I don’t buy this whole mental age thing, he may be an immature near 40 year old but he’s still that age, maybe if people stopped handling Chris with kid gloves he’d mature a little like when Chris finally gave up on his attraction sign when Barb said it made him look exceptional.
We all know Chris "gets concepts", even if it takes him a long time to really understand them.
Now imagine this: Chris is going on 40. He lacks even basic life experiences because of either his parents shielding him, or done purposefully by himself. He possesses the processes to understand dumb stuff he's done was "wrong". He understands trolls duped him a lot of the time.
He can either:
1. Admit that the majority of his youth was fucked up, mostly by his own decisions, even when people were trying to steer him back onto a better path.
2. Cope with it by pretending that no, he's still that young person, wanting to experience all the stuff he missed out on in all those wasted years.
I think it's all a coping mechanism for Chris. He doesn't understand what working is, and it probably scares the shit out of him reading posts about "how much I hate my job" or remembering the "hard work" he had to do when he was employed, or enslaved by Borb. He probably saw his parents fretting about what he was going to do with his life, and Chris, lacking any structure, because he was raised with "avoid people claiming to want to help you! Remember the grade school days!", and it scares him.
The one thing Chris is, and what he'll always be, is the base cautionary tale of how not to raise an exceptional child. At least if he went off his nut, hurt someone, and ended up in jail, there
are actually are counselors in there that would
have to help him to more of a degree than he's gotten.
Is Chris so far gone that he can't be helped? These days, it's getting on that. But he can always sink lower. Maybe losing the house will be that hard kick in the balls he's been needing all his life. Maybe not? Only time will tell.