City legend. What is behind the game "Blue Kit" and a surge of interest in "suicidal public"

In mid -February 2017, in Russia, they again spoke about “death groups” - VKontakte communities, where “tasks” are distributed to young people, which supposedly lead to suicides. The game “Blue Kit”, during which the teenager should carry out the same “tasks” within 50 days (mainly related to the infliction of physical harm to himself), write the largest media in the country; The Investigative Committee found a trace of "suicidal public" in several cases of suicide attempts. At the same time, researchers studying the “death groups” are convinced that this phenomenon should be classified as a city legend. "Medusa" tried to find out what the meaning of the game "Blue Whale" is.

In early February 2017, a stormy discussion of the game, known to journalists as “Blue Whale”, began on the hashtag #Siliakit, began on the Russian -speaking Internet. This is one of the hashtags that users of social networks (usually adolescents) leave on their pages to participate in it; There are others: #Yavra, #Tikhiid, #Blue, #Blue.

The hashtag is often accompanied by verses; Here are quite typical: “The blue house, which stands on the waves of 🏠🌊 / blue whale, which floats in the clouds 🐋☁ / take me, whale, to yourself 🌀 / I look forward to instructions. I'm ready for the game. 🐋🐋🐋 "

The image of the whale, apparently, is borrowed from the song “Burn” of the Lumen group - and symbolizes alienation and loneliness. The sharp increase in the number of such messages in February was recorded by the “Center for Internet Technologies”-as well as other researchers , while the game is looking for information about the game not only in Russia, but also in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

The game begins after the publication of the message: the “curator” of the game is allegedly associated with the user, usually from an account that cannot be identified. He explains the rules: “Nobody to tell you about this game”, “Always fulfill my tasks, whatever it is”, “For the failure to fulfill any task, you are excluded from the game forever and bad consequences are waiting for you.” The curator also gives out tasks; There are most likely 50 of them - one per day (probably this is a reference to the book “50 days before my suicide” ).

There is a typical list of tasks - it (text and picture) was sent at once by several playing and those who want to play the “blue whale” of VKontakte users, with which the Medusa correspondent spoke. The tasks are related to the infliction of physical harm to themselves (“Cut the F57 on the hand with a blade”), whales (“Draw a whale on a leaf”) and fear (“Watch terrible videos all day”). To complete some tasks, the player should climb onto the roof of the heights. Tasks from 30th to 49th are: “Every day at 4:20 you wake up, watch videos, listen to music, and every day you make one cut on your hand, you talk to the whale.”

The last task is suicide. There are non -set tasks, for example, to some users, “curators” offer to run through the road in front of the car and take it to the video (this type of entertainment received the name “run or die” among adolescents).

If the user decides to leave the game, the “curator” promises to come to his house and kill his parents. As users of the Image Border "Dvach" write to find out the address, the "curator" sends the user a link to the service fixing geodata or IP addresses. One of the interlocutors of Medusa (asked not to name his name) said that the classmate of his younger brother, who participated in the Blue Kita, did not dare to leave the game precisely because of such threats-both were studying in the seventh grade of one of the Crimean schools.

“The class teacher, and then the director, found out about what he plays first. The guy, all scared, sat in his office for several hours. Then he still said that he could not stop playing, otherwise his parents will be killed, ”said the interlocutor of Medusa. He added that after the game became known, extraordinary parental meetings were declared in the entire parallel; As a punishment, the parents "sent under house arrest."

After a surge of interest in the game by users, the newspaper began to write (for example, here ) about the “return of“ death groups ””. The first about the existence of the “coordinated network” of VKontakte communities, whose administrators distribute tasks supposedly leading to suicides, said Galina Mursalieva, observer of Novaya Gazeta in May 2016. The text claimed that 130 teenagers became victims. The current wave, writes Mursaliev, will lead to new victims, and therefore "immediately need to create a special unit to combat deadly threats to children."

The Investigative Committee and the Ministry of Internal Affairs drew attention to the "death groups". On February 17, four “death groups” were detained in North Ossetia, on February 14, the UK in the Moscow region opened a criminal case under the article “Bringing to suicide” on the fact of an attempt to suicide two teenage girls; According to the investigation, "unidentified persons through accounts in social networks exerted psychological pressure on the girls, gave dangerous tasks for their health."

Versions about the origin of the game are a huge number. For example, the director of the Center for Studies of Legitimacy and Political Protest, Evgeny Venediktov, indicates the possible involvement of Western special services, and the Internet marketing manager of Megafon Anton Elizarov is convinced that Ukrainian nationalists are standing over the creation of groups.

Social networks are trying to fight the game: VKontakte blocks users who leave the appropriate hashtags; The Instagram administration promised to pay attention to the problem.

New posts with the hashtags associated with the game appear on VKontakte every minute, but many accounts from which they are written look like false pages. These accounts have practically no friends, and all publications on the wall belong to last week. In addition, in correspondence with the Medusa correspondent, many users directly confirmed that they “write from fakes” so that no one would recognize their real names, and their real accounts are not banned.

In addition, more than half of the users that the Medusa correspondent contacted were the so -called “antiquities” or “dolphins” - adolescents who are trying to dissuade potential players from the hypothetical suicide with the help of personal messages (“I want you to not do it. Think about loved ones. Imagine what will happen ...”) or messages on the wall (“I heard, did you call? 🐋 / who leads you into the quiet house 🏡 / but remember the mother, and imagine her eyes 👭 / when she sees that with you.

Others explained that they left a hashtag associated with the game out of curiosity. Two people (one of them are 25 years old) said that they were looking for the organizers, because “because of the game” their acquaintances made a suicide attempt; However, they did not answer the request to tell the details.

Some users who were anonymously talking with Medusa also stated that they had already heard about the game - a year or two ago, and the current surge in interest is not the first. Many noted that “curators” are the same teenagers as players, and they often write from fake accounts (an impromptu flash mob has even unfolded in the Russian -speaking “Twitter” - users ask for “curators” to send a task, and then begin to troll them, for example, in response , in response, cut out of paper (and not on the hand) of whales; The results are divided by the same under the same “game”, hashtags). Medusa interlocutors admit that some players believe the words of “curators” (including from threats), but only those who have a shaky psyche.

“The terrible stories that the game“ Blue Whale ”pushes to suicide is a classic city legend, while there is a phenomenon of Ostenia, in which a person embodies a folklore plot, for example, someone, having heard stories about the Blue Kit game, can create an appropriate public,” the medical group said, at the request of Medus, the research group. “Monitoring of actual folklore” of the Institute of Social Sciences at the RANEPA Alexander Arkhipov, Maria Volkova and Anna Kirzyuk. -There are a lot of stories about something that threatens our children. For example, more recently, the Internet went around the warnings about the "drugs", backed up by a letter from the Department of Education, containing a fake link to a letter from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Other users exchange warnings about 18 ISIS terrorists or the “gang of pedophiles”, insidiously luring children into the car. All such stories are anonymous hostile forces, villains, whose motives are not rationalized in any way. Such stories arise because we are talking about fear of loss of control over children. Adults who are immersed on the Internet are less than adolescents, perceive it as an incomprehensible and dangerous reality. ”

The leading researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences Dmitry Gromov also believes that stories about the “Blue Whale” are a kind of legend. “Epidemics of rumors (including those built by the type of city legends) are based on phobias that exist in society. The interest in adolescents can be connected here. But we must understand that young people who are interested in suicide in the vast majority of cases do not seek it at all. For teenage consciousness, it’s something like horror stories about a black hand or blue curtains, such an extreme line, approaching which, you can tickle your nerves, and then discuss it in the circle of peers. For adolescents, such an activity is part of the process of mastering the world, ”Gromov said in a conversation with Medusa.

According to Gromov, the suicide of adolescents (including those who participated in the games like the “blue whale”) occur for other reasons: “A few years ago there was a similar wave-one of the deputies said that there are subcultures ready and emo, because of which suicides occur, and if we are forbidden, then there would be fewer suicides ( State Duma deputies really discussed such a ban in 2008, although this youth culture, although this youth culture At that time, there was practically no - approx . Teenage suicide is a large social problem due to many factors; This problem exists regardless of games and is not related to them. ”

Evgeny Berg