December Sealions — GamerGate Pundit Revealed to be a PR/Industry Shill

DISCLOSURE: In the past, I have worked with the subject of this article on a number of activist projects, such as “Rebuild Initiative”. In the more recent past, me and the subject have engaged in numerous heated disputes on social media. Neither are heavily touched upon in this article, but in the interest of honest reporting you should bear this in mind while reading further.

CORRECTIONS 01/08/2016: Subject was originally identified as a “gay Muslim apostate”. While at least two users behind the ‘GamingAndPandas’ group are Muslim, further research indicates the subject is not one of them. Also, it was mistakenly reported a meeting had taken place and/or was arranged between Milo Yiannopoulos, Mark Ceb, and a member of GamingAndPandas.

Contrary to the #GamerGate mantra of “No leaders.”, large amorphous groups can never be equals. Humans, as social animals, need to follow others for direction and the internet does not remove this base instinct. Perhaps if online communities recognized this they would not allow opportunists like Jamal Islambouli to have gotten so much clout.

Pictured left, Mr. Islambouli is a resident of Dallas Texas and one of the users behind the twitter account GamingAndPandas. This shared account links to lo-ping.org, an amateur gaming journalism website he owns and maintains. He also runs the brand’s youtube channel.

“Lo-Ping” started as a group of games media critics as during September 2009. Founded by Ben “Wek”, who has since left the group, they published mostly fluff pieces on gaming as well as a handful of podcasts your author has recovered. During Febuary 2011, the group moved from GameTrailers to their own website. Ben “Wek” would eventually leave sometime before or during 2012. lo-ping.org would continue to update sporadically using an unimpressive site design complete with broken links.

UPDATE 01/08/2016: I conducted a brief interview Ben “Wek” for more details of his time with the site. You can read it here.

But the failure of Lo-Ping.org, while interesting, is not the main focus of this article. Coming off as one of the more altruistic pundits during the height of #GamerGate, Mr. Islambouli, through the GamingAndPandas twitter account, became known for running charities. These charaities would raise tens of thousands of dollars through #GamerGate. These include, but are not limited to, the following, taken from his Crowdrise page:

What Mr. Islambouli neglected to tell anyone, however, was his vested interest. According to his Linkedin profile, he is looking to join a non-profit board to advance his career. Having garnered quite a large amount of funding would look very good on a resume. Piggy-backing off of a political movement full of young but gullible slactivists has proven to be the perfect tool for achieving such an end.

Perhaps the most ridiculous of these charities would be the fundraiser to “adopt a sealion”. The reasoning? Certain political opponents coined “sealioning” as a term for “intrusive attempts at engaging an unwilling debate opponent by feigning civility”; something GamingAndPandas is most notable for. Nearly six thousand dollars went to lining the World Wildlife Fund’s pockets in the name of ethics in video games journalism. The sea lion “adoption” was merely symbolic, but that did not stop GamingAndPandas from hyping up the adoption of an actual sea lion, with promises it would be named, during the campaign’s run.

The dubious nature of this charity would be reason enough for its inclusion, but a curious find sheds more light.

Mr. Islambouli has a curious connection to a public relations firm. A tweet from June 2011 confirms GamingAndPandas was following an individual named William Davis who previously promoted charities for the WWF. Mr. Davis at the time worked for Punchcomms as an Account Executive and has since been promoted twice to Senior Account Manager. A blog post published to the PR firm’s website on June 9th, 2015 states the following:

We worked alongside WWF on a series of online and offline PR campaigns to promote its catalogue of products to the lifestyle media. Activity included securing coverage in key Christmas gift guides, within lifestyle columns in the nationals and via outreach activity with influential bloggers.

Bearing in mind the #GamerGate Adopt a Sea Lion fund was the largest earning crowd-funding campaign of 2014 for the WWF, that GamingAndPandas use to follow a high-end PR professional, and that Mr. Islambouli is a highly influential blogger (despite his lack of content), the evidence would suggest Punchcomms utilized #GamerGate as part of an astroturfing campaign. Which, at the very least, makes far more sense than the reasoning GamingAndPandas gave:

Finally, there was the GG Extra Life charity which he promoted and contributed towards. No disclosure was ever given for prior dealings with Extra Life. From the Linkedin profile:

Volunteer Experience & Causes
Fundraiser
Extra Life
October 2010 — Present (5 years 2 months)Children

This connection is also interesting in light of his latest propaganda piece in which he condemned the (successful) #BoycottBattlefront campaign; a boycott against EA’s latest game Star Wars: Battlefront. Mr. Islambouli works in conjunction with Extra Life which has numerous industry ties, including EA itself.

Not that this would be his only industry connection prior to GamerGate. Mr. Islambouli having previously asked for advice on whether or not to take up offers using his since-deleted “comrade-stalin” Reddit account:

I’ve received three offers from three different networks: N4Gtv, TGN, and Zealot.

Anyone have any dealings with the three? If so, are you able to tell me anything about them beyond the typical marketing tomfoolery they send out?

Is it even worth partnering after all the recent hoopla?

“Hoopla” segways into the next industry connection; the infamous “December surprise”. For a period of months from late October 2014 onward, GamingAndPandas hyped for an event involving a “friend” implied to be a notable gamedev. Although an effort was made to deescalate the hype, it was not until January that the event was qualified; a private meeting involving said “friend” resulting in an expectation he would come forward to speak out for #GamerGate. Not only did this never happen, but only when pressured over the summer did GamingAndPandas reveal the “friend” was someone from Riot Games. Riot Games not-so-famously had PR agents on the G GameJournoPros mailing list.

What little content Mr. Islambouli has produced during #GamerGate has been propaganda in its entirety. Most notably, Mr. Islambouli will get behind a mic, deepen his voice to sound authoritative, and pontificate on what the movement should and should not do. Common themes of these videos include praising being moderate, appealing to emotions over facts, and addressing his audience as a movement in need of guidance. All five blog posts published to his website in the same manner carry the same tone.

Propaganda will only get you so far on its own. Network and relations are critical to dominating the political landscape. Pictured above are three such connections. The image to the left shows Mr. Islamboli was in the LewdGamer skype group from March 5, 2015 — March 8, 2015 at behest of the website's editor-in-chief as well as continued correspondence with the site owner “ShrekBane” (DISCLOSURE: I was a part of said Skype Group up to March 21, 2015). The image to the right demonstrate a financial tie, announced publicly, funding GamesNosh.

And how could one forget the GamingAndPandas account had endorsed the erratic and unstable “Acid Man” as the board of /gamergatehq/?

The activity of Mr. Islambouli paints the picture of a man who pontificates a lot about ethics but is extremely shady in his dealings. He is a failed games journalist, a propagandist, and left his financial and business relations undisclosed, hiding behind the cover of a shared account. Expect the usual tap-dancing and ‘dindu nuffin!’ apologetics.

But in your author’s humble opinion, sometimes you should just Own It All™.