Blue Whale (suicide game)
The Blue Whale Game (Russian: Синий кит, Siniy kit) also "Blue Whale Challenge", is an Internet "game" that is claimed to exist in several countries. The game allegedly consists of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators during a 50-day period, with the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide.[1][2] The term "Blue Whale" comes from the phenomenon of beached whales, which is linked to suicide.
Blue Whale began in Russia in 2013 with "F57", one of the names of the so-called "death group" of the VKontakte social network,[3] and allegedly caused its first suicide in 2015.[4][5] Philipp Budeikin, a former psychology student who was expelled from his university, claimed that he invented the game. Budeikin stated that his purpose was to "clean" the society by pushing to suicide those he deemed as having no value.
In Russia in 2016, Blue Whale came into broader use among teenagers after a journalist brought attention to it through an article that linked many unrelated suicide victims to the Blue Whale, creating a wave of moral panic in Russia.[13] Later, Budeikin was arrested and pled guilty to "inciting at least 16 teenage girls to commit suicide", leading to Russian suicide prevention legislation and renewed world-wide concern over the Blue Whale phenomenon.[11] It has also been linked to other rising self-harm trends, such as "human embroidery" in China.[14]
In March 2017, Romanian Minister of Internal Affairs Carmen Dan expressed her deep concerns about the phenomenon.[171] Mayor of Bucharest Gabriela Firea described the game as "extremely dangerous".[172]
The game has caused significant concern in Western Europe, including France[173] and the United Kingdom.[174]
In Brazil, in response to the game, a designer and a publicity agent from São Paulo created a movement called Baleia Rosa (Pink Whale),[175][176] which became viral and relied on the collaboration of hundreds of volunteers.[177][178][179] The movement is based on positive tasks that value life and combat depression.[180] Also in Brazil, Sandro Sanfelice created the movement Capivara Amarela (Yellow Capybara),[181] which proposes to "combat the Blue Whale game" and guide people seeking some kind of help.[182] Participants are separated between challengers, who are the people who seek help, and the healers, who are kind of godfathers of these people.[183] An Adventist school in southern Paraná, in partnership with other education networks, also sought to reverse the situation by proposing another charity game, the "Jonas Challenge" (referring to the biblical character Jonah, who was vomited up by a large fish three days after being swallowed by it).[184][185] Other games created in Brazil in response to the Blue Whale were the Baleia Verde (Green Whale) and the Preguiça Azul (Blue Sloth). In the United States, one site, also called the "Blue Whale Challenge" does not immediately identify itself as an effort to combat the game, but offers fifty days of challenges that promote mental health and well-being. [186] [187][188][189][190]
Author Glória Perez stated on 21 April 2017 that she plans to include the Blue Whale game in her new telenovela, A Força do Querer.[191][192][193][194][195] The media also stressed that the phenomenon coincided with the controversy surrounding the web television series 13 Reasons Why, which addresses the issue of teen suicide.[196][197]
In Belo Horizonte and Recife metropolitan area in Brazil, many schools promoted lectures to talk about the Blue Whale game.[198][199] The Police Specialized in High Technology Crime Repression (Dercat) in Piauí is preparing a digital primer to warn young people about the dangers of the game.[200][201][202]
In May 2017, authorities of the Mexican state of Michoacán issued an alert warning about the possibility of the Blue Whale challenge to invade the country.[203][204]
In May 2017, Tencent, China's largest Internet service portal, closed 12 suspicious Blue Whale-related network groups on its social networking platform QQ, as the number of this kind of groups is on the rise.[205] The search results of related keywords was also blocked in QQ.[206][207]
In August 2017, the Government of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology directed several internet companies (including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo) to remove all links which direct users to the game.[208]
