Herobrine- Real or fake?

Description
Herobrine is a self-spawning mob many have said, or perhaps an anomally.
Herobrine stands at the exact same height as the player controlled steve
and bears the exact same skin as his alternative- with the exception of
the eyes being completely white. He is said to stalk the lands of
'minecraftia' and cause havoc wherever he may go- leaving traps and
ambushes in his wake.


But with that, it still begs the question- WHO IS HE? 
Herobrineis said to be Notch's dead brother, according to the creepy-pasta. The creepy-pasta then went on, in an attempt to prove all these claims that  notch had the user had emailed Notch and he had replied with:
'Yes, I did, but he is no longer with us'
The conclusion on how he came to think it was his brother was never revealed explicity, only stating that
the name 'Herobrine' had been used by a swedish gamer. Notch being swedish too.
It seems to add up. Does it?

Very shady huh.
This is the alleged first and supposedly 'real' sighting of the character Herobrine.
Dueto the image being very large, it can be fairly difficult to get a real perspective of him and even harder to see him clearly. But with this image you can get a rough view on what he is said to have looked like. If you were to google 'Herobrine first sighting', and looked at in it more depth-you'd see what I mean precisely.
The image looks very weird and very sketchy. A personal theory(lol) of mine is that this is either a retextured item(such as a door) or a simply  photo-edited image. Both very plausible assumptions.
If you look closely you can see the texture does look very flat. Which draws into
both possible guesses. There also doesn't happen to be any video-proof
on this which is conveniant. Very conveniant indeed.

More Info

This is the shrine allegedly used to summon Herobrine. Many videos and images can be seen based solely on this. Not much is known about this other than the otherwise stated facts. It does require(if playing survival) to be quite far ahead in the game due to having to have the resources and access to the nether.

Conclusion(For now)
Unfortunately, due to a lack of time I must end it here. I will continue to update every now and then however so feel free to post what you think in the comments.
Personally I do think herobrine is fake. And just that, a creepy-pasta. Notch has responded on several occassions that Herobrine is false and as such completely shuts down any hope for herobrine such as the logs- which have been a big part of the conpspiracy ever since the success of herobrine really took off.
Here is the proof:


On another note, numerous coders of the like have delved into the depths of the code only to come back with the dissapointing conclusion he is fake.

Thats it for now guys thanks for reading, post your opinion in the comments!