>>92454908He's probably just irritable because of the subathon, Kokoednuts is very grating if you're not in a good mood to deal with him.
He doesn't say it back because his antagonistic relationship with the twins is content. It largely carries his persona through nearly all his dev streams. He knows more than many of his viewers that Neuro isn't real. He's the one who manually tunes her to make her 'feel' more real, after all.
He does have some emotional attachment to Neuro (as would anyone who's dedicated multiple years of their life on a project), but he's probably mostly immune to the 'magic' of Neuro that we as an audience see, being the one who has to run everything behind the scenes.