Back when I started this weekly post thing, I was in the habit of jotting down a few things throughout the week, then expanding on them on Saturday. I need to get back to that habit. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that “I’ll remember that for Saturday” is a complete lie.
Football
It’s the opening weekend for college football. If that’s not your thing, you’ll want to mute me until about December.
Tulane beat Northwestern pretty handily. Then again, despite the occasional bright spot, Northwestern is usually pretty easy to beat for almost anyone. The school holds the record for the longest losing streak in college football at 34 games (1979-1982), and they’ve never really been a powerhouse. It was a good start for the Green Wave.
ESPN annoyed me when they didn’t run their usual Gamecast for the Michigan-New Mexico game. That may be because the game was on NBC, but I couldn’t watch it on TV. Well, I could have, but I had other stuff to do. It sounds like from the highlights that we looked pretty good, though, and I’ll take a 34-17 win.
Swatting
Swatting is making a false report to a public safety agency regarding a crime in progress. It’s designed to trigger a large response, usually from police SWAT teams, hence the name. It’s been a thing since at least 2008. We used to call it making prank phone calls or calling in a false alarm.
When I was a kid, people called in bomb threats to schools and so forth. That got the building evacuated and the fire and police departments called. The kids would mill about for a while as the building was searched, then go back in and resume their day.
Over the years, things got more serious because sometimes there really were bombs.
As SWAT teams became more well-known, the calls ratcheted up in severity. It wasn’t a bomb threat anymore. Now it was “OH MY GOD! Someone’s got a gun and he’s shooting!” With the advent of call forwarding, VOIP, and other phone hacking techniques, callers could make it look like they really were calling from the school they were talking about.
After the 1999 Columbine attack, public safety agencies responded much more aggressively to swatting calls, because they realized the risk behind not doing so. They had to act as though it was a real call.
In 2015 in Oklahoma, an officer was shot by a homeowner who’d been swatted.
In 2017, an innocent man was killed by Wichita police when two gamers got into an argument online. One threatened to swat the other; the second man gave a fake address, in Wichita (one player lived elsewhere in Wichita; the other lived in Ohio). The first player contacted a known swatter, who called Wichita police, reported he’d shot his father and threatened to kill the rest of his family. When Andrew Finch opened the door to see what the police lights were all about, he ended up shot and killed by a Wichita police officer. The three men involved all faced federal charges; the swatter ended up serving 20 years in federal prison.
Recent Incidents
Why am I talking about this? Because in the last week, almost a dozen colleges received swatting calls, all supposedly involving active shooters. Active attackers are a valid threat these days, so the cops have to respond as though it’s a real call. Swatters have access to plenty of sound clips, so it’s easy to punctuate the calls with gunfire and screams and make things that much more realistic.
Wired magazine broke a story about the most recent attacks where a group called Purgatory claimed responsibility for them. The story links Purgatory to other violent groups called the com and 764. Follow the links in the story to read more about the com, 764, and where these groups do the most damage. It’s beyond disturbing.
In some cases, people pay the group to do this. These days, it’s $95 to swat a school. It’s cheaper to “brick” someone, where you hire a person to throw a brick through someone’s window.
I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the desire to do something like this. I’m just not wired that way, and I’m grateful for that. It’s a desire to hurt people, to terrorize them, and I don’t use the “t-word” lightly. We like to throw it around a lot, but this really is a form of terrorism. You’re getting your jollies by scaring the crap out of people, and I don’t understand why some folks like that.
More than that, you’re seriously risking lives. Cops are going to be driving balls to the wall to get to the scene. That’s some of the most dangerous driving a cop can do. There’s always the chance that they’ll ”outdrive their siren,” meaning someone won’t see the lights or hear the siren in time to get out of the way, and then there’s a crash.
Once they’re on the scene, they’re amped up because they think someone’s inside killing people, and they need to get in there and stop them.
People end up dead that way. And far too many of the people behind groups like this thrive on that idea. They want that power, that knowledge that they caused pain and suffering and death.
I don’t get it.
And Another Thing
That Wired article I linked up above pointed to a piece from 2024 about the main group, 764.
These guys are evil. I don’t say that lightly. They prey on children in sick and bizarre ways.
Parents, talk to your kids. Let them know that no matter what they tell you they’ve gotten involved in, you’re there to protect them. Promise them that you’ll always help them, that you’ll always be there for them. Because the stuff this group does is absolutely hideous, and kids are going to be too scared to tell you what’s been happening. Make sure they know it’s okay for them to tell you anything.
Pay attention to where your kids are when they’re online. Yeah, some of this is happening in the dark corners of Roblox and Minecraft and Whatsapp. But it’s happening on Instagram and Discord and Soundcloud, too.
Don’t blame the platform, though. Evil people will always find a way to misuse a tool.
The companies are doing the best they can. They’re notifying the cops when they find out about users involved with these groups. But you have to tell them when and where it’s happening.
Banning your kids from the internet isn’t the answer. Blocking these sites isn’t going to work, either. Your kids are going to get exposed to it, if not at home, then at school, or on a friend’s computer, or at the library. Better that you give them the tools to fight it now before they need it.
You’ve got to teach your kids how to catch this stuff as soon as it starts, and you’ve got to give them a safe place and person to report it to. They’re not going to tell you about the person who’s telling them to kill the family dog if they don’t think they can trust you. Because the people on the other end of the keyboard have been telling them for weeks that they can’t trust you.
You need to start that trust-building long before your kids ever get online. You need to saturate them with love and confidence and knowledge so they can feel safe with you when these groups start their insidious attacks.
Do it now. Before it’s too late.
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