The person online and the person in the hallway are sometimes two different people. Meet both before you decide.

A profile is edited and a hallway is not. Some people are braver in text, some are kinder in person, and plenty are one thing in a group chat at midnight and another at a lunch table. Neither version is exactly the fake one. They are two rooms in the same house and you have only stood in one of them.

Before you decide who somebody is, get one real conversation in the same physical space. If the two versions sit far apart in a way that worries you, trust the one that shows up when there is no audience.