Chennai: Vikram Kumar (name changed), a 28-year-old software employee from Tambaram, who was curious to play Blue Whale Challenge game, was smart enough to create a new mail ID and a phone number, so as not to fall prey to hackers. A week after accepting the terms and conditions imposed by the game administrators, he was given a first task: Cut the hand with a razor. The creepy task had freaked out the 28-year-old who quit the game.
Not every player is as smart as Vikram. The players, who are majorly teenagers’ give into the game administrators, as they are threatened with the data (pictures and videos), hacked from the social media.
“The game is more like using the credit card. You cannot come out of the game, just like you cannot stop using the credit card. As I had no database available in the new mail and the Whatsapp, I could disengage easily,” Vikram Kumar told Deccan Chronicle. As the country receives a rash of blue whale challenge cases, with the recent one in Puducherry, Deccan Chronicle talks to the police officers and psychiatrists to decode the behaviour of vulnerable players. A 22-year-old man from Puducherry, who was about to carve the blue whale motif was rescued by the police officials on Wednesday. The rescued man said that he could not come out of the game, even though he wanted to.
So what is stopping the youngsters to quit the game midway? Even though it is the craving for ‘thrill’ and ‘attention’ that draws them initially, youngsters feel lost as their private information is hacked by the game administrations, which is used against them as a threatening measure, say psychiatrists.
“From being bullied and cornered in school to facing the ignorance at home (credits to working parents), teenagers are deprived of attention. They tend to get attracted to such games, as somebody contacts them daily over the internet and advises to do awful things,” said Dr Kamini Paranjay, a psychiatrist, as she asserts the psychological behaviour of the kids getting into the dreadful self-harm games.
The increasing deaths in the blue whale game expose the ‘hidden side’ of the children and the lack of monitoring of the parents. “As the compromising pictures and messages shared by the children over the social networking sites are hacked, they are forced to stay in the game,” said Priyadarshini M, a renowned psychiatrist.
Even though the state police crime branch of CID (CBCID) said that the ‘Blue Whale links are blocked and that no one can download it in the state,’ the fact that it is being shared on Whatsapp groups makes the task difficult for the police. However, Tamil Nadu police issued an advisory asking the parents to closely check the behaviour of their children.
