Death by Swat: The Three Elements of Swatting

The internet has become so ubiquitous in our lives that much of our commerce, socialising, dating and recreation are now carried out via electronic means (Katz and Rice 2002). Such a growth in both traffic and time spent on the internet has seen new platforms emerge that allow individuals to easily cross the boundary from analogue reality to digital fantasy. This could be through the careful management of a social media page to present a fictitious account of one’s life via platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or it could be the broadcasting of personal performance in order to experience celebrity via platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo and Twitch.tv. Whilst these digital portrayals are often carefully managed and do not reflect reality there is a burgeoning market of consumers who are willing to monetise the performances which people share and it is estimated that social media influencers generate $1.7 billion for the global economy each year (Media Kix 2017).
However, whilst money is a driving force of much of what occurs over the aforementioned digital platforms there is a darker side to this growing digital market place. As has been well documented there are numerous illicit markets available on the internet which sell everything from fake handbags (Radon 2012), weapons (Copeland, Wallin and Holt 2019), narcotics (Van Hout and Bingham 2013) and even child abuse imagery (Davidson and Gottschalk 2010). Yet we must not think of the internet as easily dividable into licit and illicit as there are numerous areas of human interaction played out via digital means which operate in the grey areas between the two. One such example of such liminal activities is the humble prank.