Blue Whale was engineered by a Russian man in 2013. He was abused by his mother and brother in his childhood and, as a result, developed psychopathic tendencies.
INTROSPECTION
The Internet is one of the most powerful tools of the 21st Century, and has both positive and negative usage. We all have been bombarded on our Facebook feeds and our WhatsApp chats about a new internet sensation, an online game by the name of “Blue Whale”, which has shocked and horrified us to the core.
Blue Whale was engineered by a Russian man in 2013. He was abused by his mother and brother in his childhood and, as a result, developed psychopathic tendencies. When asked why he could do such a terrible thing, he replied that it was so that he could cleanse the world of the weak and those he had no use for. When the game led to a Russian man taking his life in 2015, the creator was arrested. The game, however, is to date managed by about 20 administrators. No one knows the identity of these administrators, but they are believed to be master hackers, and have avoided all attempts to be shut down.
Blue Whale has made its way across the borders of India and Pakistan. The game demands of you to start mutilating yourself on your arm each night and send video proof to the administrators. The administrators of Blue Whale remain in close contact with the unfortunate players through video calls. They ask them to constantly carry out insane tasks such as going to the top of high buildings and other high structures at exactly midnight. The players are told to play depressing music and watch horror movies which the curators of the game themselves send to them, which negatively stimulate the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the region of the brain associated with the emotions of joy, sadness, hope and despair, at exactly 4:20 am! This time of the morning is a vulnerable time for the brain, a time when the brain is exhausted and is susceptible to negative thoughts and prone to influence.
At the end of this horrible physical and mental torture, on day 50, as it is rumoured, the mutilations on the player’s arm would resemble the structure of a blue whale, and it is on that day that the administrators will suggest to the player to take their own life by jumping off a high building; a request they are usually happy to accept just to end the pain, suffering and torture.
Thankfully, no suicides have been reported in Pakistan that match this M.O yet.
The purpose of this article, however, is not to discuss what we already know; it is to point out that the hackers look for someone to start this game with them, they look for the weakest and the most vulnerable person they can find - the ones who have lost all hope, and then they send them the Blue Whale game. Once the game is initiated, the players cannot quit it since the hackers have all of their personal information including where they live and can ask for their more “obedient” players in that area to go to the dissenting players and inflict harm on them and their loved ones.
At one time or another, everyone is prone to feeling some degree of worthlessness and sadness. Unfortunately, they then self-diagnose themselves as being depressed. This creates a group of people who claim to be depressed with only a few cases being genuine. As a result, the genuine victims are not given enough attention and are told to simply get over it; this advice may help those who are usually discontent, but not those who are clinically depressed.
The best thing someone can do to help the depressed is to talk normally to them every day. And once the sufferer finally begins to trust you, they would rush to share with you if and when they are down and need to open up to someone. Once that happens and they start talking about the underlying cause of their depression, they are on the mend.
To combat the phenomenon like Blue Whale, we need to look for the underlying cause of depression which makes people go for such extreme things in the first place. Let us put our heads together and be charitable to everyone, be it a family member, a friend or even a complete stranger. It may not yield us many rewards but, to anyone we are able to reach, it can make all the difference.
