Follow this authorMegan McArdle's opinions

In some games, the rules tend toward producing a stable meta — the popularity of the King’s Pawn opening in chess, for example, seems remarkably durable. Unfortunately, if a meta gets too dominant, the game can become predictable, and players lose interest. So, popular games often need rule changes periodically to counter emerging metas.

This is something today’s policymakers also need to think about, because criminal strategies can now spread through the internet with some of the ruthless efficiency you see in the gaming community. Only the results are much worse than player boredom.

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Last week, law enforcement officials arrested a California teenager who reportedly might be one of the most prolific “swatters” in history, meaning that the teen allegedly called in false 911 reports of the kind that are designed to generate an overwhelming police response — such as bomb threats or active shootings. This practice is insanely dangerous; in 2017, a man in Kansas was killed when police stormed his house after such a call. But it has become alarmingly common, because it is a powerful way to harass someone, even from thousands of miles away.

Beyond the obvious alarm and moral outrage, what’s striking is that swatting was possible long before it became popular. Even though 911 launched in the late 1960s, and police began adopting paramilitary tactics decades ago, swatting seems to have started in earnest in the early 2000s by gamers who were competing against one another online. (Since then, the targets have broadened to include public officials, celebrities and schools.)

It is somewhat remarkable that a very powerful tactic, attractive to wrongdoers, could lie undiscovered within the system so long — a meta-lag, if you will. What’s not remarkable is that it was popularized by gamers. Online communities are hyperefficient engines for finding and mining an unexploited meta-lag, processing it into a new meta, and then exporting it globally. And swatting’s not the only incidence of this.

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Consider the viral videos of shoplifters brazenly clearing shelves while employees stand by and watch. The thieves are taking advantage of “no touch” retail security policies, which have been deployed for years to minimize store liability. But once this possibility was widely publicized on social media — ironically, often by outraged people trying to get the police to do something — it became untenable, especially in combination with the kinder, gentler policies toward petty crime that some cities adopted to much fanfare. Now, many urban stores are putting frequently stolen items behind glass or are closing altogether.

Or consider the recent spike in thefts of Kia and Hyundai cars. Unlike most American cars, many Korean models were sold for more than a decade without immobilizers to foil thieves. Yet they didn’t become particular targets for theft until someone, apparently in Milwaukee, figured out how to steal them........

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