This chapter discusses how conflict ethnography—ethnography attuned to the challenges of researching armed conflict—went online in my study of Ukrainian volunteer battalions. This online turn was both unexpected and exciting. While I had never been particularly interested in online research, social media and instant messaging nevertheless appeared to offer unforeseen opportunities for remotely researching a scantly studied conflict. In this chapter, I describe three revelatory moments that marked the rise, fall and plateau of the resulting chatnography, or the interaction through instant messaging apps and social media. Ultimately, I advocate caution when it comes to the use of digital methods in the study of armed conflict: while chatnography may be unavoidable, it can only work as one dimension of a broader ethnographic effort.