In 2018, let’s stop pretending abusive fans are ‘passionate’
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 exactly what critics of toxic video game culture have long feared, and claimed a life.
Finch’s death 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 all the rage at the dawn of a new year, and it’s long past time to assess the problem of toxic fandom with the greater urgency and...