{"id":43355,"date":"2018-01-03T03:08:47","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T10:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/in-2018-lets-stop-pretending-abusive-fans-are-passionate\/"},"modified":"2018-01-03T03:08:47","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T10:08:47","slug":"in-2018-lets-stop-pretending-abusive-fans-are-passionate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/in-2018-lets-stop-pretending-abusive-fans-are-passionate\/","title":{"rendered":"In 2018, let\u2019s stop pretending abusive fans are \u2018passionate\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

2017 was a year of grim milestones, and its tail end offered one more to add to the painfully long list: the first confirmed death<\/a> from a gamer-initiated swatting<\/a>. Swatting, the practice of calling a SWAT team to the house of a target by fraudulently reporting a serious crime at their address, has finally done exactly what critics of toxic video game culture have long feared, and claimed a life.<\/p>\n

The recent death of Andrew Finch, slain when a feud between two Call of Duty <\/em>players ended in a SWAT team being summoned to his home in Wichita, Kansas, leads us into a thorny thicket of questions that demand introspection from policymakers, technology and gaming studio executives, and fan communities. Reflecting on change and self-improvement is…<\/p>\n

\n Continue reading\u2026<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

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2017 was a year of grim milestones, and its tail end offered one more to add to the painfully long list: the first confirmed death from a gamer-initiated swatting. Swatting, the practice of calling a SWAT team to the house of a target by fraudulently reporting a serious crime at their address, has finally done… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t