It's been stated in the forums at least a dozen times (I wish people used the search function more, sadface). I'm a VIP on these servers for various reasons, some small, some large.
The first one that people seem to assume is that it's because I was a moderator. While yes, I was a moderator, I wasn't a moderator for a massive amount of time, certainly not long enough to warrant me having VIP over friend rank. When VIP was switched over to friend rank, I was actually switched to friend along with this. I had this for about a week until I moved back up to VIP. I've had some deep roots in this community, and I've tried my best to be an active part of it since it came out of beta. This community is the sole factor that formed my YouTube channel, and I thank Chad, the developers, and you guys, the community for that. My YouTube did in fact have a part in me getting VIP though. I produced decent quality content that eventually drew in a gathering of people who didn't know that MCSG existed.
Me being an old time moderator has very little to do with it at this point, as very few of the mods in my time retired and were given VIP. Being a close friends with uppers can help, but to get VIP that way you'd have to be a borderline RL friend of them (as in, it's rare to get VIP like that these days, as that way is reserved for Friends now.)
Anyways, posting this to clear some things up. I hope it did, as now I can copy and paste it to the future questions. As for the original post itself, Devon does deserve VIP. He's worked his butt off and has grown his YT channel massively. Kudos to him, I can always respect those who make it that far on YouTube, since there are a lot of ups and downs to this hobby. He sent in his app just tonight to Chad, so hopefully his time will come!