Oh dear.
Whilst I can't speak for his social life, I have been good friends with Ze Operator in-game long before I knew his reputation on the forums.
I've talked to him a lot privately through the years, and he usually has good intentions. He never spoke to me like he speaks on the forums. He unintentionally paints a corrupt picture of what he's actually trying to say most of the time due to his intense irritation at, well, whatever he is irritated at.
For example: McJob went on an angry tyraid because he thought I was being pretentious (?) but I found out that it's because of negative experiences he's had in the past with people who sounded a lot like me, but who were actually quite different from me. He was just trying to stop what he thought was a problem before it began, but the way he was trying to do it appeared hostile at first, which I found was because of his upbringing in Australia.
Not all is as it seems. I could just be extremely biased, but there you go.