This information is very important, especially if you have teenage children who surf the Internet, you must be very careful and pay attention to their behavior, this way you will avoid headaches.
The game, which mainly persuades minors between 12 and 14 years old prone to depression, consists of meeting 50 challenges ranging from painting a whale on a sheet of paper to jumping off a building.
Fifty challenges, for fifty days, which would finally lead to the suicide of the children who play it. That would be, in a nutshell, the description of the Blue Whale, a digital game that would have originated in Russia and that would be the reason why several minors would have taken their lives in various countries around the world.
According to the newspaper O Globo, from Brazil, The origin of the dangerous game is not determined with certainty, however, the first reports of suicides that would be related to it come from Russia. In February of this year, two teenagers jumped from a fourteen-story building in the city of Irkutsk, Siberian region in that country.
Yulia Konstantinova, 15, and Veronika Volkova, 16took their own lives after completing the 50 challenges that an administrator sends through platforms, such as WhatsApp, and other social networks, such as Facebook. Both left a message on their social networks, along with the image of a blue whale. However, the figures indicate that since 2015 the suicide figures of minors in Russia have increased and it is estimated that one 130 young people who committed suicide that year would be related to the macabre game.
The authorities of that country have indicated that the «fashion» has spread through VKontakte, a Russian social network that is the equivalent of Facebook in Russia.
Whats the game about?
The Blue Whale begins in anonymous groups created, usually on social networks like Facebook, run by people operating under pseudonyms. The first step is to contact young people through messages on their social media accounts or cell phones.
Once accepted, enter the game, the fifty challenges begin that range from fairly basic tasks, such as drawing a whale on paper or posting on social networks with the hashtag #I_am_whale (I am a whale). As the number of tasks increases, the level of «difficulty» to the point where minors are persuaded to perform acts against themselves, such as injuring themselves or drawing a whale on their forearm using a blade.
Challenges that have been known include cutting your lip, standing on the edge of a bridge, sitting on a rooftop, watching horror videos at a set time or listening to music that administrators, called curators, submit.
In order to continue with a new task, minors must submit a photograph as proof of completion of the assigned task. According to the Russian media, the last test consists of jumping into the void from a building.
It has also been reported that minors who try to leave the game are threatened by administrators, who intimidate them by pointing out that they have their parents’ data or their addresses.
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Who are they looking for?
The target audience that game administrators are looking for is located in minors between 12 and 14 years old who have a certain tendency to depression. In fact, the trend has already reached Latin America and from Brazil the alarms went off once the Delegation for the Suppression of Computer Crimes (DRCI) of Rio de Janeiro announced that social media is being scoured for information about the game.
In the state of Minas Gerais, the Police investigate the case of a 19-year-old boy who was found dead, whose cell phone is checked in the middle of the investigation to determine if it is related to the game. A similar case occurred in Mato Grossowhere a 16-year-old girl was found dead in a Vila Rica dam and who, according to the minor’s mother, had had cuts on her arms for two months.
In Colombia, the authorities suspect that the death of a teenager and the suicide attempt by two others in the municipality of San Pedro, Valle del Cauca, is linked to the practice of this game.
Captured in Russia and Brazil
After the death of the two Russian girls in February, Philip Budeikin was captured, who was identified as administrators of one of these groups and who called himself Philip Lis on VKontakte. The crime for which he must respond is that of incitement to suicide.
On the other hand, in the state of Mato Grosso, in Brazil, a 24-year-old man was also captured who sent messages through WhatsApp inviting him to enter the game, however, he assured that it was a joke and that he is not involved with the game.
With information from The Spectator