Swatting really isn't funny

Swatting - calling in false reports to authorities in order to have a livestream interrupted by a SWAT team raid - is not funny at all.

Twitch streamer Maxcuster X has posted a video log outlining his recent experience with being swatted in his second week of using the service.

Maxcuster X chose not to publicise the prank at the time, hopefully denying the troll who targeted him any satisfaction, but has now spoken out, describing the effects of having his new neighbours see him and his wife in hand cuffs, having automatic rifles pointed at his kids, and more.

Perhaps the most poignant part of the video is when Maxcuster X reveals the police told him if he hadn't reached out to them within the next five minutes, they would have burst in with tear gas. The cop Maxcuster X spoke to said he'd rather take a bullet in the leg than be exposed to tear gas.

By siccing a SWAT team on Maxcuster X, the unknown troll exposed not just Maxcuster X and his wife but also their small children and infant daughter to genuine physical harm. The incredible trauma of being raided (and perhaps hit with tear gas) aside, a recent SWAT raid left a child in a coma with very serious injuries.

You can talk about the militarization of the police all you like, and you'd be right to, but the fact remains that sending a SWAT team to raid someone's home as a prank is a dick move, and genuinely not funny. Unfortunately, it's becoming quite a common prank.