THE FATAL FIFTY TASKS
Serious risk or urban legend? How real and potent is the threat posed by the Blue Whale online game, and should parents be worried? HT finds out
The office of West Bengal police in West Midnapore was in a tizzy. A man from Garbeta had claimed that his teenaged son was playing the dreaded Blue Whale challenge game and had cut himself to make the impression of a whale on his arm.”The media had also gathered at his house, sensing a story,” said a senior police official in West Midnapore. “But during interrogation, the boy confessed that he was not playing the game. He had read of the steps that were believed to be a part of the game. A friend sent him a photo of the impression of the whale that players supposedly have to make on their body on Facebook and he cut himself to do it.”
The Blue Whale challenge – a suicide game where the player is given various tasks by an administrator over a 50-day period, ranging from isolation to self-harm and ultimately suicide – is not really new. Believed to have originated in Russia, the game has allegedly claimed over a 100 lives in Russia and Europe. The alleged creator of the game, Philipp Budeikin is in prison in Russia. Ilya Sidorov, believed to be an administrator of the game, has also reportedly been arrested in Moscow. The game, initially believed to have been available on the social networking site VKontakte, is said to have got its name from the popular belief that blue whales sometimes beach themselves to die.
WHALE ALERT
India woke up to the Blue Whale alarm, after a boy in Mumbai’s Andheri area committed suicide last month. Newspaper reports quoted friends as saying that he was playing the suicide game. Though the police have as yet found nothing to link his death to the game, the words “Blue Whale challenge” made an entry in popular discourse – triggering both curiosity and panic. Reports of other Blue-Whale related incidents followed– from Solapur, Dehradun, Indore, Kerala, West Bengal, Delhi, Jaipur and Punjab. The police found noth- ing to confirm the allegations, and in many cases, the Blue Whale bogey raised by friends or school authorities of the victim, was vehemently denied by families.
“It is understandable. If a family admits that their child has been playing the game it will make them headline news,” explains Rajiv Makhni, HT columnist, managing editor (technology), NDTV and anchor of Gadget Guru Cell Guru and Newsnet 3. “As for the police, if they agree that the victim was playing the game, they will be under pressure to find the administrator of the game and put him in prison. Which is very difficult to do since the administrator is hidden behind layers of anonymity and operates in the realm of the dark web.”
IN THE DARK
Explaining how the game works, Makhni says, “The police is in most cases checking the mobile phone or computer of the victim to find some evidence. But it is not an app or a link that one downloads and plays. The game is mainly played on social media apps, online gaming groups, message boards and online community messaging areas. There are code words that one uses to reach out to the administrators of the game – like F57 or F58 – and these codes keep changing. Once contact has been made, the player and administrator move to a private chatroom. Even the tasks keep changing. So something like getting up at 4:20 am or self-injury, which people are writing about as signs that the kids are playing the game, might not be a part of it anymore, making it difficult to track.”
Interestingly, it is not just in India that cops have been unable to link the suicides with the game. According to an article available on the website of the online factchecking group Snopes, while there have been allegations of Blue Whale-related deaths in Russia and Europe, investigations found no definite links. .
In India, as the police struggled to find concrete evidence to link the deaths with the game, fear gave way to doubt, and stories challenging the Blue Whale theory also started appearing in the news and social media. “There have been instances of teenagers having been bullied into committing suicide. But the idea of a cult-like Blue Whale challenge is a complete fabrication for which no evidence exists,” says Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society, who has also taken to his Twitter handle to express his views. “It seems to be an urban legend. By focussing too much on the game, we are ignoring the real dangers, such as mental health issues in children.”
FORBIDDEN THRILL
That there is interest in the game can’t be ruled out. A simple search on Facebook throws up links with the hashtag “iamwhale”. Some claim to be playing the game, while others express interest in it. Makhni shares how in a live show with students of prestigious institutes, at least 95 per cent said they were curious to try the game. “A few admitted to having played it for a few levels,” he says.
Supreme Court advocate and cyber law expert Pawan Duggal agrees that the dangers from the game are real. “If we are waiting for some mammoth figure like lakhs of children being affected, then that has not happened yet. But children are playing this game,” he says. “In the last one month I have had six parents from the Delhi-NCR region coming to me for advice because their children were playing the game. The kids, all teenagers, were at various levels of the game . Some bore marks of self-injury.”
To say that children are playing the game is not to say that depression is not a major cause of suicide. In fact, experts point out that while curiosity and thrill can be a reason for youngsters to try the game, those who are already depressed are most vulnerable to it.
“In the nuclear family set up today, most working parents have little time for the children. When the latter join the game, the first few steps are easy. And when you complete them, you get a high. In some cases I have found that by playing the game and thinking of killing himself, the child wanted to punish the parents. Or it can be an attempt to seek attention,” says Duggal. In the meantime, says Makhni, the administrators have often coaxed information out of the child which makes it easy for them to track him if he wants to pull out after a few stages. “Then the blackmail and emotional manipulations starts and one often feels it is just easier to kill himself than go through this.”
Mumbai-based advocate and cyber law expert Prashant Mali says what we need is digital literacy among parents, a mobile and social media code in homes which takes care of addiction to gadgets. “We need counsellors in schools and for parents to observe their kids for suicidal tendencies or game addictions.”
And, as Makhni points out, we need peer-counselling. “In a group of seven youngsters if five say it’s cool let’s do it, all seven will. But if they say it’s a stupid game, it will also act as a deterrent for their friends.”
THERE IS DEFINITELY INTEREST IN THE GAME. A SIMPLE SEARCH ON FACEBOOK THROWS UP QUITE A FEW PROFILES WITH THE HASHTAG STATUS “IAMWHALE”