It is called the Blue Whale Challenge and the reason that it is making headlines in India is for the most sobering of reasons which goes way beyond the usual concerns of time wasted on gaming, possible addiction, poor marks in school and eyesight issues. This is an online game that has resulted in a young boy’s suicide and is something of a wakeup call for all of us.
It is an utterly bizarre phenomenon that is thought to have originated in Russia and has found its way around the world; mainly via social networks. There is no actual app to ‘play’ this deadly ‘game; it functions via a series of hashtags, social media groups and their administrators.
This ‘challenge’ asks participants to cut themselves, inflict self harm and to take other risks and to send photographic ‘evidence’ of this to group administrators or other shadowy beings on the web; it isn't clear exactly how the thing works. The ‘challenges’ progress to Day 50 and to the point of actual suicide.
The ‘game’ actually started back in 2013 with something called a ‘Death Group’ called F57 on the VKontakte social network. While it proliferated in Russia to begin with, it soon spread to other parts of the world.
The challenge is thought to be invented by a psychology student called Philipp Budeikin who was expelled from his college. Budeikin, claims that he wanted to ‘cleanse’ society of those that he saw as ‘having no value’ – what he described as ‘biological waste’ and since pled guilty to inciting suicide.
According to some, the ‘game’ exploits certain aspects of teenage life; a period of childhood that is fraught with emotions of self pity and the need for posturing and the strong need to ‘belong’ to certain groups seen as desirable. There is a strong tendency to imitative behavior in this group and children tend to kill themselves in what is known as ‘space-time clusters’.
In a horrifying twist in the tale of the Blue Whale challenge, a 14 year old boy in Mumbai took his own life by jumping from the 7th floor of a building.
When he left school last Friday, he had told his friends that he would not be coming to school on Monday. His behavior had changed and he had been searching online for ways to jump from the terrace days before he took his own life. He sat on the parapet for 20 minutes messaging friends that he would commit suicide. Tragically people thought he was joking and no one took him seriously.
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