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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Swatting feels like white bro gamers playing god with overviolent cops and someone's going to get killed, if they haven't already.

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Where do we talk about the ugly trend of SWATing?

Is it this thread?

These are always heartbreaking to watch, not only for the obvious reasons but because you know that someone out there is bragging about making him cry and laughing about how he deserved it and generally being a reprehensible sack of hot, wet garbage.

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I know we've reached peak ethics already but. Making fun of a guy who had his entire family placed into a life or death situation for some perceived wrong committed while being a streaming personality? What the actual fuck.

I hate the term as well. 'Swatting' it needs a serious name; like those few evil actions that get placed in a special sub category beyond abuse.

What really saddens me though are the people who react to this behaviour with statements like "this is why I hate people" because I feel like that's not just a shrug, or an expression of sympathy. It's a gateway to the same type of thinking that leads to the original behaviour in the first place.

I think it's similar to the difference between feeling an emotion and being an emotion. I think the statements predispose people to feeling similar in future.

I think there are rough parallels there that both lead to the kind of cynicsm gamergate seems to rely on.

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I'm starting to think the talking point "gg is not right wing" has merit. 

 

Calling gamergate right wing implies they believe in something. 

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I hate the term as well. 'Swatting' it needs a serious name;

 

How's this: Remote terrorism.

 

Much the same kind of crap Eron Gjoni pulled off with the gamergater crowd, only with US armed forces. Use other people to attack whom you don't like.

I'm starting to think the talking point "gg is not right wing" has merit.

Calling gamergate right wing implies they believe in something.

They have a faith, they have a doctrine. So, to a degree, they believe in something.

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I'm starting to think the talking point "gg is not right wing" has merit. 

 

Calling gamergate right wing implies they believe in something. 

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It's hard to deal with: what are the police supposed to do? Not respond to calls of the utmost (potential) urgency that they demand an immediate armed presence? 

 

I'm sure there's a way to vet the calls, but if a SWAT team arrives almost instantly, you would assume that the false threat was pretty radical and time sensitive which means even a few seconds spent vetting a call could cost people their lives from the police's point of view.

 

Personally, I think I'd rather have the people deal with the terror of getting "SWATed" than have a real emergency result in the death of someone because the police didn't arrive in time (or at all). It's a sad lesser of two evils...

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I don't think anyone's blaming the cops in this. (Though they can certainly blamed for a lot of other things...)

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That's also a false dichotomy. This could easily result in the death of a "swatting" victim. All it takes is one wrong move and an itchy trigger finger. They need to crack down HARD on false reports that waste time and resources.

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That's also a false dichotomy. This could easily result in the death of a "swatting" victim. All it takes is one wrong move and an itchy trigger finger. They need to crack down HARD on false reports that waste time and resources.

Yep. This is one of those things I was alluding to. They can't be blamed for being victim to swatting themselves, but they can definitely be blamed for not properly combating the thread of swatting.

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Cider already alluded to it, but I think SWATting tells us as much about the complete lack of concern on the part of these remote terrorists as it does the sorry state of policing, gun culture, etc. etc. that allows these people to so easily turn law enforcement into their weapon. Like, from what I gather from some of these reports it's enough to mention that somebody at the address you're targetting is suicidal, and how the hell does storming the place make any sense there except when you're trying to help them end up dead.

Maybe vetting the calls isn't an option, but they certainly need to be prosecuted for that shit. I've heard rather too many people suggest it's a waste of resources to go after "pranksters", but then laxness allows them to waste even more resources in the future with more fake calls.

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Interesting sidenote, one of the reasons suicide/attempting suicide is a crime is so police can enter your premises without your permission because a crime might be "in progess."

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As it turns out, Anita's speaking at my alma mater tonight. I really wonder if assholes are going to turn up, especially with knowing some shitheads from my time there, one of our more infamous graduates being in the news (the Silk Road guy), and the way baphomet has been attacking people involved in that guy's trial.

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Well it won't be a problem if they let people be bodily searched! Heh.

Actually, this is good timing. It's expected that our Republican-controlled legislature is going to pass concealed campus carry this term, which could have created a Utah State type scenario where campus officials couldn't prohibit firearms from the event.

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Zoe just posted this on Twitter:

 

"Nothing has changed. Not a single fucking thing, other than watching a similacrum of me be gang raped on national TV and quit her job."

 

Really? That's where the SVU episode went? Christ.

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Reading about the gamergate SVU episode makes me really glad I went to the Anita lecture instead of getting suckered into watching that really gross sounding trash.

 

 

Zoe just posted this on Twitter:

 

"Nothing has changed. Not a single fucking thing, other than watching a similacrum of me be gang raped on national TV and quit her job."

 

Really? That's where the SVU episode went? Christ.

 

Yeah, apparently.  Saw a description of the end of the episode that someone posted on NeoGAF:

The developer in question ends up getting gang raped by the people that kidnapped her. They force her to read a message saying that women don't belong in gaming. SVU eventually finds her duct taped to a shotgun. The end scene has her turn to the camera and say "Women in gaming, what was I expecting?". One of officers tells her that she previously said that if she gave up then they'd win. The developer turns around and says "The already have.". It ends up with a stunned look by the officer.

 

Another tweet from Zoe a little earlier right as the episode ended:

I don't know what I expected but it wasnt Law And Order telling me to give up.

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To be briefly fair to SVU, it's characteristic of the show that it ends on a downer.

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