In the past year Twitch.tv has become one of the biggest sites on the web, offering a free video game streaming service like never before. Unfortunately, that has spawned a new “game”… If you can call it that. It’s called swatting. An idiotic idea where someone will be watching a Twitch stream and then call the police on the streamer, making false threats. If the police believe the threat, a SWAT Team will bust in during the stream and arrest the player. Sounds hilarious, but it’s actually boring and quite pointless. Here’s the famous video of the popular Twitch streamer “Kootra” getting swatted. The swatting starts in the video at 6:45.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH-uRFIr3mA
Kootra figured he was probably getting swatted when he noticed that his building was clearing out. The situation was a big waste of time more than anything. Those officers could have been doing real work to protect people instead of busting in on an innocent person all because someone thought it would be funny. Kootra handled the situation well though and obviously gave the officers no problems. He tweeted this out after the situation was over:
Dag nabbit that was dern sure an experience. I am all Ok though. Thanks for all the supportive tweets everyone
— Kootra (@Kootra) August 27, 2014
This has happened multiple times and it’s become quite a big problem for Twitch. The company has clear worries of them gaining a bad reputation from these “pranks”. The company was just bought by Amazon and I’m sure this is not the first thing they thought they’d have to deal with. The more popular this becomes, the more people will do it, and the more streamers will have the thought in the back of their mind that at any moment a SWAT Team could bust in and hold them at gunpoint. It’s not funny and there are major consequences. A false threat to police can result in many years in prison. This “game” needs to stop as soon as possible because Twitch is a great service and having this problem be even a small part of it is pretty upsetting to the company and the users (not to mention the police).
This isn’t like planking. Planking is harmless. When people swat someone they are simply breaking the law and wasting officer’s time for a joke. The kids who do this have no concept of the law and think that it’s just some fun fad to jump on. Hope you feel that same way from Juvenile Detention, kid.
My suggestion is to stop this swatting nonsense and try Pizzaing instead… But pay for the pizza first.
