The Blue Whale Suicide Challenge

[peter]

Be alert for this dangerous and obscene game of dare that is being followed by children as they absorb themselves in the social media platforms they are fixated with today. Centrally administrated the 'game' involves completing a series of ever more difficult and dangerous tasks, up to fifty in number, which ends in the final task of committing suicide. Children in large groups are vying to get as far up the list as they can, and the peer pressure they are exposed to to continue doing the challenges an apparently be intense. A number of deaths worldwide have been recorded and the craze is apparently spreading, as crazes do amongst kids. Be vigilant - one death to this kind of nonsense is one too many!

[Avatar]

www.snopes.com/blue-whale-game-suicides-russia

Unproven...This story was inexplicably picked up months later by international tabloids (alongside claims that the game was spreading across the world), but we remain unable to verify any of the claims...

--A

[sgt.null]

has to be a hoax? or are kids even dumber than I thought?

[Avatar]

One does not preclude the other.

--A

[sgt.null]

the choking game has proven that people can be very stupid.

[deer of the dawn]

People are stupid? Can verify. People are sick/evil? Ditto.

I'm pretty sure this showed up on a crime show within the last year, but I don't remember which one. Wikipedia has quite an article on it. They also say, "In the United States, one site, also called the "Blue Whale Challenge", does not identify as an effort to combat the game, but offers fifty days of challenges that promote mental health and well-being." Which is pretty cool.

Some people are awesome? Yup!

[Harbinger]

Kill yourself. YOU WIN!!! WTF?!

Remember the "sissy test?"

A kid would use an eraser on the back of your hand until you asked him to stop. I remember the kid who wanted to give me the test. He had a scab the size of a Cheeto on his hand. I told him I knew I wasn't a sissy and I didn't need him to prove it. I thought to myself that it was a dumbass test and he passed. I prob should have told him that, but I was a middle school kid and he was a high school kid so (as much as it pains me to admit) there was an intimidation factor.

[Avatar]

Haha, when I was a kid people used to press their forearms together, and lay a lit cigarette in the dip where they made contact...I never fell for that one either.

--A

[I'm Murrin]

Sounds like bullshit tabloid scaremongering. They read one thing somewhere that probably no one's paying attention to, then report it like it's a massive craze.

[Kizza]

People are stupid? Can verify. People are sick/evil? Ditto.

I'm pretty sure this showed up on a crime show within the last year, but I don't remember which one. Wikipedia has quite an article on it. They also say, "In the United States, one site, also called the "Blue Whale Challenge", does not identify as an effort to combat the game, but offers fifty days of challenges that promote mental health and well-being." Which is pretty cool.

Some people are awesome? Yup!

Suicide among our youth seems more prevalent these days. Anything to raise awareness and delver support to people struggling is good.

[Avatar]

Sounds like bullshit tabloid scaremongering.

It is.

Suicide among our youth seems more prevalent these days. Anything to raise awareness and delver support to people struggling is good.

Well, I'm generally in favour of it myself. By which I mean that I tend to feel that if you do want to kill yourself, well, it's your life, and your business.

That said however, I tend to take a dim view of people killing themselves if, for example, they have a family to support or dependents or whatever.

However, you're certainly right, suicide rates do appear to be increasing, particularly amongst the youth.

That taboo we were talking about in the Close, (death) being perhaps one of the reasons that it's not discussed more.

In the modern world, it's like death is bad.

--A

[peter]

Oh, death is bad right enough......... (but there are worse things in life!)

What I don't get is if in countries where assisted dying is legal, how come you have to pay shit loads of money to a clinic in order to access it. Why not just sell the grolly for ten bucks off the shelf in the pharmacy ( well OK - they could keep it behind the counter to stop the school kids nicking it) purchasable after a short questionnaire and declaration signing?

[Avatar]

Because of the long-held hang-ups that it is somehow wrong to kill yourself.

Also, fears of being accused of making it too easy etc. The clinics etc. serve to ensure that you really mean it, its not just a sudden burst of ennui or something.

(Death isn't bad, it's perfectly natural.)

--A

[peter]

But it's the money side of it that gets me Av. By all means, end your suffering if you will - for reasons of humanity we allow this. But humanity does not come cheap, and if you don't/can't spring for it then just continue to suffer along with the rest.

This position seems obscene to me; if it's deemed to be an acceptable service to offer, then humanity demands that it be freely available to all whose suffering warrants it.

[Avatar]

Agree on that score, definitely.

--A

[Ur Dead]

Darwin theory strikes again...