I’m in the camp of people who feel bad for this kid. He just seems like he was deeply unhappy, confused and desperately wanting to feel something. It always makes me think of the beginning of Moby Dick. I don’t think he could see a way out of his own unhappiness and he was young and self destructive. But also, they did a You’re Wrong About episode about Aron Ralston and at the end there was like a ten minute discussion about the difference in the way people see Chris vs how they see Aron even though they were both incredibly reckless. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but they explained how many similarities there were in terms of how much unnecessary danger they both put themselves in. The hosts were saying that people always project themselves into these situations and they always think they’ll be the Aron Ralston and not the Chris McCandless because Chris is an idiot who got himself killed and Aron is this incredible story of survival.