Marching Towards The Dark Side

Bangladeshi youngsters trapped in digital quicksand that is the “Blue Whale Challenge”

 

A suicide here, an identification there – that is the recent state of affairs regarding the new internet sensation, albeit of the wrong kind. The outreach of a Russian-made online challenge, which goes by the name of “Blue Whale Challenge” has gripped the youth of the nation like any other trending topic. We have become the third top nation whose internet users are looking up for the challenge online, according to a Google Trend data.

Challenge 101

At least 130 children and teenagers have killed themselves in Russia, allegedly after taking up the challenges, with many more suicides reported in Asia, North America, Europe and South America between November 2015 and April 2016.

Found only on the dark web (another dimension of the internet that is virtually inaccessible to ordinary users, sans those with technical know-how), the Blue Whale Challenge is basically a hypnotic game (of sorts) that makes the participants kill themselves at the end of the challenge. When one joins the game, he or she is given “assignments” by an “administrator” or “curator”, which ranges from waking up at odd hours to self-harming, eventually ending with the participant committing suicide.

Russian national Philipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old former psychology student, admitted to be the creator of the game, proudly claiming that he had designed the game to “cleanse the society” of “biological waste”, referring to the participants of the game, reported BBC.