it's definitely the latter lol. he seemed happy enough to answer my query though.
idk, from the moment phylactery joined i thought it was weird that he had very specifically mid-00s GMD tastes but claimed to have not been on a forum before. i read his posts or lists sometimes and think, i've never come across anyone other than david or myself who knows and likes all of those obscure ass albums despite frequenting a number of different 'in crowd' internet circles over the years--twas kind of similar to how hbb must've felt about talos' posts, and given what we found out about talos, i got pretty suspicious. i remember his first few posts when he joined were just him naming a bunch of my favourite albums and even reeling off my favourite tracks off those albums. i mean, maybe he's just my soulmate or something, but it was and is pretty odd, as i expressed at the time.
deron actually traced the IP specifically to my county (which is consistent with his claim that he worked at my school and schools in the area i guess), which should make everyone else more suspicious that it's my alt, especially if you knew what this area is like... i mean, BM heads don't exist around here to my knowledge lol. i guess he said he was from manchester which is probably less weird. anyway, i guess i'm okay with people (people = TB) thinking i'm the king of the alts and beat omni at his own game.
part of me still thinks this is just omni's alt AI improving itself through trial and error and figuring out how to use a proxy, i mean a lot of coincidences appeared when we started looking for similarities between the two of them, but maybe that was just confirmation bias. another part of me thinks omni just wouldn't be capable of such a convincing alt, and phylactery has always done a good impression of a british person if he isn't one, so... huh.