I'm publicly retracting my previous position of supporting Wylted's permanent ban.
I thank Lunatic for posting this thread and sharing the link to Wylted's posts. I had no idea that the thread that yielded the accusation of catfishing in the first place was available to the public eye, as this kind of stuff almost always happen in PMs.
All I was going off of before now was David's summarization, which made the situation appear a lot more malicious than it was... I literally thought Wylted was going full pedo. Instead, while he lied about his age, it wasn't a means to any malicious end.
Lunatic is right that the mods can twist contexts to suit their agendas when it comes to this kind of thing, and I've been aware of this issue for a while... Before this all went down, Pie and I had even been discussing a MEEP to solve the problem (nearly all of which is his ideas, just some refinement on my part). My belief that this is a problem is enhanced by the recent events... I'd normally give the benefit of the doubt to David if he admitted that this was an exaggeration on his part and corrected himself, but instead he deleted the thread altogether to prevent the criticism from happening. This was blatant censorship to prevent scrutiny.
Thankfully, he's admitted that that was a wrong move and has provided screenshots... still, David's handling of the situation really disappoints me.
Anyway, having now read Wylted's thread myself, my personal view is that he hasn't warranted himself a permanent ban.
Don't get me wrong, with his multitude of deplorable posts, he had a ban coming... But I don't think that ban should be a permanent one. At least not at this point. Wylted's behavior was bad, but at least he had positive qualities to weigh against the bad behavior *cough* unlike mgtowdemon *cough*
Wylted has also convincingly expressed to me that he wants to clean up his act and that he will stay well-behaved should he be let back onto the site, and I made it clear to him that further violations would probably result in another permanent ban should he be allowed to return.
Worse case scenario, it’s a bust, we all admit David was right, and Wylted goes back to being a troll under the bridge. Best case scenario, he actually reforms his act. If he can continue to behave as he has under his Bringer account, then as far as I'm concerned he can stay indefinitely. Either way, no harm done.