Blue Whale: The Suicidal Dare

Blue Whale Challenge, which has been held responsible for allegedly forcing a numerous teenagers and youths into suicide in various parts of the world, is considered to be an urban myth. It is not a downloadable game, app or software but rather it is a social media phenomenon which continues to spread through secretive groups.

- Tonmoy Dev Sharma

Origin

Blue Whale began in Russia in 2013 with F57, one of the names of the so-called death group of the V Kontakte social network, and allegedly caused its first suicide in 2015. Reports started coming in from various Russian sources that a VK group administrator had been detained for urging children to commit suicide. The game plays out over 50 days, where a player has to successfully complete 50 challenges. The challenges range from watching a horror movie to self mutilation. These tasks are given by the ‘curator’, who also asks for photos of the teenagers carrying out the tasks as proof for his approval. The last of the 50 challenges as we know – is suicide!

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 those to suicide whom he deemed as having no value. In May earlier this year, Russian authorities revealed that they have arrested him related to these deaths. Later, he pleaded guilty to the charges of inciting at least 16 teenage girls into suicide.

He had also claimed that the reasons for creating this game were linked to him suffering from bipolar disorder, he was later found to be of sane mind by the court.