the "often lighthearted" was to point out that it was never supposed to be a damning indictment, calling someone a janny was never meant to be like calling them a pedo or anything, it would be like decrying people for devaluing the word fag when calling a mod a fag in varying contexts.
people "lie" because the alternative is just assume nick finds it funny to troll people about zoom's cp escapades, its actually charitable to assume he did outright lie. most posters ive seen acknowledge zoom is a pos with only one guy defending him outright, everyone else has said that hes awful but that his doxing of the gunt guard was relevant, which is kind of what the site is based on, people involved in drama being highlighted no matter how awful