A few days on from the 2022 Game Awards, a certain boy with his majestic mane of long black hair has already secured his place in gaming folklore. The boy, who managed to merge with key From Software developers to get on the stage as they were claiming the Best Game Award for Elden Ring, patiently waited in the background while Hidetaka Miyazaki gave a winners’ speech for Elden Ring,’ before calmly stepping up to the mic and nominating the award for “my reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton.”The internet exploded, memes proliferated, and Bill Clinton was quickly modded into Elden Ring, while everyone wondered what just happened and who exactly this kid was. Some suggested it was Josef Fares’ son, others accused him of being a right-wing troll. But after days of digging and new information coming to light, we have a pretty comprehensive story of the kid, his past work, and even have more insight into what the hell he was talking about at the Game Awards.The boy’s name, as confirmed by various sources like his Twitter channel and his YouTube interview with NeonSniperPanda shortly after the show, is Matan Even (or Matan Evenoff, assuming his Twitter account name–which he’s had since March 2019–is genuine). He’s actually been around on the internet for a while, but in a very different context to what we saw the other night.
Between 2019 and 2021, Even was prolific in covering the civil unrest in Hong Kong, when pro-democracy protesters standing up against oppressive Chinese legislation were cracked down upon with excessive force by the Hong Kong government and police. His interest in the topic–which he covered on Twitter and YouTube–seemed to be genuine; he talked about Hong Kong across dozens of videos, and there are pictures of him attending protests against police brutality in Hong Kong.
While Even’s interest in gaming is largely unknown, he interrupted a BlizzCon Q&A in December 2019 to shout “Free Hong Kong.” This was shortly in the wake of the Blitzchung controversy in October 2019, when a professional Hearthstone player representing Hong Kong was banned by Blizzard from a tournament after he wore a mask in solidarity with the Hong Kong protesters.
In 2020, Even was in the audience at an LA Clippers NBA game, where the camera showed him in the crowd holding up a Clippers t-shirt, before he turned the t-shirt around to show a ‘Free Hong Kong’ message before the camera swiftly cut away from him. The NBA has close ties to China and, as per a Guardian report earlier this year, has invested over $10bn in popularising the sport in China, which would explain why Even targeted that particular event.
Following the stunt in 2020, 13-year-old Even made an appearance on Infowars to talk with Owen Shroyer about the Hong Kong protests. A lot has been made of this, with some people rather speculatively seeing this as a ‘smoking gun’ that Even was somehow involved in right-wing politics, but during the 20-minute interview it’s clear that Even’s interest was strictly around China and Hong Kong rather than in any of Infowars’ far more dubious politics (which, make no mistake, Shroyer deftly crowbars into the interview at every opportunity).
The unfortunate reality there is that Even’s seemingly genuine and good-willed interest in Chinese governmental oppression was leveraged by Infowars, which itself has a strongly anti-China stance and therefore common interest with Even. Around this time, Even actually also had an interview with the much less known left-leaning channel ‘imreallyimportant’ on the same topics, which should in itself negate the ‘smoking gun’ argument, but sadly the internet tends not to work in such balanced and deductive ways.
From Human Rights Activist To Prankster
In June 2021, Even announced on his Twitter channel that he’d be stepping away from Twitter for a while, and it seems that he didn’t make a public appearance again until The Game Awards the other night.
At some point during his absence, all his previous videos surrounding the Hong Kong protests and his political discussions were taken down off YouTube. We don’t know if he took them down himself, or if they were taken down by YouTube moderators (his Twitter feed and earlier interviews suggest his content was being quite heavily censored due to its depictions of violence in Hong Kong).
But the Even that appeared at The Game Awards seemed a little, well, different to the fresh-faced human rights advocate of previous years. His voice had broken for a start, he had a stern frown fixed on his face, and his accent appears to have changed from an American one to what sounds like an Israeli one (think ‘French but with a Middle-Eastern overtone). Even addresses this in an interview with NeonSniperPanda, which he conducted shortly after The Game Awards.
Responding to a question from a live feed asking how he developed an accent since 2019, Even answered “It’s not like it’s developed over three years. I would say that if anything I’ve trained the accent to be developed over 48 hours.” Throughout the interview, Even maintained his stance that Bill Clinton is a great man, and the injustice of the former US President being excluded from The Game Awards.
Even, who says he’s Jewish himself and according to reputable journalist Jason Schreier speaks at least a little Hebrew. He even addresses the elephant in the room about ‘his reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton.’ As Even praises heaps praise on Clinton, he mentions that Clinton isn’t Jewish, which NeonSniperPanda astutely pounces on to ask how Clinton can be a rabbi if he’s not Jewish. Here’s what Even had to say:
“Right, a lot of people might hold the sentiment that you have to be Jewish to be a rabbi, and that might be true by definition but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment… I as a Jew do accept him as a Rabbi because I believe that if he’s a devout Christian and he has a lot of profound understandings of Judaism then he should be considered a Rabbi, especially if he has a lot of quotes that back him up.”
What quotes is he referring to? When asked by the host, Even admitted he didn’t know any from memory, but a quick Google search led him to find the Clinton quote “You can put wings on a pig, but that doesn’t make it an eagle.” Clearly thinking on his feet, Even then applied the quote to Jewish ideology, saying “You are allowed to eat an eagle for the most part, I think, but you cannot eat a pig, even if it has wings.”
Well played, Matan. Well played.
Even didn’t talk much about games in the interview, though he did say that he “personally enjoyed God of War a little bit more” than Elden Ring, and thinks it should have got the nod (alongside Bill Clinton, presumably).
So what do we make of all this? Well, either young Matan Even has gone completely mad since disappearing from the internet in 2020, or he’s used his time away to train himself into the stern-faced Israeli Bill Clinton fan we saw at The Game Awards the other night. He’s basically doing a Sacha Baron Cohen (of Borat fame), staying firmly in-character to the bemusement and entertainment of the entire internet, it seems. There’s nothing to suggest there’s anything nefarious going on here. His interest in politics was genuine, and his appearance on Infowars (as a 13-year-old, lest we forget) shouldn’t instantly make him guilty by association. If anything, it’s just more evidence of how the conspiracy-nut site (and let’s be honest, media at large) can exploit and leverage a well-meaning kid for their own goals and messaging.
Assuming Geoff Keighley doesn’t push for Even to spend the rest of his days behind bars for his now-legendary gatecrashing of Elden Ring’s party, don’t be surprised to see more from this guy soon. One thing’s for sure: it won’t be as easy for him to crash The Game Awards next time round, though if Keighley could handle sharing the spotlight then don’t you think he’d make a great co-host?