Stefan Etienne Is the PC Community’s Chris-Chan
Why he’s become so hated has more to do with signaling status than misapplication of thermal paste.
Shortly following the formation of communities online, most of them tend to go through a purification process where aberrations are culled in the interest of maintaining homogeneity. Vexed by a poor showing, the tech enthusiast community has been on Stefan Etienne’s throat ever since the publication of the ill-fated “Verge PC Build” in late 2018–that’s a pretty long time to stay angry, and the reasons why are worth examining.
While the concept of systemic racism is completely lost on an audience that can’t otherwise explain why it doesn’t go out of its way to correct white creators nearly as aggressively or persistently, an interesting parallel arises wherein Chris-Chan’s predicament isn’t all that dissimilar–they’re both characters loathed for their inadequacy as a projection of their detractors’ own insecurities.
But to first understand why Etienne acts as a Chris-Chan stand-in for the tech enthusiast community, one must first know why Chris-Chan was hated the way she was. Short for Christine Weston Chandler, the person in meme form has been the internet’s strangest fascination to an almost obsessive degree–an autistic trans woman with a very…
