Black Russian is no longer the popular cocktail that’s a heady concoction of carefully chosen spirits. The ‘black’ that is feared to be infesting youngsters in Russia is a heady mixture, but of self-harm and death. Blue Whale is a social media ‘challenge game’ that is feared to have taken the lives of more than 100 youngsters.
In essence, the game revolves around a ‘master’ (the anonymous administrator of a social media group) who orders you to do certain tasks for a period of 50 days. Every day, you are expected to do something bizarre like wake up at 4 am, staying aloof and not talking to anyone for an entire day, watching horror movies etc.
As the days progress, the tasks become more sinister, like using a knife to draw the pattern of a whale on your forearms with blood. The challenge ultimately culminates with the player having to commit suicide on the 50th day to become the ‘winner’. While the roots of the game appear to emanate from Russia, it is seemingly spreading its tentacles to rest of the civilised world.
Some East European nations like Bulgaria, caught in a Blue Whale panic, have debunked the whole thing. Balkan Insight quotes the Sofia-based Centre for Safe Internet saying there was no concrete evidence for the existence of the game or anything to substantiate the claim that teenagers were playing it in Bulgaria. “Blue Whale is a creepy manipulation of parents’ fears,” the internet watchdog said in a statement, last week.
However, fear continues to spread. Many schools in the UK have alerted parents to monitor their children’s smartphone behaviour. It’s only a matter of time before other countries will be forced to adopt drastic measures to counter the epidemic that Blue Whale is turning out to be. With some of the world’s most avid social media fans, India will inevitably be on the spreading fault lines of the sick game.
Of course, one way is to sensitise people against it, and the other is to use technology to prevent the malicious proliferation of the game itself. The latter is slightly difficult since Blue Whale is more of a social media movement and is difficult to trace. All we can say is, may better sense prevail.
This trend is a reflection of social media proliferation, which is pervading our lives so much so that we are unable to circumvent our temptation & are falling prey to it. India being the fastest growing country in terms of digital consumption have many options to mitigate the consequences of social media. Parents will have to keep any eye and constantly communicate /educate their children on the pitfalls. This is a dangerous trend, any transformation comes with some risks, and I feel the Blue Whale Challenge is one of the few risks of social media. Better prepare & prevent, rather than repair & repent. — Shajan Samuel, social media enthusiast & social entrepreneur
‘To prove their mettle’
This game is very similar to what teenagers generally play — truth and dare, but taken to the extreme extent. This seems to be the more comfortable option for people who are not so outgoing, so they don’t need to prove their mettle to someone else, but to themselves. I think the people who fall prey to this game are those teenagers who are emotionally disturbed, because otherwise nobody would take instructions from faceless strangers. They may be feeling weak and by pushing themselves to their limits to complete these ‘daring’ challenges one by one, they think that they are getting stronger or getting over their fears at each level, but that’s not what’s really happening. — Sujatha Rajamani, psychotherapist
