A not-so-royal challenge

One of the latest venomous sides of Internet that has surfaced is Blue Whale — a social media ‘challenge game’ that is feared to have taken the lives of more than 100 youngsters!

In essence, the game, which has its roots from Russia, revolves around a ‘master’ (the anonymous administrator of a social media group) who orders you to do certain tasks for a period of 50 days. Everyday, you are expected to do something bizarre like wake up at 4 am, staying aloof and not talking to anyone for an entire day, watching horror movies etc. As the days progress, the tasks become more sinister, like using a knife to draw the pattern of a whale on your forearms with blood.

Deadly challenge: Players use a knife to draw the pattern of a whale on forearms with blood.

The challenge ultimately culminates with the player having to commit suicide on the 50th day to become the ‘winner’. With some of the world’s most avid social media fans across the world, India will inevitably be on the spreading fault lines of the sick game.

An obsession with ‘winning’

Dr. Sneha Hindocha, Psychologist

Over the past few years, there have been many games that children have been growing up on that thrive on violence. By excessive exposure to violence through video games and cartoons, teens are becoming more and more vulnerable and easy prey to game makers. Youngsters are also growing to be overly obsessed with the idea of ‘winning’ these games at any cost — even if the game is taking their lives. By getting ready to even killing themselves, teenagers believe that they are proving themselves to be the ‘better’ ones among their peers.

These kinds of addictive games should be noticed by parents or care takers and instead of banning them from the games, (which only prods them to want to play it more), parents must find more engaging activities for teens.

Some east European nations like Bulgaria, caught in a Blue Whale panic, have debunked the whole thing.  “Blue Whale is a creepy manipulation of parents’ fears,” an Internet watchdog said in a statement, last week.

Many schools in the UK have alerted parents to monitor their children’s smart phone behaviour. It’s only a matter of time before other countries will be forced to adopt drastic measures to counter the epidemic that Blue Whale is turning out to be.

Of course, one way is to sensitise people against it, and the other is to use technology to prevent the malicious proliferation of the game itself. The latter is slightly difficult since Blue Whale is more of a social media movement and is difficult to trace.

Pallavi Poojary, a Bengaluru-based social media evangelist, is aghast at the so-called movement. “It is depressing to learn that so many youngsters across the world think it is ‘cool’ to be part of something like this. Social media has so much potential in the world and it is sad to see that it is being leveraged for totally unnecessary and in this case, a fatal result.”
All we can say is, may sense prevail.

— IndiaTechOnline

‘To prove their mettle’

This game is very similar to what teenagers generally play — truth and dare, but taken to the extreme extent. This seems to be the more comfortable option for people who are not so outgoing, so they don’t need to prove their mettle to someone else, but to themselves. I think the people who fall prey to this game are those teenagers who are emotionally disturbed, because otherwise nobody would take instructions from faceless strangers.

They may be feeling weak and by pushing themselves to their limits to complete these ‘daring’ challenges one by one, they think that they are getting stronger or getting over their fears at each level, but that’s not what’s really happening.

 — SujathaRajamani, psychotherapist