I've been talking to him for 2 years now on an account he doesn't know is me. He's VERY, VERY different in private; not better, just different. Mostly, if you're not someone he's trying to fuck, his low self esteem, inability to socialize normally, defense mechanisms that keep him from having to face reality, and
constant anxiety is extremely obvious. At any given time, he's usually hovering around something that's a mixture of severe depression and also a borderline panic attack.
Dude cries, like, literally, on an incredibly regular and frequent basis.
It's definitely not an act, he really doesn't see
anything strange or off about his behavior and it legitimately confuses him when he gets called "creepy" because of it. This dumbass honest to fucking god thinks that his comedy is funny (now and again he can manage some 'heh' level wordplay but beyond that nothing is even remotely funny) and that he's something akin to what always reminds me of that 90s song
Rico Suave.
Some of it at this point is definitely a psychological defense mechanism as it keeps him from having to face the harsh reality of his life but a lot of it seems to genuinely be shit he's believed since he was a kid: That he's an amazing, witty, charming, friendly, easy going guy and it's other people that make life difficult for him.
That attitude lines up extremely well with the narrative his mom posted on her old blog, because that's exactly how she talks about him (understandable as most moms are like that about their own kids but still). There's no possible way he didn't spend his entire childhood and teenage years being coddled and cooed over by mommy dearest, who 100% told him nothing that happened to him was his fault.
That attitude is common in most adults who had a mother that went full on coddling crazy over their kid and never allowed them to think any of their failures or failings were their fault.