For the folks who met the man...IS he a man or just a boy? I mean, he usually comes off as some spastic early-teenager...but then once in a while he posts something that indicates that he is a bit older than that. Perhaps the guy suffers from a mental illness of some sort?
He's an adult. I can't claim to know him, as I only spent a few hours in an arcade chatting, and playing some games. What I will say is that meeting shorthair in person was pleasant enough, and for me at least, the man didn't entirely jibe with his postings to this board. I, in fact, mentioned to him that I thought many of his posts were designed to deliberately needle people, and that I found many of them to be amusing. He seemed a bit surprised at that and said they weren't. Take what you will from that exchange. I've read far too many posts on this board from numerous members that could be described as those of a 'spastic teenager', when I know full well the poster is not one. I'm definitely in no position to comment on his overall mental health.
I think that tends to come from the anonymity the internet affords us. When you meet a person in ah... person. There's a certain amount of holding back most people do. It's all for different reasons. For some, if they let their true personality through, they'd get their asses pummeled into the ground. For others, it's a nature of being conniving. For others still, it's a measure of shame, or sexuality, or whatever. The gist is, you act like the person you want to appear to be like when interacting in RL. Most of us have enough self control to accomplish this.
With the internet, those inhibitions disappear or they're altered. The person becomes more like his or herself or they become more like the person they desire to be (eg, a wimp in RL but a tough guy online). It's harder for us to really decide what kind of person they are because we're missing a lot of cues, such as body language, tone, inflection, timing, etc.
Things really start to get interesting when you know the person both online and off. Then you get a better sense of what's happening behind the scenes.
I don't think I've had an encounter with shorthair, but if descriptions of him are accurate, it's pretty obvious he has an altered view on reality. I think his sense of what's right or justifiable is self centered enough that he can't perceive anything but his own opinion as being true.
Just my two cents and I wouldn't even pay myself that much.