Dangerous game of contact. “I want to play the game”: how “death groups” kill teenagers. Fox holes and eternal children

In Mariupol, a 15-year-old girl jumped from the 13th floor - according to friends, she was subscribed to a “death group” on a social network and carried out tasks from the moderator, who ordered her to step from a height.

Journalists from the news agency Vchasno found out how social networks lure teenagers into deadly games.

On the social network VKontakte, we easily found more than a thousand public pages on suicide topics. Open ones that anyone can read, and closed ones. Not all of them are popular - some have only a few hundred subscribers, others have thousands and even tens of thousands. But they all write about loneliness, hopelessness, despair, the meaninglessness of life.

The favorite symbol of most of these publics is whales. They are present in titles, in pictures, in videos, in posts. The members of these groups also call themselves whales. The whales were not chosen by chance - these animals sometimes wash ashore, killing themselves.

Many public pages contain the numbers 4:20 in their titles - the time at which, according to statistics, people most often commit suicide. Some of the groups start communicating at 4:20 am. It sounds incredible, but some experts advise parents to check if their children are asleep at 4:20 am. If a child is surfing the Internet at this time, this may be a sign that he has come under the influence of suicidal groups.

However, the groups do not contain overt calls for suicide. According to information from Roskomnadzor, all public pages that openly promote voluntary death are blocked. Now, to “play” with death, you need “instructors” to contact you - teenagers post on their page a statement about their readiness to join the game and the corresponding hashtags. After this, the “curator” contacts the child and gives tasks.

Deadly game technology

“I want to play the game. Give me the number. Give me instructions. Find it. Me. Where I am?" - similar messages appear on the Internet almost every few minutes.

Journalists from the news agency “Vchasno” also posted a couple of such advertisements from fake accounts - a nineteen-year-old boy and a high school girl. They contacted us within literally 10 minutes.

“Hello, I’m the one who will give you the number and tasks,” wrote a person from the account of a certain Ilya Kostlyavykh. “Are you sure you want to die?”

After our employee confirmed this, he received his first task - to carve the number F57 on his wrist. This was the name of one of the most popular “death groups”, blocked after several children who were members of it committed suicide. The curator ordered the photo with the cut hand to be posted online.

“Well done, wait for the next instructor, he will write to you,” said the “curator”, having received a photo of the completed task. “My job is to check whether you are ready to do anything for the sake of death.”

The second curator demanded that the journalist hiding under the account of a 15-year-old girl tell him why she decided to die. Ultimately, he concluded:

“I think it’s about your classmates and the fact that you’re the bottom, and it can’t be fixed.”

The “curator” ordered me to go to my mother and say: “I want to die because I don’t see the meaning in life.” The completion of the quest had to be recorded on video.

This is exactly the game that a 15-year-old girl from Mariupol played in the last days before her death. At that time, she was experiencing a breakup with her boyfriend and, most likely, was in a state of depression - this is evidenced by entries on her page on the social network.

“The quest is completed,” the girl wrote on her page. “One step left.”

A Mariupol woman posted a photo online, taken from a height of the 13th floor - this photo was also a condition of the quest. This is exactly what many child suicides in Russia did - shortly before suicide, they photographed the place of their death and posted the picture on the Internet.

It was on December 8 and 9 that “death groups” announced a wave of suicides among teenagers. Muscovite Ekaterina Melikhova, who provides psychological assistance to teenagers, wrote about this on a social network:

“A new wave of suicides is planned on the 8th-9th. But in fact, children are thrown off roofs. We counted 130 (!) child suicides that occurred in Russia from November 2015 to April 2016 - almost all of them were members of the same groups on the Internet. New deaths were announced there.”

Recently, Ukrainian teenagers have also become interested in dangerous games.

Who pushes children to death and why?

The administrator of the “death groups” and the creator of the ominous hashtag F57, Philip Budeikin, was detained in St. Petersburg in early December. The public pages in which he pushed children to death are blocked. The man admitted that thanks to his direct participation, 17 children died during the year.

He created several dozen public pages and “played” terrible games with children.

There are many more teenagers who decided to die without the direct participation of an administrator. According to Russian media, the number of dead teenagers who wrote an ominous hashtag online before their death is about 130.

And, as we personally saw, Budeikin’s arrest did not stop the wave of suicidal publics - thousands of children publish hashtags asking them to “play.” And unknown “curators” contact them and push them to death.

Now this wave has reached Donbass - a 15-year-old girl in Mariupol died after the arrest of the St. Petersburg administrator. This means that the nightmare games continue and death in the front-line city may not be the last.

Who does this and why - law enforcement officers must find the answer to this question. And at the same time take care of how to protect children from deadly games.

In addition, the question remains open: why doesn’t the VKontakte social network close such groups?

“Adolescents do not understand that death is the end,” psychologist

“For teenagers, the idea of ​​the finitude of existence is too complex a construct; they do not understand that death is the finale, from which there is no return,” clinical psychologist and gestalt therapist Kristina Fomina told a journalist from the Vchasno news agency. - Also at this age, death is often extremely romanticized.

Remember the emo and goth cultures, popular books and TV series about vampires, where already deceased heroes are endowed with superpowers, and some kind of love beyond the grave is described. In addition, adolescents’ emotional-volitional sphere is not yet fully formed and stable; they react to what is happening faster than they have time to realize it.

Often there is an accentuation of character, an accentuation of temperament, when children have clearly expressed certain traits that have not yet been formed into a final character. All these components make them easily vulnerable - unhappy love, quarreled with mom, failed an exam - and this becomes the end of the world.”

- How does the behavior of a teenager who has come under the influence of suicidal groups change? What should parents pay attention to?

In a suicidal state, people always give some kind of call sign to the outside world. A teenager almost always commits suicide to attract attention. A child in such a situation may become withdrawn, secretive, and may develop new acquaintances or hobbies that he does not want to talk about. Or he may become hot-tempered, irritable, and may talk about the topic of death or suicide. Make notes and drawings of this kind.

Only attention should be paid to a teenager not when he has already closed himself off and is cutting his veins, but every day.

What should parents do?

Participants in “death groups” may have photographs of whales, harbingers of death, appearing on their social network pages.

Some of the “death groups” begin communication at 4:20 am. Experts advise parents to check whether their children are asleep at 4:20 am.

Check your child's wrist. The first task in the “death groups” is to make cuts on the hands of F57, F59 (or similar), as well as a drawing of a whale.

Take an interest in events in the child’s life: whether he has conflicts and problems communicating with other children, whether the child is currently in a state of depression. Talk more with your child about what is happening in his life.

“Young Lawyers of Russia” (YLR) checked the social network “VKontakte” for communities that are potentially dangerous for children and adolescents. They provided the results of their work to RT. Social activists analyzed groups with more than 100 thousand subscribers.

In 36% of publications, lawyers say they found “calls for violence.” In their opinion, these online publics may fall under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Inciting hatred or enmity.” Last year, 181 cases were considered at the federal level under this article.

In addition, social activists discovered that more than half of the posts of popular VKontakte communities contain obscene language.

The actively discussed topic of “calls to suicide,” on the contrary, was identified in only 1.5% of publications, including so-called near-suicidal materials. They do not directly call for suicide, but, for example, they use expressions such as “I am your curator,” “blue whale,” and so on. These words refer to a dangerous game that is gaining popularity among teenagers. It has spread on social networks and consists of performing tasks that can threaten life.

Some groups publish pornographic materials, romanticize the criminal lifestyle, and promote the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

The most dangerous

“Based on the results of the work, a list of the most dangerous communities was compiled. Among them, lawyers included “Clear Jokes” (8,457,634 users), “MDK” (7,736,071), “Killer Humor” (6,312,167), “BORSCH” (5,659,523), “Eaglet” (2,417 861), “Institute of Noble Maidens” (3,287,835) and others,” according to the MJR document provided by RT.

Lawyers sent an official appeal to the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, with a request to check these public pages. Roskomnadzor press secretary Vadim Ampelonsky said that “a letter from Young Lawyers has been received.” “Experts analyze the content of those communities about which complaints have been received. There is no conclusion yet,” he said.

Triple protection

VKontakte press secretary Evgeny Krasnikov said that the company would not comment on the Young Lawyers of Russia study. He told RT what protection against illegal content is currently in place on the social network.

“Firstly, we regularly conduct our own monitoring of the site. Secondly, we receive signals from the market regulator - Roskomnadzor. And finally, our users have the opportunity to complain about any type of information posted on VKontakte: photo, video, text, public page, page of a specific person. Each such complaint is reviewed by our moderators. They have enough competence and experience to figure out whether this content is dangerous,” says Krasnikov.

Attention to detail

Alexey Kovalev, head of the educational projects department of Young Lawyers of Russia, member of Rosobrnadzor, told RT that the main goal of this monitoring is to draw public attention to the danger of most online content.

• Lucélia Ribeiro/flickr.com

“This project does not have the goal of closing any VKontakte groups.” Much more important is that lawyers attract the attention of large government agencies to an urgent problem. I believe that teenagers and young people need to create more positive content that will help them develop in the right direction,” adds Kovalev.

“Young Lawyers of Russia” noted that they recently began monitoring Odnoklassniki. And very soon data will appear on the number of “dangerous” groups in this social network.

Scandalous "MDK"

MDK is one of the three most dangerous groups, according to the lawyers who conducted the study. At the same time, this is one of the most popular public pages of the VKontakte network. It contains mostly humorous pictures and jokes, often with obscene content.

MDK CEO Roberto Panchvidze told RT that the group does not violate the law. He also sees no point in monitoring social network groups.

“We obey the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and fully comply with it. Our publications do not contain dangerous information. If online communities call on users to take life-threatening actions, VKontakte simply blocks them. Therefore, there is no need to additionally control the content,” says Panchvidze.

And obscene language on the Internet is, according to him, quite common, since “the Internet is not a public place, and it is inappropriate to prohibit the use of obscenities here.”

Let us recall that in 2015 the court decided to block the “MDK” page after checking the community by employees of the St. Petersburg Herzen University. It was found that the materials published there offend the feelings of believers. The court made a decision to liquidate the group. Then the Sarafanka company, the owner of the public, tried to challenge the experts’ conclusion. Litigation continues to this day. In 2016, Roskomnadzor blocked “MDK”, after which a new page with the same name was created.

It is more useful to promote a culture of communication

Director of External Communications at Rambler & Co Matvey Alekseev believes that the study of “Young Lawyers of Russia” is pointless.

“Everyone already knows that there are dangerous groups on social networks. They are already being fought. In my opinion, the activities of the MJR would be much more useful if they worked with young people: they promoted a culture of communication, campaigned for a healthy lifestyle. This is much better than just searching for something forbidden,” Alekseev explained.

He also thinks it's very stupid to point out the presence of profanity online.

“Recently there was a proposal to equate swearing with cultural heritage. We have already discussed the issue of banning it on the Internet on the site in the State Duma. Then we were able to explain that it is simply impossible to block such language on a social network,” the expert said.

the Forbidden fruit

Psychologist, Candidate of Medical Sciences Oleg Bely told RT that it is useless to fight communities that promote violence and the use of obscene language.

“How to treat society from such dangerous groups on social networks? I think this question is equivalent to the following: how to cure gangrene with a plaster? No way. The problem with the popularity of such public pages is that young people are looking for satisfaction of their interests and leisure there. “Anything that has a mysterious, threatening character is especially attractive to teenagers,” says the doctor.

• Ren Rebadomia/flickr.com

In his opinion, children often turn to such communities due to lack of attention from their parents.

“Many mothers and fathers think that they work, bring home money, provide for the family, and devoting time to their child is not at all necessary. As a result, their children are looking for ways to have fun online,” says Bely.

Vitaly Pashin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, agrees that adults should be more attentive to the younger generation.

“Parents need to monitor what their children are looking for on the Internet and what online communities they visit. Moreover, it is necessary to link VKontakte groups to a specific individual. Public registration must take place officially, using a citizen’s passport. A person must understand that he may be held responsible for unwanted content,” the deputy asserts.

The Novaya Gazeta publication published an investigation into numerous cases of suicide among teenagers. According to the author of the material, Galina Mursalieva, most incidents are connected by an invisible thread leading to closed communities for suicidal teenagers on the social network VKontakte. . After reviewing this text, the editors of Mama.ru compiled a guidebook on warning signs that a child may be a member of a dangerous Internet group. We think it is important to write about such topics and not turn a blind eye to them, no matter how much you might want to.

Numbers and pictures

One of the signs that a child is interested in suicidal topics may be the appearance of certain numbers and drawings in his notebooks, notepads and albums. Often members of dangerous groups talk or write about numbers 57, 58, 50 (the first two numbers refer to the names of groups on the social network VKontakte, the second is associated with the book “50 days before my suicide” by Stace Kramer). Sometimes the number can be arbitrary, but often repeated. It may indicate that the leaders of a dangerous community assigned the child a serial number, which he now calls himself and uses for his identification. As for the drawings, you should be wary: whales, butterflies, knives, images of scars and cuts (including on the hands of a child). All this is symbolic of communities pushing teenagers towards irreparable things.

Names

Often members of marginalized communities talk or write about the girl Rina, a 16-year-old resident of Ussuriysk, who committed suicide on the railway at the end of 2015. For some reason, the death of a teenage girl became a symbol, a landmark event, among her peers and younger children. According to a Novaya Gazeta observer, the elevation of Rina’s act to a cult was the result of paid promotion on social networks (it is unknown who exactly ordered, paid for and carried out the campaign). One way or another, teenagers who are in dangerous communities write poems about Rina, dedicate drawings to her, and imitate her clothing style. You also need to be wary of names like Eva Reich, Philip Lis, Myron Seth.

Dream

According to the newspaper, sometimes a sign that a child is visiting dangerous pages on VKontakte can be drowsiness. The fact is that there is a community on the social network that encourages teenagers to get up early in the morning, at 4:20, to correspond with like-minded people and group leaders. The author of the text encourages parents to go into their child’s bedroom from time to time at night to make sure that he is sleeping and not sitting at the computer or hugging a tablet.

Symbols and songs

Members of closed groups have their own pseudo-mysterious signs that are very attractive to impressionable teenagers. Among them is a symbol with the word “It” written inside (you can look at it). It can be seen in group profile photos. In addition, to lure teenagers into groups, quotes about death, inscriptions in Hebrew (usually without translation), illiterate phrases with supposedly deep meaning, and excerpts from holy books are used. Cruel and dark videos, as well as musical compositions on the theme of death, are regularly posted on community pages.

In which columnist Galina Mursalieva linked the suicides of 130 Russian teenagers with a network of mysterious groups on VKontakte, where children were systematically driven to suicide. Apparat contacted the creators and members of these groups and tried to find out what really happened.

Who is Rina Palenkova?

In November 2015, a schoolgirl from Ussuriysk, Renata Kambolina, committed suicide by throwing herself under a train. Before her death, the girl published a photo of herself in front of a train with the caption “nya.bye.” This story was widely circulated on VKontakte with specific humor. “Nya.bye” and the girl’s photo turned into a meme, and Rina herself became the subject of a strange Internet cult.

Last post on Rina Palenkova's page

What kind of groups are “f57”, “Silent House”, “Sea of ​​Whale”?

Soon after Rina’s death, the administrators of a community with shock content called “f57” decided to take advantage of what happened to promote them. They began to actively spread rumors that Rina was a member of a suicide sect called “f57”, and watching a video from there pushed her to death. Using the VKopt program, they added reposts of videos from their group to her fake account. Clones of "f57" quickly began to appear. Users were lured into them through advertising in large groups and active PR. Some of the groups have gained thousands of subscribers.

These groups actively exploited the theme of suicide - they continued the cult of Rina Palenkova, published shock content: psychedelic and sinister videos, recordings of suicides. The creators filled the walls of communities with strange symbols - Hebrew inscriptions, code numbers, pictures and video with a strange logo (later it turned out to be borrowed from the logo of a lingerie brand).

Another meme that was promoted by the creators of the groups is “Quiet House”. It comes from netstalker culture. “A quiet house” is supposedly a special state of consciousness, once in which a person cannot get out.

Groups with depressing content dedicated to whales stood apart. They published sad pictures and quotes, and the whole theme was built around the theme of whales - lonely and sad animals. They are known to “commit suicide” and wash ashore: it is still unknown exactly why.

Later, the creators of the groups began to promote through them some kind of interactive quest, ARG, augmented reality game. They took the idea of ​​the mysterious quest “The Insider”, created in 2012 - there are practically no details about the original project, you can check out its ominous promotional video - and based on it they created a new ARG with levels and tasks in real life. The author of the new project “Insiders,” user Alexander Nosferatu, refused to communicate with Apparat. According to other users, the project initially had nothing to do with suicide, but later it was “hijacked” by administrators of destructive groups. One of the elements of the project was a timer on the website, counting down 70 days until a certain date - according to f57, the day of mass suicide.

What happened on December 8, 2015?

The creators of the groups planned a “suicide flash mob” for December 8, 2015. One of its attributes was the numbers that were distributed to the participants. On a certain day, users from different cities with numbers had to commit suicide in the specified way (it was reported along with the number), according to one version - by broadcasting what was happening on Periscope. When this day came, many participants published photographs on their pages with cut veins and other evidence of suicide. The administrators published a list of those who were “cut out” and who actually did not visit the site after that. They later revealed that they were actually just asking members to stay offline until the listings were removed.

Who is the “Sea of ​​Whales”?

One of the creators of the original group f57, in his own words, was a user under the name “Sea of ​​Whales” (his real name, surname and age are known to Apparat). In personal correspondence and in a conversation on Skype, he said that he actively promoted himself as an f57 administrator, although he was not one, participated in the promotion of f57 groups and also gave out numbers. But a few days before the date of the flash mob, he sharply changed his activity: he created a public "Sea of ​​Whales"(formerly Familiam) and began to promote anti-suicide. As “Sea” himself says, he realized that the game was out of control and real people could die. According to him, he came up with the theme with whales in order to gather all suicidal teenagers, catching them “with live bait” with the help of depressive public pages, and then instill in schoolchildren that suicide is not an option, whales are strong animals, they have friends - flock - and so on.

Who is Philip Lys?

Philip Lis. Photo: his VKontakte page

The most active group creator was user Philip Lis. Philip is his real name, his last name differs in different versions of deanonymization - Tsvetanovsky or Budeikin. He is 21 years old, he lives with his parents in the city of Solnechnogorsk, Moscow region, and works as a sound engineer. Philip was one of the first to create and fill the f57 group with content. He was the most active in distributing numbers to subscribers and publishing posts promoting suicide. Philip has repeatedly published videos of his alleged death by hanging. Another user helped him with this - Miron Seth (more about him below).

Fragment of chat correspondence

After the demarche of the Sea of ​​Whale, Philip Lis began to impersonate “The Sea”, created his fakes and tried to “steal” the topic of whales from him, using it to promote suicide. Together with like-minded people, he created many “whale” public pages, in which he whipped up depressive moods and, in a hidden or overt form, talked about suicide in a positive way. Only the first public page created by the Sea itself remained anti-suicide.

A post in one of the “whale” public pages associated with Philip Lis

In personal correspondence with the editor of Apparat, Philip Lis confirmed that he distributed numbers to the participants of the flash mob. At the same time, the number of real suicides as a result of the “game” is estimated at “at most 10.” He explained his motivation this way: “The space in the universe is full! We are cleaning the world from bio-waste!” ( the author's spelling has been preserved). According to other group members, he did this to attract attention to himself or just for fun.

Diagram provided by Apparat user Sea of ​​Whale

Who is Myron Seth?

Another active group creator is user Miron Seth. Like Philip Lis, he created and promoted groups, gave out numbers, and also published photos of his cut hands. In personal correspondence, Miron told the editor of Apparat that all the groups he created were designed to help depressed schoolchildren. In one of these groups (“nekres”), Miron actually wrote at the beginning of May about creating a hotline for subscribers where they could receive first psychological help. The “psychologist” who provided this assistance to subscribers told Apparat that he only managed to work there for two weeks. He left constructive comments with advice for desperate subscribers in one of Seth’s groups (“Sorrows my soul”, something like “Indulgence” or “Overheard” of a depressive kind), where one of the admins noticed him and suggested running a hotline. He corresponded with teenagers about their problems, and advised those who needed more serious help to visit a psychologist.

It is possible that Myron Seth created a help group as a cover, or really wanted to help, realizing the danger of the game and following the example of the Sea of ​​​​Whales. But he only started helping in early May. Before this, he actively continued to promote groups from the f57 network.

What does the Safe Internet League have to do with it?

In an attempt to learn more about f57, we wrote to active commentators of the groups. One of the few who responded was 15-year-old Vadim. After a short correspondence, he admitted to Apparat that he was in fact an adult employee of the Safe Internet League (an organization created by Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeev that advocates limiting the dissemination of information online for security purposes). Since December, Apparat’s interlocutor has been following public posts from the student’s fake account (correspondence with him was conducted from his real account). Representatives of the League confirmed this information.

On December 17, 2015, the League complained to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about groups promoting suicide. Interestingly, League representatives later stated that they found content in the groups produced in Sweden and Germany. An interlocutor from the League said that these were professionally made pro-suicidal videos, but refused to provide the videos themselves.

A League employee provided Apparat with screenshots from Miron Seth’s closed group, in which schoolchildren posted photographs of cut hands. As Miron himself explained, the group was created in order to identify the children most in need of help, and all the published photos were old.

Photo from Miron Seth’s closed group “I cut myself”

What really happened?

The administrators of the group with shock content f57 decided to promote their group on the death of Rina. Force quickly got out of control: the cult of Rina, shock content, creepy videos, symbols and numerical codes, staged suicides and constant emphasis on the topic of suicide mixed in a tangle of dozens or even hundreds of groups, randomly appearing and closing. These groups, led by several dozen people, the most active of whom are Philip Lis and Miron Seth, united a community of several thousand interested teenagers. Moreover, all the signs and codes most likely did not carry any meaning and served only to create an atmosphere of a “sect.” Some teenagers took the “game” seriously and actually committed suicide. The teenager’s involvement in the “game” followed a certain funnel: from depressive “vanilla” public pages, the most interested subscribers ended up in more sinister ones, from there - in closed groups by personal invitation, then - in closed chats.

Deadly games have appeared on social networks. The organizers of these games are leading teenagers and children to commit suicide. Some professional psychiatrists stated that this could not be true. Other figures - guardians of freedom - said that this was a provocation, a special hoax to limit Internet freedom in Russia. To our horror, it turned out that teenagers and children are actually involved in this devilish game and are committing suicide. The motives of the organizers are not yet clear. But these are, of course, extremely dangerous people. These are maniacs.

Suicide is still a largely mysterious phenomenon. Previously, it was explained rather by pathology, mental disorders. Later they began to talk about suicide as a social phenomenon.

Here are the statistics of suicides in our country over the past 30 years. The graph shows the number of suicides per hundred thousand people. You see a rise in the 90s, but since the early 2000s the number of suicides has been steadily declining. And if in 1992 46 out of one hundred thousand people committed suicide. Then in 2016 there were 16 people. The decrease is almost threefold.

Then in the 90s, millions of people lost the purpose of their activities. They were confused, they didn't know what to do. The old social and government structures have collapsed. Everyday life itself, the one to which people are accustomed, has become completely different. And many did not find themselves in this new life. And someone decided to leave this life. Hence the rise in the number of suicides.

There are fewer suicides now. But there should be no dizziness from success here. The figure of 16 suicides per 100,000 people is still a lot. The norm, if we can talk about the norm here at all, is significantly less than ten.

Behind each story is the cut short of the life of very young boys and girls who played a terrible game with death. Tomorrow at 4:20 am you will receive your first assignment. But look, if I don't see that you read my message right away, you'll be removed from the game. I wish you a speedy death, my whale.

Scientists have not yet figured out why whales wash ashore - but the authors of so-called death groups on social networks have turned this mystery into a terrible suicide conveyor belt. A series of tasks from a harmless, at first glance, picture on the hand to the very last step in life under the guidance of an invisible curator - the count of children's deaths is open and does not stop.

Irkutsk This week, classmates Yulia and Nika stepped from the 12th floor - on Yulia’s social network page there are still the same whales and the last entry: “I broke all records.” The girls were 15 years old. And no one noticed anything suspicious - only now Niki’s younger brother remembers: she once mentioned the game and showed the video online.

I managed to warn Nick's brothers. It probably seemed to her that there was no going back. This is exactly how the system works.

Angelina died in December 2015, also jumping from a height. The girl was in seventh grade. Her mother, too, did not notice anything unusual until the very end, but after her daughter’s death she decided to figure out why a seemingly happy child suddenly took her own life and she herself registered in the death group, completing the tasks of the curators one after another.

“I remembered that my child once showed me his hand, not long ago, she had some scratches on her hands. No, not deep cuts, just scratches. My question is: what is this and why? It was she who said that this is a cat, this is our beloved cat. Cat, yes, there really is. And I believed it. But then, when I went through all these stages, yes, they give us similar instructions that if mom suddenly sees, you say that the cat scratched you, that it’s okay. This is real murder. It is murder through such skillful manipulations,” says Elena Davydova.

To counter such manipulations, Elena, together with other parents, opened a center for saving children from cybercrimes; she says that they have already managed to help many escape the deadly game. And everyone who was saved either by volunteers or police officers then tells their story of missions that almost cost their lives.

“The administrator of the group, on his own behalf, wrote all sorts of instructions regarding life and death, that after death it will be better, why live, why suffer. He told me to throw myself off the roof or open my veins on such and such a date at such and such a time,” says the girl.

Curators also often ask players to find someone who will film a suicide on a smartphone - the so-called shock content is at a premium on certain sites. And those who at the last moment refuse to take their own lives are threatened with reprisals against their families.

“In general, we call this nothing more than a terrorist attack. Because why blow something up if they’re going to jump off the roofs themselves?” - says Anton Androsov, chairman of the “Emergency Youth Aid” movement.

Anton and his friends began their hunt for hunters of children's souls. Volunteers create fake accounts and join death groups in order to warn those who find themselves there and pass information about the organizers to the police. The system works - but there are problems with punishment for incitement to suicide, says Anton.

“There is a gap in the legislation. Article 110 of the Criminal Code says that only violent prosecution with a note that there was also intent. If they put a gun to your head and said, “Hang yourself,” then there will be something for it. There is nothing for promoting suicide, non-violent incitement - there is nothing,” says Anton Androsov, chairman of the “Emergency Youth Aid” movement.

The lawyers of Philip Budeikin, his online nickname Philip Lis, will probably take advantage of this. Investigators call him the curator of the deadly game and believe that he drove 15 teenagers to suicide. A few days before the arrest, the publication Sankt-Peterburg.ru published an interview with Budeikin, in which he gave a terrible answer to the question on the record - why.

“The planet simply doesn’t need this bio-waste. This is unnecessary biomass. It spoils the world and the environment,” said Philip Budeikin.

Little is known about Fox himself; journalists wrote: he was 21 years old, lived in Ukhta, then moved to Solnechnogorsk, and seemed secretive and uncommunicative to his acquaintances. It hardly looks like a collective image of a maniac, but Budeikin is not the only administrator, there are others. And the motive, psychologists say, is different for everyone.

“The motivation, I think, is different for these administrators, there are sociopaths, there are sadists who look at what will happen and who manipulate our children. These could be completely ordinary people, neighbors in your stairwell. You don’t know what they do in the evening while surfing the Internet, do you? Therefore, from the point of view of manifestation in everyday life, these people may be no different from you and me,” notes psychologist Elena Feigin.

And at the same time bring death. But their intent - to take the life of a child - still needs to be proven, and even in this case the maximum sentence is three years. This legislative gap has long been noticed in the office of the Commissioner for Children's Rights.

“We came up with an initiative to tighten punishment for calls for suicide, including through social networks. And this bill has already been developed and is in the cabinet of ministers, in the government. That is, we expect that it will be adopted in the near future. These are the norms of a legislative nature that must inevitably be adopted; they will help to actually find these people who are engaged in this activity and there should be subsequent punishment,” said Anna Kuznetsova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights under the President of the Russian Federation.

Severe punishment, however, is only part of the fight against the new virtual evil. The social network VKontakte, where, in fact, the first death groups appeared, blocks more and more new pages every day, both on the instructions of Roskomnadzor and as a result of its monitoring, but there is another effective way.

“The most important vector in this fight is our own users, whom we actively encourage to complain about any type of content posted on the social network. They have the opportunity to send a complaint about a photograph, video text - in general, about any thing. Recently, we have also added calls for suicide to the list of complaints. This allows our moderators to respond to this even more quickly and make appropriate decisions about blocking this or that content,” says Evgeniy Krasnikov, press secretary of the VKontakte social network.

And if you publish one of the popular hashtags of the deadly game on your page, your account will be temporarily blocked and you will be offered a list of questions, the answer to some of which will automatically redirect you to the website of the psychological assistance center.

No one talks on the phone here - a feature of the work of the “Your Territory” foundation. After all, teenagers are used to communicating in chat rooms - such help is closer to them. And not only for those who have been drawn into yet another suicide group, because danger can lurk even in a seemingly harmless children’s game.

A video review based on an episode of the popular game “Minecraft” ends with the suicide of a character named Alena, and before that, for several days on the video’s author’s page there was a heated discussion about what to do with this Alena - to forgive or not. And, despite the survey results, the author decided not to forgive - the result is known. Whether this can be considered suicide propaganda is a question for lawyers, but while playing on this platform open to creativity, ten-year-old Artem met a certain girl in a chat, followed by nightly correspondence and mysterious calls, after which, the mother says, her son was replaced.

“He ran away from the tutor, a Russian language teacher comes to us, at the same time always, he knows this very well, he always fulfills her assignments accurately. Grandma already wanted to go to the police, almost write a statement, he wasn’t at school. And then he came as if nothing had happened and said: “I went to the cinema.” It’s as if this is not my child, but some kind of complex teenager,” says the mother.

Artyom himself noticed that something was happening to him. Grandmother and mother suddenly seemed angry, and the younger sister was too noisy. The mother decided to take her son to a psychologist and now promises to spend more time with the children. This, experts are sure, is the best way not to miss the moment. They also advise not to remain silent about the problem, but, on the contrary, to talk as much as possible. This is what the guys from Yekaterinburg did, filming a series about suicidal children - in it all the troubles of teenagers through their own eyes and the search for a way out.

And this way out is not to step into the void. And a beached whale is actually a mountain of rotting flesh and no romance. This is worth remembering for those to whom games with death seem like a mysterious adventure.

Law enforcement agencies have taken up the organizers of the terrible games, these maniacs. There are already suspects, one has been detained. Society should be absolutely intolerant of these scoundrels. We support the investigation. And legislators need to think about adjusting the punishment under the article on incitement to suicide. Today this punishment does not scare anyone.