The Blue Whale Challenge: Behind the Curtain
Written by: Aryan Mukherjee, in partnership with Currently Informed
I knew something awful was brewing when the ringing came back. The same ringing in my ears and spine that echoed from within and blurred my vision at every moment that I tried to exorcize it. It was the ringing of phones, of computer notifications, a chime shared by almost all 2,500 kids at my school as soon as they were notified of their next challenges.
So far, I’ve tried my best to avoid these challenges, but they’ve had their own sinister ways of creeping up behind me when I least expect it and paralyzing me as I am forced to smell their rancid breaths. The same breaths, most unfortunately, that I should have smelled coming from a mile away. Those of the people enforcing the challenges of course, which just so happen to be a handful of scrawny outstated students who’ve convinced practically everyone I know to join them in partaking in the tasks in the first place.
Eventually, it was too much, and I had to, just had to try them for myself. I simply had no other choice. The only other option would be to remain strapped to my seat and seethe in ire as the rest of the world taunted me for being too scared. And if there is one thing that I absolutely cannot stand, it’s when people think I’m scared.
They started off mendaciously simple. All I had to do at the start was just draw a picture of a whale on my arm. A blue whale. A trip back to my youth later, and the task was complete. That same ring that had so unflinchingly terrorized me for the last several months now chimed for me the sweetest melody I felt like I’d ever heard, and my heart skipped a beat as it felt like my sole purpose in life was one step closer to being fulfilled. Looking back, I should have known that this massive spike of dopamine was just a ruse conjured by the trendmakers to bend adolescents under their will like a band of plastic tubing, but alas, I cannot change what has already been drilled into fruition. All I can do is look back in contemplation and state for an absolute fact that I’ve never felt so stupid in my entire life.
The next few tasks escalated in difficulty, but were still extraordinarily doable. Eat a spicy meal, walk backwards for 30 seconds, wake up in the middle of the night, deliberately fail a school test? My confidence proliferated. As I worked through the tasks, each ring flashed a glimmer in my eyes that would slowly flicker out as the days passed by, waiting and waiting in increasingly gritted irritation at the leisurely speed that the next task was taking to simmer in. The imprints in my palms grew deeper and deeper from my fingernails rooting themselves in them each and every day, and at this point, this wasn’t just a game. I needed to win, to finish my tasks as fast as I could so that those who used to tantalize me for my insecurities could now be jeered back at 10-fold.
It was at about task 44 out of 50 that the sad realization finally hit me. What I had initially started as an attempt to make friends and improve my well-being had isolated me completely from society altogether, depriving me of the few people in my life who had actually cared in the first place. I had become a monster, nothing but a depraved and disgruntled humanoid with no morals left over. At that point, I had stolen, shoplifted, hurt people both emotionally and physically, and climbed a mental ledge so high and so narrow that I needed to throw everyone else off of it in order to reach the summit.
But at that point, however pathetic my disposition had boiled down to, however disappointing I had accepted myself to be, there was nothing I could do. I had phased right through to the point of no return without even noticing, and needed to finish what I started. My addiction to the ring was far stronger than any allegiances I could have had to the influx of other worldly noises trying to drag me back down to reality, and finally the moment came.
I was at task number 50.
My palms were sweating, and I was pacing back and forth around the room like a ping pong ball jittering in anxiety. The final ring shocked the living daylight straight out of my soul, but my face was cold and hard in solemnity. I trembled, inching forward and forward and forward until I was practically inside of the phone, and my eyes scanned over the ultimate message.
“Your final task is to kill yourself.”
My heart pounded in my head, and I felt dizzy. I was all alone, the only light in my lusterless room but a curtain of artificial pixels illuminating my face from the thin rectangular screen. There was nobody around me, nobody to hold me back, nobody to mourn me, nobody to care if I were to end it all, and nobody to hear that final triumphant ring coated in a nocuous dose of pure evil.
I gulped a breath of hot air starved of oxygen, and slid open my desk drawer. A droplet of salty insanity brushed past my fingertips as they shook like the the wind's victims, and I couldn't even tell if its source was a tear or bead of perspiration at the point. Something sharp clawed itself around the palms of my hand, and I stopped myself ever so momentarily as I caught a glimpse of my face reflected across the blade of this knife sneering at me in cruel-intentioned glee. It really was just me, myself, and I, and all three of us felt like I finally had control over something. Control over everything in fact, like some sort of super natural ability even. I had the ability to end it all, and to end with such power was something I knew I would never have the satisfaction of being able to do in infinitely many lifetimes again.
Five days, four hours, 13 minutes, and half a second later, someone finally showed up to my dorm room. Trust me, I know, for counting the nanoseconds was the only way I could pass the time besides wallowing over the pathetic state of my being. Oh, how I still chuckle today up high in the heavens thinking about the face of that man who came, the way his dull gray eyes twisted back in fear and how he carelessly let slip his mud-splattered broom into the oozing pool of blood circumscribing my dead body. He had stood there, backed into a corner and immobilized in place pondering what he should do with me. For a second, I started to consider if he might have actually cared, of all people, about me and my decayed state despite how lowly a state I'd been confined to. Ha! What a daft thought to pass through my brain. It only took a matter of minutes before my body was swept away in a crumpled black bag to the cremation room, never to be seen again.
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Author’s Note:
Although this story may have been a work of fiction, stories scarily similar in its nature have been voiced by the survivors of thousands across the world who were once impelled into taking part in this event. Already, the “Blue Whale Challenge” has taken the lives of hundreds who were uneducated and illiterate about the hazards associated with social media and its subsets in trends, starting with teeneger Rina Palenkova of Russia who took her own life just a little less than eight years ago.
Together, if we as a society work together towards implementing media literacy policies more strictly into our laws, then we can potentially save the lives of millions in the future who risk straying off the beaten path and into the grips of such a black and deceptive death like this one.
Sign this petition today if you want to see changes made in our communities about media literacy in government:
Source:
Adeane, Ant. “Blue Whale: The Truth behind an Online “Suicide Challenge.”” BBC News, BBC News, 13 Jan. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-46505722.
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