You may or may not have heard of the practice of “swatting”. Recently, it’s been in the news more and more. And it begs the question, how far is to far when you’re having a bad day online?

Let’s start with the basics. “Swatting” is the act of calling in a report to the police of a shooting or other crime in the hopes that a SWAT team will respond. It is usually carried out against streamers – broadcasters who stream live gameplay to their audience. The prankster calls in the report hoping to see the streamer arrested live on stream.  Which is exactly what happened to The Creatures founder Kootra recently. While playing a game of Counterstrike, he says “They’re clearing rooms. I think we’re being swatted.” Shortly after, several heavily armed police officers enter the room, ordering him to the ground and handcuffing him. They were responding to a call of multiple shootings. Naturally, they were in a heightened state of tension, as they believed an armed criminal was waiting for them.

Stop me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see anything funny about this. Recently, swatting has become more and more prevalent, and following the Kootra incident a fake news article appeared online claiming that a Louisiana teen guilty of swatting had been sentenced to 25 years in prison. The story was fake, and sadly the picture used in the story is actual that of a teen convicted of a much more heinous crime – beating his girlfriend’s infant brother to death. I considered using that exact picture in this article, but I cannot, in good taste, do so.

The crux of this issue is that some on the internet have taken it upon themselves to vent their petty frustration and anger (or need for attention) in such a way as to place the lives of innocents in danger. In the case of Kootra, nearby schools were placed on lockdown for several hours. Given that the police were fully armed with assault rifles, it’s fortunate that the ending to this story is a happy as it was: The lockdown was lifted and Kootra was released from custody several hours later. However, the point here is not that there WAS a happy ending. No, the point is that the practice of swatting is dangerous and reprehensible. Police officers going into what they perceive to be a high threat environment are much more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, even with high levels of training. This isn’t an indictment of what some are calling the “police state” of America. It is, instead, a simple acknowledgment of the fact that a human being placed into a life or death situation is going to react quickly, and potentially lethally in this case, to an assumed threat.

Which, to me, makes the appearance of this fake news article all the more egregious. Yes, swatting needs to be stamped out. Preferably before someone gets injured or even killed. All of us who are rational gamers would do well to denounce the practice as loudly as possible. Sing it from the rooftops if you like. But a blatant attention grab such as this article is even worse. In the article, it is stated that during the purported incident, the victim’s father was shot and critically injured. I understand the concept of parody. I even understand the concept of the attention grab. But there is a line of poor taste and the site in question (I have not and will not be naming them specifically, because I do not wish for them to receive any more traffic to this so called “news story”) crossed it. With abandon. Making light of a trend that I am firmly convinced won’t be stopped until blood has been spilled is beyond the pale for journalists, or anyone selling themselves as a journalist. Even more so when the story was received with praise and even joy as many saw it as a sign that a legitimate precedent had been set where swatting was concerned.

I’ll end with this. To those that published the piece in question, shame on you. To all the swatters out there, even more shame on you. Is having a laugh or getting revenge on someone for a perceived digital grievance worth someone’s life? Leave your gaming ego in cyberspace where it belongs.