10th of January 2014, the Chandler family home caught fire thanks to a faulty extension cord, an incident that was featured on the local news. Then, in an even more high-profile incident, Chandler went viral on Twitter in December 2014 after she was filmed flying into a rage in a local GameStop and pepper-spraying an employee. This incident became even more sensational when it was revealed that Chandler's outburst was down to a new Sonic the Hedgehog game,

which she felt featured Sonic with the wrong coloured arms. She's just really not well. No, definitely, definitely not. So Chandler was eventually found guilty of the unlawful release of a dangerous gas and given a $500 fine, along with a 180-day suspended sentence. But mostly, Chandler posted online. The so-called Christorians kept on diligently documenting. And apart from occasionally being embroiled in some absurd drama,

Chris Chan was essentially left alone. But then, in 2017, a few of the long-standing 4chan users and moderators of the Chris Chan wiki became concerned when Chandler began selling off some of her prized possessions online. Sonichu Medallions and original hand-drawn Sonichu comics had begun to spring up on places like eBay, and they were being snapped up by self-confessed Christorians. On top of this, Chandler had started a Patreon page with a goal set at a quarter of a million dollars, with the aim being to pay off all my home finances, including the mortgage and credit cards,

so I can feel better peace of mind and less weight long time hanging over my head, like many hippopotamuses, and will feel better able to draw, colour, create and so forth of my very own Sonichu and Rosechu. On the face of it, it just looked like the Chandler family, with her mother approaching 80, had begun to lose some control over their finances. But on closer inspection, it seems as though the old trolls were just rearing their ugly heads once again.

Those who'd been keeping a close eye on Chandler's latest additions to the Sonichu series noticed themes and ideas cropping up that didn't feel right. Figures like Russian billionaires, Satanists and Nazis were cropping up throughout the comic. These themes were very much not in keeping with the usual Sonic fairy tale gone sexual that normally filled the pages of Sonichu. It's basically like erotic fanfiction for Sonic the Hedgehog and now it's filled with Nazis. So they felt like all of this was a joke at Chanda's expense, and worried, a group of faithful Christorians, who called themselves the Guard Dogs, began to dig into what might have been going on. And what they found out was that in late 2017, a troll who called himself Joshua Wise

had begun to make contact with Chandler, pretending to be a character from the Sonichu universe. And as we have already established, Chandler, pretending to be a character from the Sonichu universe. And as we have already established, Chandler's understanding of fantasy and reality had already started to crumble, and it seemed that Joshua Wise had been ready and waiting to seize that opportunity. Over the course of almost a year, Joshua Wise, and later a few other trolls, began to communicate with Chandler posing as several different characters from the Sonichu universe and yeah I it's just like it just gets worse and worse at first it's just like them you know using this love quest as an opportunity to berate this person

and now it's falling off a cliff from the world of reality because they're literally pretending to be her comic book characters. I just, I'm just speechless. Like it's just so cruel. I mean, it's just the fact of we deal with people, right, who have psychopathic tendencies. And I think when it's operating in the real world and your real hands on having to destroy somebody's life, it takes one type of person. I think the parameters for people acting in this kind of psychopathic way online are far, far less. So you have a far greater number of people that are willing to engage anonymously in this kind of disgusting behavior. I'm convinced that most of these people would never do anything in real life because they're doing it behind the

safety of anonymity online. So yeah, you basically just multiply by 100 the number of people capable of doing sick, sick things when you're talking about who would do it online. And that's what you're seeing here. And this lot called themselves the Idea Guys. And they established the idea that they, as the characters, within Chris Chan's story, had control over Chandler's fictional world.

They would tell her that there were problems within the Sonichu universe that only she could solve. Using this tactic, the Idea Guys managed to extort roughly $6,000 from Chandler by asking her to sell pieces of her extensive comic book and anime collection. And one of the members of this group, while posing as one of Chandler's fictional characters, also convinced her that the chat logs from her previous sexual interactions with Blue Spike in 2009 would be enough to have her convicted as a paedophile. Then he threatened to report her to the FBI unless she could produce around $20,000. On top of this, they also forced Chandler to record a series of compromising, and in some cases, very very explicit videos including her reacting to

extreme pornography and they kept those videos as a way of blackmailing her in the future. So when the guard dog group caught wind of all of this they decided to put a stop to it. They did this however using the exact same tactics as the Idea Guys by posing as yet more characters from Chandler's comic book to convince her that the Idea Guys were manipulating her. This is a fucking mindfuck of epic proportions. I can barely follow it. Imagine losing grip of reality and living in the middle of this. But the thing is, by the time the guard dog started,

this significant damage had already been done to Chandler, both financially and psychologically. This extended contact with people she believed had been from her imaginary universe had set in stone in Chandler's mind that everything she had written was real. Even more worryingly, Chandler became absolutely fixated on the idea of a dimensional merge that would bring the Sonichu universe into ours. This, she felt, would solve all of her and her mother's financial problems, since she would have access to untold wealth within the Sonichu universe. The real-world effect of this was that Chandler almost entirely gave up on dealing with her and her mother's current financial worries, believing that it wouldn't matter once the dimensions merged.

And that would be that. The story of Christine Chris-Chan Chandler, the victim of all victims of trolling, and a story that's one part absurd and 100 parts really sad. That was until the 30th of June 2021, when someone using the name Bella leaked a nine-minute phone call they claimed to have been with Chandler. And during this phone call, Chandler spoke openly about her relationship with her mother Barbara, saying that she was getting older and that her health and memory were deteriorating. And then, pretty much out of nowhere, she went on to say that for the last few months, she had been performing sex acts on her 80-year-old mother using her fingers. And this recording inevitably spread like wildfire.

Yeah, I mean, anyone who didn't know the story, I just can't imagine that you would see that coming. Mm-mm. I certainly didn't. Nope. The next day, police arrived at Chandler's house to arrest her. She was given the felony charge of incest, to which she pleaded not guilty. A month later, on the 4th of August, she made her first of three court appearances before going in front of a grand jury. During these appearances, her lawyer, David Haleberg,

questioned her ability to understand the charges against her. He argued that she was so uniquely susceptible to manipulation, thanks both to her severe autism and also her desire for acceptance online. At this point, Chandler verified this to the judge by shouting, I'm famous on the internet. The case, of course, was getting an incredible amount of attention from watchers around the world. Information was shared and discussed by thousands, and every development was poured over. And when people started phoning the courthouse for information, the case was sealed.

So because of this, we cannot know exactly what happened. But we can assume that Chandler was found guilty as she wasn't released from prison until March of this year. And that really is the end of this mammoth episode on one of the most bizarre, grotesque and saddening stories on the internet. As we said at the top of the show, that really is just a snapshot of what happened during that time. There are quite literally thousands of individual wiki entries on Christine Chandler. However, what we will say is that despite a lot of people seeing Chris Chan as a figure for endless mockery and fair game, and despite her own extremely questionable views,

she is a vulnerable person. Most of these sites, including the CWC wiki, are less than sympathetic, however. They often blame Chandler for most of the unfavourable events that have taken place in her lifetime. So, I would say, if you are curious after you've listened to this episode, just take our word for it and stay away from any more Chris-tory. Because you don't need it. You don't need it. And you know what? You might not be perfect, but at least you're not one of these pieces of shit extorting a very vulnerable person on the internet or at least i hope you're not yeah yeah it was just like fuel that was feeding this endless perpetual cycle of trolling because we've seen trolling we've seen trolling we've

talked about it but it is a case here in which the victim is almost complicit, but they are complicit through a total lack of understanding of what is actually going on. Absolutely. I think one of the weirdest things about this story is not that it happened. Nothing about that baffles me. It's that even today when it's reported,

it's slightly reported as a hilarious internet historical event. And people in large part, even in the mainstream reporting of this story insofar as much as there has been any kind of do just see chandler as a person who was the butt of the joke and i think everybody seems to miss the point that they were incredibly vulnerable yeah you know it's not for me to be like oh they had horrible views so like who gives a fuck no it's horrendous what happened they should have been protected and they weren't and all sorts of fucking horrible stuff happened which basically is rendered their entire life fucked and where it ends up with the incest charges the elder abuse oh my god it's just so harrowing and you have to ask yourself like did that happen because chris chan always had that in

them to do something like that to sexually exploit a vulnerable person in an opportunistic way. Did it happen at all? I presume so because they were found guilty and that's a very difficult thing to prove. Or did it happen because they constantly had to keep upping the ante in order to stay relevant and in order to stay lol worthy on the internet? God. And I don't know. I don't know. So that's it, guys.

That is the story of Chris Chan. It's a very, very strange story. But yeah, don't go look into it. You don't need to. I don't know. So that's it, guys. That is the story of Chris Chan. It's a very, very strange story. But yeah, don't go looking to it. You don't need to. Go do something else. Go listen to our shorthand that came out this week over on Amazon Music, which is on the guy who saved the Internet. And it is a fascinating story. But after this one, I don't know if the Internet needs saving.

Burn it down. Burn it to the ground. So that's it, guys. We'll see you next week for something else. Yeah, don't troll anybody on the internet. Please, it makes me sad. Bye. Bye.

Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. Thank you. gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper

issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan we'll be finding andy you can listen to finding andy and finding natasha exclusively and ad free on wondery plus join wondery plus in the wondery app apple podcasts or spotify