Long time lurker, just saw this and had a similar experience with who I believe to be sketchek so decided to make an account.

I was probably about 15 yo and this was after the whole terminal illness thing. I jumped into a pub just like any other day, if my memory serves me correctly it was on badwater or frontier and immediately noticed there was a heavy who was blatantly hacking with like a 30 ks or something and his name was sketchek. For whatever reason I immediately had the feeling that it was the real sketchek and not someone aliasing. I guess it was probably the fact that from his youtube channel, sketchek just appeared so mysterious and shady and that profile kinda matched with someone who would be blatantly hacking in a pub. I never checked his steam profile or anything but I was kinda sure it was him. Afterwards I always had the feeling that the whole terminal illness thing was faked. The mysterious personality and lack of details surrounding the incident made me feel this way. As well as this, if you think about it, someone who hacks in a pub probably has no regard for the impact they are having on other people and this character profile just fitted in so well with someone who would toy with so many fans by creating a bogus terminal illness story. The whole incident kind of made me feel for all the people leaving heartfelt comments on his youtube videos.

Funnily enough probably about a month ago I was on an upward pub and was playing pyro. I was using the detonator and doing some detonator jumps and someone said I was trying to impersonate sketchek and I told them I'm pretty sure sketchek is a hacker who didn't actually have a terminal illness.