‘Don’t worry, you’ll understand everything’, says Blue Whale suicide game creator
New Delhi (IndiaToday): The suicide of a Mumbai teenager last week is being linked to the nefarious internet craze, the Blue Whale Challenge. Those who choose to play are asked to perform some 50 tasks, spread over a period of 50 days, most of them to do with harming themselves and watching horror movies, and the last task being ‘jumping off a building’, falling to death.
The Blue Whale Challenge has claimed around 130 lives in Europe and Russia, and the incident of the Mumbai teen is the first reported incident linked to the Blue Whale Challenge in India.
What is worrying the authorities is how the challenge is still continuing and claiming lives when the creator of the challenge was arrested in Russia. 22-year-old Philipp Budeikin, the creator of the Blue Whale Challenge was sentenced to three years in prison.
Budeikin, in an interview in May, was asked if he was deliberately inciting young teenagers to commit suicide. He said, “Yes, I truly was doing that. Don’t worry, you’ll understand everything. Everyone will understand”.
Budeikin claimed that he gave those people “warmth”, “understanding” and “contact” and that the kids who committed suicide because of him “died happily”.
“There are people – and there is biological waste. Those who do not represent any value for society. Who cause or will cause only harm to society. I was cleaning our society of such people”, Budeikin said during an interview with Saint Petersburg News.
In the interview, Budeikin confessed to have been directly involved in inciting suicide in 17 cases, although he disregarded claims of the Blue Whale Challenge claiming 130 lives across Russia and Europe.
The Blue Whale Challenge began in 2013. The administrators/curators of the challenge contact the players online and give them 50 tasks spread over 50 days. The players are supposed to send photographic proof of the challenge being completed.
What is Budeikin’s game all about?
‘The Blue Whale Challenge’ started in 2013, with Budeikin making online contact with people – usually impressionable teenagers – so he could decide who would play the game successfully. He would ask people to talk about themselves, Skype them and ask them to watch gory and depressing content online. He would then select people he considered weak enough to be manipulated.
After selecting who gets to play ‘The Blue Whale Challenge’+ , the administrators of the game assign daily tasks to the players, which they must complete over 50 days. The game begins with fairly basic tasks, but continually increases in magnitude to tasks such as cutting one’s veins, killing an animal and finally suicide.
Each task also needs to be photographed or videotaped, so the administrators have proof of completion and authenticity, including the final suicide.
The game got its name from one of the first disturbing challenges of the game, where players were asked to draw a blue whale on a piece of paper, and then told to carve the whale onto their body.
Budeikin claimed that the psychological manipulation he was administrating was intended to make the ‘victims’ happy. He said he was giving them the warmth and understanding that they didn’t get in their lives.
His motives for driving them to suicide were far less empathetic though.
“There are people – and there is biological waste. Those who do not represent any value for society. Who cause or will cause only harm to society. I was cleaning our society of such people”, Budeikin said during the interview with Saint Petersburg News.
He denied reports that he and his game were directly responsible for over 130 deaths, stating that he had only directly influenced 17 deaths. He said others had communicated with him and committed suicide later, but without any direct influence from him. Chillingly, he said that there were 28 more people ready to take their lives.
Disturbingly, Budeikin received love letters in jail after his arrest from teenage girls that were under his influence.
“At some point, it is necessary to push the teenager not to sleep at night. [In this way, their] psyche becomes more susceptible to influence”, he said, explaining his tactics of manipulation.
Budeikin studied sound engineering and psychology for three years until he was expelled. He has confessed that his mother and older brother hit him while he was growing up. He also stated that he is bipolar.