8channers Sent Cops to Wrong House in Attempt to Attack Gamergate Critic
Remember 8chan? The anonymous image board that sprang to relevance at the height of the Gamergate fiasco may have faded from public view in the months since then, but the creeps who use it haven't stopped creeping.
Late Friday night, a 911 call about an armed man and a hostage situation sent 20 police to a southwest Portland home before authorities determined the call was a misguided prank. The stunt appears to have been sparked by a discussion on 8chan, with artist and outspoken Gamergate critic Grace Lynn as its target. One thing the 8channers overlooked: Lynn doesn't live there anymore.
Lynn, who now resides in California, wrote on Twitter that she caught wind of the so-called "swatting" while "preemptively checking for harassment" on 8chan. (Making false 911 calls is a relatively common prank in the online gaming community.) The artist, a trans woman, told the New York Daily News that she was once a Gamergate supporter, but left the movement and began criticizing it "when it turned against transgender women." After the attempted swatting, she said, she is "afraid for my safety."
Just got confirmation from Portland police someone did indeed try to SWAT my old address.
— Grace Lynn (@pixelgoth) January 3, 2015
Got off the phone with the Police again. They said they were able to deescalate the situation thanks to me contacting them.
— Grace Lynn (@pixelgoth) January 3, 2015
They informed me when I move back to Portland to contact them and they would make sure to have my info on file in case anyone tried again.
— Grace Lynn (@pixelgoth) January 3, 2015
Fun fact : The only reason I was able to catch the SWAT in time is because I have to every day preemptively check for continued harassment.
— Grace Lynn (@pixelgoth) January 3, 2015
Ars Technia posted an excerpt of the since-deleted thread that led to the stunt:
I'm bored, so if someone gets post ending in 88 I will do one of the following:
-If they are already doxed I will swat them, results are normally pretty noteworthy
-If they aren't doxed I will attempt to dox them and swat them. If I can't dox them (rare) I will chose the next post and so on.
Lynn contacted the police to tell them that the apparent hostage situation was a prank. "[Police] said they were able to deescalate the situation thanks to me contacting them," she wrote on Twitter.
According to screenshots Lynn posted to Twitter, users on /baphomet/—an 8chan board devoted to particularly virulent racism, misogyny, homophobia, et cetera—have since moved on to posting the personal information of Nathan Mattise, the Ars writer who covered the swatting, and musing about harassing Lynn's family.
8chan just doxxed @NathanMattise the Ars Technica writer who covered my SWAT'ing.
http://t.co/22wssNvMCs pic.twitter.com/Uk2E2wBudJ
— Grace Lynn (@pixelgoth) January 5, 2015
It was indeed http://t.co/PTu5cBIDIl who swatted me.
They want to do it to my family too.
https://t.co/XPn73WqIqw pic.twitter.com/md2Hozbms5
— Grace Lynn (@pixelgoth) January 3, 2015
[Image via pixelgoth/Twitter]