The Blue Whale Game
The Blue Whale game or Blue Whale Challenge is believed to be a suicide game wherein a group of administrators or a certain curator gives a participant a task to complete daily — for a period of 50 days — the final of which is the participant committing suicide. Participants are expected to share photos of the challenges/tasks completed by them.
These daily tasks start off easy — such as listening to certain genres of music, waking up at odd hours, watching a horror movie, among others, and then slowly escalate to carving out shapes on one’s skin, self-mutilation and eventually suicide.
There is still uncertainty over how a participant plays the game. While some say the user has to install some app on their smart phone, others say it’s via social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook where the administrators get in touch with the participant after those interested throw out postings on social media asking for a “curator”. A number of different hashtags— #bluewhalechallenge, #curatorfindme, #i_am_whale — act as signals for the anonymous curators.
The Blue Whale Game also known as “Blue Whale Challenge”, is a 21st-century social network phenomenon that is claimed to exist in several countries, beginning in 2016. The game reportedly consists of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period, with the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide.
As per the media reports, this bloody game has its origin in Russia. The game is famous with many other names such as – A Silent House, A Sea of Whales, F57 or F-57. This online game is mostly played on social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat.
In 2016, Philipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old former psychology student who was expelled from his university, claimed that he invented the game in 2013. He said his intention was tocleanse society by pushing persons to suicide whom he deemed as having no value.Although originally claiming innocence and stating he was “just having fun”, Budeikin was arrested and held in Kresty Prison, St Petersburg and in May 2016 pled guilty to “inciting at least 16 teenage girls to commit suicide.” He was later convicted on two counts of inciting suicide of a minor.
In June 2017, postman Ilya Sidorov was arrested in Moscow, also accused of setting up a “Blue Whale” group to encourage children to self-harm and ultimately commit suicide. He claimed to have persuaded 32 children to join his group and follow commands.
THE PINK WHALE GAME
The Pink Whale Challenge ‘encourages positive and generous acts and attempts to bring happiness in the participant’s daily life.’ The idea of the Pink Whale challenge was conceived in Brazil and the Facebook and Instagram pages where the tasks are set out already have over 3,40,000 followers.
The challenge was started in April and Baleia Rosa, as it is called, has already set out 107 daily tasks for its participants.
In Brazil, a designer and a publicity agent from São Paulo created a movement called Baleia Rosa (Pink Whale), which became viral. It relied on the collaboration of hundreds of volunteers. The movement is based on positive tasks that value life and combat depression.
Also in Brazil, Sandro Sanfelice created the movement Capivara Amarela (Yellow Capybara), which proposes to “combat the Blue Whale game” and guide people seeking some kind of help. Participants are separated between challengers, who are the people who seek help, and the healers, who are kind of godfathers of these people.
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”
Other games created in Brazil in response to the Blue Whale were the Baleia Verde (Green Whale) and the Preguiça Azul (Blue Sloth).
Describing the projects aim, the administrators of the verified Facebook page Baleia Rosa (Pink Whale in Portuguese) said, “In order to prove that the internet can be used to vitalize the good, the Pink Whale was born. We are not a self help group! We just believe that we are all capable of promoting love and good!”
Unlike the Blue Whale challenge, the Pink Whale’s challenges don’t encourage self harm.
It includes tasks like writing how you would help someone who’s being bullied, smiling at each person that passes you for an entire day, posting on your social media pages with the lines ‘I am beautiful’, learning something new from an internet tutorial, forgiving someone, apologizing to someone, talking to someone who doesn’t talk much at all.
