What you need to know about Blue Whale Challenge Dare Game

The virtual world and its exposure to young minds under little or no supervision are throwing new mental health and cyber-crime challenges for families and law enforcement agencies. The new Blue Whale Challenge Dare Game floating on the Internet is a case in point. Several suicides worldwide have been reportedly linked to the deadly video game.

Blue Whale Challenge Dare Game has been created by Philipp Budeikin. The game reportedly debuted in Russia four years ago. Soon after the game started making news for all wrong reasons, a Siberian court sentenced the 22-year-old Russian creator of the game to three years in jail for inciting Russian youths to kill themselves. The creator acknowledged the killings but wasn’t quite apologetic about incident, forcing the judge to doubt his sanity.

Here’s what he had to say in his defense during the interview with Saint Petersburg News –

There are people – and there is a biological waste. Those who do not represent any value for society. Who cause or will cause only harm to society. I was cleaning our society of such people.
What’s more worrying? He claimed the game directly influenced over 100 deaths and more people were ready to end their lives.

The developer’s academic and family background – Budeikin had completed courses in sound engineering and psychology for three years until he was expelled. His childhood didn’t seem to be quite worthwhile as he was bipolar and his mother and older brother hit him while he was growing up. It was this hostile treatment that transformed him into a different person altogether.

How Blue Whale Challenge Dare Game works
Blue Whale Challenge is not an app you can download or a game that you can install on your computer. It is a social media phenomenon that has taken root.

The game derives its name from one of the first disturbing challenges of the game, where players are asked to draw a blue whale on a piece of paper, and then carve the same onto their body. Other tasks include watching horror movies alone or harming oneself.

The main target audience is impressionable teenagers contacted online through ‘The Blue Whale Challenge’ game. Once participated, the creators of the group do not allow participants to leave.

The second step involves introducing oneself to the community and performing game related tasks like watching gory and depressing content online, before starting the game.

All players are given the deadline of 50 days to complete the 50 tasks. The game begins with fairly simple tasks like getting up early in the morning at 4:20, drawing a whale on paper, as mentioned earlier to the most horrific ones (suicide). It also marks the end of all 50 dares.

The 50 days rules appear something like this:

Never share anything about this game with anyone
Wake up at 4:20 AM every day
Listen to the recommended songs and horror movies, every day.
Cut yourself. (Different day, different cuts)
The game requires photographing or video graph every task, so as to furnish the proof of completion and authenticity. There are thousands of posts relating to the sick trend on Instagram. Rumors about Blue Whale Challenge Dare Game prevalence existed for quite some time, but it’s only now that the menace has witnessed an upward trend and has been escalated by manifolds.

Several have died or killed themselves playing this game. The Indian youths were the latest targets of this deadly game. A class 9 student living in the Mumbai suburb recently committed suicide. The boy had allegedly discussed the game with his friends, who weren’t initially concerned about the game until he talked about suicide. He even expressed his desire of not coming to school anymore. The 14-year-old before committing suicide informed his friend, saying-

I am going to the building to jump.
Moments later he jumped off the fifth floor of a building. Investigations are underway to ascertain the link between the death and the game.

From the above, it’s starkly clear that Blue Whale is not a game but a killing mission, abetting people to commit a crime by taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally. As such, it warrants immediate action to stop the spread of such a “game”.

People, living in rural areas are somewhat immune to this attack as they have a lifestyle quite different from the urban regions. In urban areas parents seem to have less control over their children.

It is therefore imperative that you educate your children to stay away from this game.