Confessions of “dolphins”: After I started dissuading teenagers from the “Game of Death”, I lost sleep

BISHKEK, February 1 – Sputnik. To obtain qualified advice on the issue of teenagers’ involvement in virtual games, hotlines 111 and 185 will operate, the press service of the government of the Kyrgyz Republic reported.

Survey

• Yes, it has become unsafe for teenagers to use the Internet

  53.8% (1906)

• Yes, we need to decide what all parents should do

  20.1% (713)

• No, but you need to fight a dangerous hobby

  17.1% (607)

• This does not threaten Kyrgyz teenagers

  2.8% (99)

• This is a law enforcement concern.

  6.2% (219)

Earlier it became known that many Kyrgyz teenagers on social networks use the hashtags #morekitov, #quiethome, #yavigre, #wakemeat420. Russian law enforcement agencies are confident that these hashtags are the cause of suicide among minors - the game consists of tasks, the last of which is suicide.

Number 112 will operate throughout the republic, and number 185 will operate in Bishkek. All calls to the hotline numbers are free from both mobile and landline phones. This decision was made on Wednesday at a meeting with the participation of heads of ministries and departments chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Cholpon Sultanbekova.

She noted that virtual teenage games distributed through social networks are widely discussed in society.

“Every effort must be made to prevent the spread of such games, which can lead to tragic consequences,” says Sultanbekova.

The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that law enforcement agencies must carry out appropriate work. In addition, an interdepartmental working group will be created that will study the situation around virtual games that threaten the lives of minors.

Residents of Russia learned about “blue whales” and “death groups” almost a year ago from a resonant article by Galina Mursalieva, published in Novaya Gazeta. The very possibility that some curators are deliberately driving children to suicide has turned out to be so frightening that the story is becoming increasingly surrounded by new rumors, such as those planned last weekend mass suicides. Right now, more and more conspiracy theories are being built around “death groups” - for example, about the external forces behind the curators. But while parents want to protect their children from at all costs, and the prosecutor’s office is dealing with one of the curators, the question remains open what is really behind such groups as “F57”, “F58”, “Silent House”, “Dead Souls F57” " and "Blue Whale"?

In order to understand this, a member of our research team “Monitoring Current Folklore” infiltrated them under a pseudonym and actively participated in collective chats (such as “Dead Souls” and “No”) from May 2016 to the present. In total, our observer was in 20 groups that could be suspected of being “death groups.” Among the 49 respondents who contacted him during this time, there were nine curators and even one participant who introduced himself as an FSB officer looking for curators. What conclusions did we come to from this study?

Children's netstalking

An article by Galina Mursalieva stated that the curators of “death groups”, seeking to force suicide, asked children to solve codes as tasks. This Internet practice - deciphering strange messages - has actually existed for the last ten years (the journalist does not mention this) as part of a subculture of netstalkers who search for hidden content on the Internet, trying to decipher messages embedded in strange videos or audios, or by looking at page codes. Some netstalkers believe that groups like " blue whale“are unsuccessful examples of such quests for schoolchildren.

Mursalieva, having analyzed the geography and chronology of teenage suicides, comes to the conclusion about a certain “suicide map”, which, in her opinion, indicates the organized nature of suicides. This “solution” itself is suspiciously reminiscent of the content of the popular 2012 legend about the group Cicada 3301. A secret organization invites everyone to solve complex cryptographic riddles in order to discover “the smartest people in the world.” The proposed riddles are very similar to those given in stories about “death groups”: find a code in a jpeg file, decrypt the received message using the “Caesar cipher”, get an onion link (in the Tor network) to a new picture, which must be decrypted again . If the player solves the riddles, he will receive a map, but not of suicides, but of the coordinates of a certain place with new riddles. A secret organization that declares itself either part of the CIA or a community of hackers working to create a free Internet will enroll the “smartest” into its ranks.

So, the type of practices discussed in Mursalieva’s investigation - building up suspense, performing strange deciphering tasks using mysterious symbols - existed before. But is it really true that in the death groups that Novaya writes about, participants are systematically pushed to commit suicide?

Inside the "group of death"

As our team’s observations show, “death groups” live in anticipation that the game will finally begin. In one group in May 2016, teenagers actively discussed their problems at school, family and personal life, as well as suicidal ideation (indicating that no one in the group ever committed suicide). In the general chat of another “death group” everyone was waiting for the administrator to finally announce the rules of the game, they were discussing what “F58” is, netstalking and how to find a real “death group”.

Everything that has been happening lately with the topic of “death groups” on the Internet is becoming like a pandemic. Today I cannot name a single region of Russia from which there have not been reports of the death of children who were under the severe influence of suicidal publics. It has been known for a long time that the same tragic phenomenon is observed in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan (sometimes on a large scale, and sometimes on a smaller scale). Recently, deadly games have reached Azerbaijan. Kyrgyzstan is at the bottom of the list of children’s suicide risks, but everything is repeated there, just like it was with us (when on May 16, 2016 “ New Newspaper” came out with the publication of “Group of Death”).

In Russia today, there are practically no doubts left that it is possible to bring a teenager to the last line remotely, through well-known games. The scale of the disaster is monstrous. The same media that mockingly and noisily denied the very fact of such a possibility are now asking: “What is the reason for the new surge in the activity of “death groups”?”

What is it connected with? Let me remind you: immediately after the resonant publication about how in in social networks systematically and systematically incline children and adolescents to suicide, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation demanded that the regional departments of the Investigative Committee raise and analyze all criminal cases initiated on the basis of child suicides. At the same time, the first criminal case was opened in St. Petersburg against the then unidentified administrators of these teenage groups in social networks. In November 2016, one of the administrators of the “death groups”, Philip Budeikin, known on the Internet under the nickname Lis, was detained and subsequently arrested. At the same time, searches of other administrators of “death groups” were conducted in ten regions of Russia, and “electronic media and other materials relevant to the investigation” were confiscated.

Nevertheless, in December I was forced to admit: all this had practically no effect on the activity of the “death groups”. They continue psychological terror - they invite children into closed groups, into chats, and continue to talk about the worthlessness of life, about chosenness and the posthumous knowledge of the truth. They give detailed instructions how to commit suicide.

Why, despite the arrest of Lis and searches in the apartments of other administrators of “death groups,” do those who incite children to commit suicide continue to feel unpunished? Because in Russia there is no special unit for immediate and round-the-clock response to cases of deadly threats to children. Such a crisis service has long been necessary to create, because neither society nor law enforcement agencies today have sufficient capabilities and powers to take real actions that could prevent tragedies.

This was in December 2016, but there was no such service in the country. This means that right now one of the children is carving a blue whale on his hand with a blade - completing the first tasks of the “death groups”. The child can no longer get out of this game, he cannot cope on his own, but no one protects him or saves him. There is no one, despite the closest attention to the topic of all power structures of the state. That is why, feeling their complete impunity and elusiveness, just over a month after publication - on January 20, 2017, ROCIT (Russian Public Center for Internet Technologies) recorded an incredible surge in activity in social networks of groups inciting children to commit suicide. ROCIT reports: “In January, an analysis was carried out of tags typical of suicidal groups in public messages on the walls of groups on the social network VKontakte, after which the authors of posts with these tags were geotargeted using public data. Our analyzer found about 4,000 tags from these groups per day.” Per day!

The center illustrates this with a “heat map” of messages for January 18, 2016, indicating the number of messages with suicidal tags linked to the places they were sent:

“All messages,” explain ROCIT employees, “that attracted the attention of the analyzer, have the same pattern: they begin with “The time on the clock is 4.20” and have the hashtags #morekitov #quiethome #150stars #milkyway #I want a game #waiting for instructions. Moreover, the hashtags identified by our analyzer lead precisely to such groups and communities.”

And already on February 8, the same ROCIT reported: “The hashtags of “death groups” hit Instagram. That is, it is like a flood or a forest fire. If you don’t put up dams or don’t use all possible extinguishing equipment, the disaster spreads and covers more and more new areas. It spreads quickly and needs to be responded to immediately. But is there such an adequate reaction? No".

Almost every week, someone from the large army of volunteers formed after the publication about “death groups” sends a distress signal: such and such a child urgently needs help, he is ready to die, such and such a character is inclining him to death. People are asking for help to save the child, to block and identify the curators. All the bells are ringing. Somewhere they are heard, somewhere they are not, somewhere something happens right away, and somewhere the curator of the “death groups” behaves like Koschey the Immortal.

A very recent case: a young and ardent volunteer began to write directly to such a character: “What are you doing, you are killing children, I have already reported it everywhere I can! They will come for you...” In response, he began receiving audio messages on the social network. I listened to them: criminal vocabulary, threats, knowledge exact address volunteer and all his loved ones. Outright intimidation: “Your relatives will seize grief,” with a detailed, creepy and voluptuous description of how this will happen. Next is a bit of maniacal fascist philosophy: “These stupid youngsters who can be driven to death via the Internet - they must die... What’s wrong with the fact that we drive youngsters to suicide? Read Nietzsche, he said that those who fall must be pushed. If we kill all the lower strata (homeless people, scourges, youngsters who are weak in spirit), society will become better. We, one might say, are providing you with a service... We make money from suicides. If you kill youngsters, you get money for that.”

And undisguised bragging: who will come with me? “There are none of us in the Russian Federation who actually killed. There are only schoolchildren (who haven’t done anything, and who have no reason to be imprisoned) and too tough types who are not afraid of anything at all. I’ve been killing people for a year and a half now, you still don’t even have my face. Your cops called me and asked my lawyer questions. That's all. No one was arrested" ( the recording is available to the editors).

Then this virtual maniac says that 60 children will commit suicide in the near future. Then he corrects himself - 70. “Here is the list in front of me.” Then, for greater persuasiveness, a day later he reports that things have gone well, and sends photographs of children’s hands, quite badly cut. Perhaps it's photoshopped. And if not? It is already common knowledge that cutting hands is the first stage of the game that children must go through according to the scenario of the perpetrators of suicide.

A young volunteer is in correspondence with three schoolchildren who are being treated by this particular character. He tries to dissuade them from the game, not to join it, because it is more difficult to leave than to enter. He writes and calls everywhere - stop it! And... nothing happens. Was this character taken into development? Is there help for the children he affects? Don't know. It is impossible to find out. Investigators tell me that they do not have such powers - to find out the IP addresses of children who incite suicide, to immediately come to them with a search warrant. A volunteer who called the FSB of the Russian Federation is again and again advised to write letters. He writes them and writes them.

Were you able to block a character on a social network? Not on the first try, but we managed to do it together with a volunteer. This person appeared on another page a few hours later and sent a volunteer a photo of a squashed dead pigeon, hinting that the same thing would happen to one of the people close to him.

The paradox is that all this is happening against the backdrop of incredible public attention to the phenomenon of “death groups.” People in power are speaking out more and more loudly. The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, in an interview with Arguments and Facts, said that the organizers of “groups” on social networks that incline children to suicide should be equated with terrorists. But in order to make them equal, they must first be caught.

Various media outlets reported a meeting between the parents of deceased teenagers, who united in the public organization “Saving Children from Cybercrime,” with the head of Investigative Committee RF Alexander Bastrykin. The weekly quotes him as saying: “They came to the reception with valuable proposals for improving Russian legislation under Art. 110 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Incitement to suicide” and other proposals that government agencies should take to save children’s lives... I admire their courage, the fact that they had the strength not only to live on, but also to help others avoid similar grief. It was decided to prepare appropriate appeals to the country’s top leadership and heads of competent authorities with a request to jointly develop the necessary response and countermeasures on this problem.”

All this, of course, costs a lot - to equate it with terrorism, to declare the need for changes in legislation, to seek a decision on the development of the necessary measures. Just understand what’s the matter, all this has already been said many times - starting in May, when Novaya published the publication of “Group of Death”. Eight months have passed, and during these eight months wonderful children have passed away. At the end of August 2016, 16-year-old Vitalik jumped from the roof of a high-rise building in Volgograd. The boy wrote the best essays at school and took ballroom dancing classes. He asked his parents to hire him a tutor in social studies - this is a specialized subject for the university with which he connected his future. I was supposed to go to 11th grade in September.

“It all happened at the end of August,” his mother told me. - Tall - one meter eighty-five, handsome, smart. He read a lot, could carry on any conversation, and delighted his teachers. Six months earlier, in our city, a girl, Alina, the daughter of my former classmate, died in the same way. She also threw herself from a high-rise building. Just one of those four girls who passed away on the same day, in November 2015, you talked about this later. When this happened to the girl, I was so shocked that I immediately decided to talk to my son. Without knowing anything yet about these “death groups”. I told him about the value of life, I said that there is nothing worse in the world than burying your children. He then answered me: “This will never threaten you, Mom!” He answered very confidently and convincingly. He did not and could not have such thoughts.

“We have our own house, and the biggest problem before was getting through to Vitalik from work - he would leave the phone on the first floor, but he would go up and not hear,” says the boy’s father. “But in July we began to notice that he now wouldn’t part with his phone. Just not for a minute. It’s hot, he’s wearing shorts, but the phone is still in his pocket, and with some imperceptible movement he always seems to be checking whether he’s there. There was some correspondence going on... The investigative authorities took our phone away. And he deleted everything on social networks, this is the instruction they give to children, as it turned out... What I can’t forget... We have these hoses, you need to turn on the watering, and then go out and switch the mechanism so that the water is directed to another part. Vitalka switched it and ran out on his own, without prompting. Switch to home. And the day before, before he... jumped out of life... in the evening he went out to switch, and he was gone. An hour had almost passed, I walked around the whole house - he was gone. He began to call, and he came out from the dark side, where he had never entered at all. It came out in a way that I can’t even put into words. His head is down, he walks without making out anything. I hugged him: “Vital, I say, what are you doing?” It was as if he didn’t hear, didn’t feel. He walked so slowly towards the house as soon as I opened my arms. Head in the ground, phone in hand... like a condemned man... I can’t forget... I can’t forget and forgive myself for letting him go like this.

Please hear: “Like a condemned man!” - said the father. Do you know how children are sentenced? How, for example, did the Fox, Philip Budeikin, sentence? Let me remind you of an important fragment from the publication “Biogarbage”:

From an interview with the head of the department of the 1st Directorate for Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Main Investigative Directorate of the RF IC in St. Petersburg, Anton Breido, about the testimony of a girl who survived a suicide attempt: “... the threat has already been proven: “You can’t do it yourself, we will help you, and not only for you." That is, it became clear to the girl that not only she could be in danger of death, but also her close relatives might be affected by something terrible.”

There is a lot of other evidence that this is exactly what happens: when a child understands that he does not want to die, he is threatened that his relatives will be killed. He immediately receives his own address in correspondence. If a young but adult volunteer was sent a photo of a torn to pieces pigeon, then one can only guess what they could have sent to Vitalik.

Remember yourself at 11 or even 16 years old. It’s very scary if, through your fault, if you were just playing, now your mother or younger brother will be killed. This is a sentence, the child sees no way out.

It's all one system. The fox and the maniac who sent a crushed pigeon to a volunteer, other curators of “death groups” - they are people of different mentalities, but they act the same, as if they had undergone special training. This is very similar to a destructive cult. But now the most important thing is that we immediately need to create a special unit to combat deadly threats to children. It should include the most competent specialists. I repeat, this is the most important thing: neither society nor law enforcement agencies today have sufficient capabilities and powers to take real actions that could prevent child suicides.

“Do you know how many people died because of me? I bet you that no one will ever come for me!” — the online executioner says to the volunteer in his audio message.

So: we need to come for them before our children die because of them.

"Komsomolskaya Pravda" infiltrated a flock of virtual rescuers and realized that this was also a dangerous game

Our Kirill is back in the game, only now on the “light side”. Photo: Alexey BULATOV

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Part two. Read the beginning of the investigation

Whales gave birth to dolphins. What nonsense, you say. But in the virtual world, where our children run away from the harsh and not always friendly reality, everything is possible, and here they play by their own rules. We can only pray that the child emerges from this sea alive and with a healthy psyche.

So, in the last part of our investigation, the Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent pretended to be a whale - a teenager who decided to play a deadly game, the end result of which would be suicide. We, of course, did not intend to lead to sin. The task was to infiltrate, find out the rules, and expose the so-called curators - scumbags (sorry) pushing children to commit suicide.

Let us remember that then it all ended with the fact that the 16-year-old Kirill I invented was threatened with killing his relatives when he announced his withdrawal from the game. It must be said that no one was in a hurry to implement the threats. But I thought about something else: when I set the status “I’m in the game,” most of those who responded were not curators eager to send me to the next world, but dolphins. This is what the game calls those who dissuade teenagers from committing suicide. There are many more of them. What motivates these" sea ​​rescuers"? Idle interest, own “rakes”? Or in modern life Schoolchildren have no room for heroic deeds, but you really want to feel like, if not Timur, then someone from his team?

So be it, my Kirill is back in the game.

DOLPHINS: THERE IS NO REAL GAME

This time he and I are on the light side, and I'm trying to infiltrate the dolphin team. Finding them is easy. Social networks are full of groups like “Stop Dying”, “Sea of ​​Dolphins”, “Antikytes”. In one of them I came across the following information: “There is no real game! The curators of the Blue Whale were imprisoned long ago, and sick people are making emotional profit off of children.”

Here you go! But what about the dozens of suicide cases and official investigations? After all, there are curators who are still caught, and teenagers who actually die. Or a suicide quest and, really, like a zombie virus: the source of infection was localized, but the infection, contrary to common sense and the law of self-preservation, overwhelmed the most unhealthy users?

DEATH ONLINE OR LOVE ME

“She said that everything would happen at night and she would die. He no longer responds to messages,” write members of one of the Loud House groups.

We are talking about 14-year-old Sonya. For several days in a row, a dozen dolphins tried to talk the schoolgirl out of suicide, discussed a rescue plan on the wall, and begged her to live. But Sonya desperately posted gloomy photographs from the roof of the house and pointedly counted down the days to suicide. And that's it, offline.

Next, on the page of Muscovite Sarah, for whose life several children also fought, mournful messages appeared about her tragic death. And this conveyor of online deaths does not stop for a second: someone dies, someone is just starting the Blue Whale game, and someone is dissuaded.

This is a difficult case,” says 41-year-old Elizaveta about Danil. Judging by the profile, the teenager has been cutting his hands for six days now, and in response to persuasion to stop, he sends provocative selfies from a high-rise building. - You can't reach him. He likes it when we write to him, but he just makes fun of us!

And here it is: most whales are fakes, deprived of love and attention in reality (“Let at least someone cry after my virtual death,” they think). Most dolphins are people with “savior syndrome” (“He will certainly die without me!”)

And while some children (and adults) help each other feel needed by turning the game into the mainstream, others run into real sociopaths and become their victims.

KEITH'S CONFESSION: I HAVE CANCER

Black Whale, aka 18-year-old Kostya, played and even reached level 22 when dolphins found his fake page. Found and attacked. This was the first task for me, Kirill. I am not a psychologist by training, but I consider myself a good conversationalist. “Go to chat with Konstantin?” offers the VK website. Yes!

Are you really in the game or just for fun?

Really! I'm tired of life's hardships. I just want to lie down and never get up again,” Kostya insists.

How do you feel about the fact that children, without problems or illnesses, commit suicide? Just wondering.

- (unprintable word) because! They play for fun!

According to Kostya, he is depressed, and “he has no strength or desire to do anything.” He entered the university after school and dropped out; he communicates little with friends, but his supervisor willingly listens to the guy’s outpourings, and in return asks only to fulfill the conditions of the game.

The tasks, especially in the morning, are designed for the teenage psyche. They don’t work on me,” says the whale.

I don't think you're going to do the latter for this reason.

Going to.

I know in advance (the dolphins reported) that Kostya is sick. He himself, after leading questions, does not deny:

I have lung cancer, stage four.

That scoundrel hiding behind the mask of a curator simply takes advantage of the guy’s depression and brings his terrible plan to life (of course, provided that there are real people on the other side of the screen)...

“IF I CAN’T FIND A CURATOR, THEY WILL KILL ME”

It is very difficult to communicate with them. You have to be a psychologist, and the most important thing is not to give up when things don’t work out. There are times when whales do not respond, and this torments for several days. I’ve already begun to have trouble sleeping at night, I think about them all the time,” said Elizaveta, whom I ask to teach how to be a dolphin.

He is reluctant to share the secrets of a difficult craft, as if he doesn’t trust him or, what’s more, he’s making things up. But 19-year-old Vasily is more chatty:

We post links to the whales’ pages in our groups and then write them in private messages en masse. It is advisable to have a couple of pages for this. Try not to be annoying. Make sure that the person understands that someone needs him. Send him poems about the meaning of life.

It's easy to say - help. What if it doesn't work out? In general, the more I communicate with whales and dolphins, the more acutely I understand that the world has gone crazy. I address 18-year-old Maya from the same company of dolphins:

I give fake tasks. Like draw a whale with a felt-tip pen and send a photo. Children think they are playing for real and get distracted. I'm actually a psychologist. This is good practice for me,” the girl confesses. And then he contradicts himself: “In general, such training ends in death, if that!”

Persuaded - dissuaded. To be useful, I find a group of death and throw it to Mae (she knows better what to do with it). However, any references in The Blue Whale are taboo. Players say that this is how they calculate the user’s address, and then threaten him with violence. This angered my interlocutor, and she revealed her cards. She is no dolphin.

I'm a hacker. I'm playing whale now because I need a head curator! I have an order. If I fail the task, I could be killed. Just a little more and I’ll get him, and then I’ll cripple him, break his ribs and hand him over!

I don’t know what they call such secret agents in the virtual sea, but I’m definitely not at ease anymore.

YOUR TERRITORY

But we must pay tribute to those who still take a responsible approach to the dolphin’s mission. These guys block dozens of death groups, curator pages and whales every day. Participants in the game have to re-create profiles or wait for defrosting, which greatly complicates the quest, and the thrill of the experience is lost.

Each liquidated group advises contacting the community “Your Territory. Help for teenagers online” with a hyperlink. Psychologists work here under conditions of complete anonymity. You can write to them by email, website or call.

Afterword

Finally, I, Kirill, received a tempting offer to become a whale again (oh, that dark past). Before agreeing, I require a curator's portfolio. 26-year-old Andrey, a psychologist by training, indicated his place of residence dead city Pripyat. Without a twinge of conscience, he admitted that he “killed” 149 whales (that is, at least he gave tasks to so many people!)

How does it feel to force a whale to hurt itself by manipulating it?

I feel joy because he gets what he wants.

I'm sending a complaint about him to the dolphins. I've had enough of maniacs. Kirill and I are leaving the game. And then I can’t sleep at night either.