"The authorities are silent, but the panic is growing!"

A joke about Telegram, invented by adolescents, turned into parental sanctions against a forbidden messenger

In my entrance next to the announcement of the subbotnik, a memo with the logo of Roskomnadzor has been hanging for two days:

“Roskomnadzor warns !!! Now a new analogue of the blue whale walks on the Internet, children cover it behind the word VIPEN or VPN (Very Painful Number). Installing this encoding on his gadget, the child becomes involved in the game, the outcome of which is at best cuts on his hands. Three such cases are already in Vladimir and Ryazan, the authorities are silent, and the panic is growing ... ”

(I retain spelling and punctuation.)

After that, there are many exclamation signs framing the calls to be more vigilant and find out whether the child is sitting in a telegram, ”and if he sits, then force to“ remove the VIPEN ”, because with the help of“ telegram ”he can be recruited by terrorists.

My sixty -year -old neighbor Irina Petrovna printed and pasted the memo - she specially went to the “copy” for two stops, because she did not have a printer.

“Yeah, I hung it,” she confirmed to me. - My initiative. My daughter threw a document to my classmates. Read: In Vladimir with Ryazan there are already three cases of suicides. Let it finally close this Internet!

Blue Whale: What is it?
The so -called “Blue Whale” game existed in VKontakte teenage publics as a sequence of manipulative tasks from “anonymous curators”, performing which the teenager passed to the next level. The “curators” formulated, among other things, suicidal tasks, then calling it a joke. The material of Novaya Gazeta about the popularity of this “game” among schoolchildren and its connection with the real suicides of adolescents caused a wide public discussion.

The consequences were legislative norms on the prohibition of propaganda of suicide in social networks and a demonstrative criminal case against the administrator of one of the Suicidal Plugs of VKontakte.

The media of Great Britain (with reference to the police), Brazil, the USA and India was subsequently told about the popularity of the game “Blue Kit” in other countries.

I found out that my entrance is not the only place where the leaflet against VIPEN is placed. Artem S., a tenth grader from one of the Vladimir schools, on April 18, published in VKontakte a post under the heading “All this went too far”. In the post - photo: at the information stand in the lobby of the school between letters for active participation in the talent contest hanging exactly the same memo.

-Yes, I just wanted to fofl ( Rofl-an abbreviation, deciphering as “Rolling on Floor Laughing” (“I ride the floor, laughing” -A . R. ). Flooding-have fun, get along over someone). I printed at home, brought to school in the morning. I hung a leaflet, and she sagged until the end of the first shift. The teachers did not catch up that this was a joke - they thought that the administration seriously hung. That is, such topics normally fit into the life of society, ”Artem commented on the photograph.

I tried to find out where this memo came from.

The first “Warns about the dangers of the VPN and the dangers of Telegram” on the night of April 17, immediately after blocking, were launched by the adolescents themselves in the same telegram. A guy named Anton in the anonymous conference “Big Top Confa” published a parody text on behalf of Roskomnadzor - about the non -existent game “VIPEN”, which supposedly spreads to telegram and provokes participants in suicide. This absurdity was picked up by Dvach ( a large anonymous Russian forum, often becomes the primary source of memes in Runet - Ed. ), From which in the end everything passed on VKontakte - by the middle of the first day of Telegram blocking, posts that duplicate the publication of the tenth grader Anton began to appear there. There were so many reposts that their parents began to pay attention to them - many advanced ancestors were sitting on VKontakte.

By the evening of April 17, the story of VIPEN has already reached the audience of Odnoklassniki. However, by that time, the text of the memo has already undergone some changes: the call to “protect children from the deadly game” replaced the warning about recruiting by playing the ranks of ISIS banned in Russia. This detail only added pepper: the absurd leaflet with even greater excitement began to be spread by both the adolescents themselves and their alarmed mothers and grandmothers. Parents were frightened by the abundance of incomprehensible words in such a terrible context. Teenagers - even more amused, caught the game. The next week, VKontakte news ribbons were overwhelmed by meaningless, and therefore even more frightening messages: “I started the game”, “My number is 9090”, “I'm waiting for the first task”.

Roskomnadzor did not succeed in blocking the “cart”, but now, it may be possible to remove it from everyone: many parents are seriously frightened by the Alliance “Wepaen”, “whales” and terrorists. Include an administrative resource.

- I yelled like that ( laughed loudly - ed. ): Dad first threw me in VKontakte this text about Blue Telegram. Well, I thought he was kidding. And then - calls from the Samara region. And from the summer he begins to ask: do I have a “cart”, do I know about the danger of VPN. Without raids, just as if he wants to figure it out. I explained to him that the main terrorists are now sitting in Roskomnadzor. He seemed to have calmed down, but still advised “to be more careful,” Kirill K., a twenty-two-year-old student of a medical university from St. Petersburg, told me to publish the name of Cyril for ethical considerations.

Durov, Roskomnadzors and deputies of the State Duma have not yet commented on a new threat that Russia has encountered.

Artem Raspov, for Novaya Gazeta