Discussion anyone remember the blue whale challenge?

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i was rewatching old "spooky" videos from like 2016 and was reminded of the Blue Whale Challenge.
if you aren't familiar with it: this was a "challenge" that was all over the news around 2016. a user would be given different tasks that would ultimately end with them ctbing. the challenge started with simple tasks like waking up at strange times, watching scary movies late at night, or listening to weird audios, but then would escalate into more extreme tasks like standing on train tracks or high roofs and different forms of self harm. the user's final task would be to ctb.
most people thought this challenge was an urban legend, but it was very real. iirc, there were many people (mostly minors) who had ctb'd and were linked to the Blue Whale Challenge (they had whales carved into them, posted a photo of a blue whale right before ctbing, or they were literally in the telegram chats dedicated to the challenge).
deaths relating to the challenge were happened everywhere: russia, china, egypt, etc. and some countries even put laws into place in relation to the challenge. it was kind of weird, imo. like... coercing someone into ctb was already illegal in these countries, so i don't think making this specific challenge illegal did much, lol.

there were a few arrests. apparently a girl (who was underage at the time) ran the challenge and was linked to multiple deaths. reports said she was really brutal and horrible to the participants but idk if she had a motive.
some guy, an adult, who claimed to also be running the challenges said he wanted to rid the world of weaker people/people who would be "stupid" enough to do such a challenge.
i've seen a lot of weirdos agreeing with that guy which irritates me greatly... it's worth mentioning that nearly every victim to this challenge was underage (tweens and young teenagers). also, a lot of the victims were threatened if they wanted to back out. they were told that if they backed out, their families would be killed. i believe different forms of blackmail were also used in some cases as well. (also, i could be wrong, but i heard that some "participants" never even asked to be part of the challenge. they were approached and basically groomed, threatened, or blackmailed into starting it.)

sorry if this is random or if i'm posting this in the incorrect section. i'd like to hear this community's thoughts on this. i've only heard perspectives of the mainstream, pro-life media and weird, edgy redditors.
i'd also just like to see if anyone remembers this, of course. i remember when i first heard of it! for so long, i thought it was just an urban legend. at the time, it was very new with not much evidence and most sources discussing it were based in russia, so a lot of american media reported it as an urban legend.

also, there's so much misinformation and so many rumors surrounding this, so i apologize if i left out any important information/got something wrong. i am pretty positive that i got most of this right, though. i'm planning to read about it some more.

 

[Whale_bones]

Seeing as I'm a fan of whale imagery and whale-related things in general, this post caught my eye. The story led me down an interesting rabbit hole.

It seems no one had really heard of the game before an article came out, describing the game and claiming it was widespread and dangerous. Real suicides of teenagers were endlessly speculated about in chat rooms, leading to people coming up with wilder and wilder theories.

When a group of professors went into Blue Whale chat rooms at the time the game was supposedly popular, they found that all the "curators" of the game were 12-14 year old kids.

"Arkhipova says that the "curators" she came across online were copycats, acting out step by step the parts of a game that was being widely reported in the press.
"In all these groups people, mainly young people, were waiting for this game," says Arkhipova. "This game never starts."

Various countries had moral panics, India, for example, had many news articles reporting suicide and self-harm, and their government was requesting to ban some social media sites. In 2018, after a full investigation, the government reported there was no evidence that any death was as a result of the Blue Whale challenge. A similar process took place in several other countries.

However, it seems there may have been some real suicides because of this. It's just extremely hard to confirm, because there's no reputable news outlets that confirm a police investigation came to that conclusion.

The man you mentioned, Philipp Budeikin, was actually arrested for inciting suicide, it's just the media focused massively on him and presented him as some "evil mastermind" type because he said those gross lines that are very quotable and get lots of clicks for news articles.

He was originally charged with inciting 16 suicides, but almost all of them were dropped. That part seems to be confirmed, but beyond that, I could only find one somewhat sketchy-looking news site saying he was convicted of inciting two. Not any less disgusting of course, but definitely a case of one awful individual rather than a widespread phenomenon.

It is an interesting case of how urban legends take on a life of their own, but simultaneously tragic for the very real young people who died having nothing to do with this, and their deaths were turned into cannon fodder for the media and general public to speculate over and gawk at.

 

[blacksand]

Always felt like an urban legend.

 

[Weird.loser]

This reminds me of Rina palenkova

 

[maniac116]

Wow! The crazy things that people will do!!!

 

[Forever Sleep]

Sounds like a bunch of sick sadists ran it. It's disturbing to think there are people out there who enjoy doing that kind of stuff.

I suspect haters of this site believe some of us are like that but I'm glad that I haven't come across any.