[kictanet] Blue Whale info

Sun May 14 17:37:52 EAT 2017

As many of you have seen, Liquid Telecom came out opposing this “ban” on the basis that firstly, there is no application to ban – and secondly – you cannot “ban” individual tweets or social media posts and make ISP’s responsible for them – it is impractical and entirely impossible for any ISP to selectively filter against specific posts on a social media site without banning the entire social media site – and banning the likes of twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc would be entirely stupid and cause riots.

Now, let me add a few things – because I did a LOT of research into this – what follows in this email is detailed and I apologise for the length of what I’m sharing below but for anyone attempting to understand the nature of this game and understand why what is being said about it is improbable – there is important background information here.  Secondly – I can state that I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist – however – over the years I have acted in the role of councillor (and have some training in that regard) and have interacted with certain communities at great length.  So, am I an expert? Probably not – but what follows is based on the research I have done and the conversations that I have over the last 20 odd years of interactions with online and offline communities where certain behaviours are the norm rather than the exception.

Firstly – the concept behind this game has shown up before – in a slightly different form – in a fictional Hollywood film called Nerve which was released in 2016.   To quote my research report that I drew up on this:

In the film Nerve, users play a game of dare against each other, for money.  The film has two sets of people, the watchers and the players – and throughout the film the dares given get more and more extreme and dangerous, as does the money resulting from the completion of the dare.  The dare related sequences in the film culminate with the two final players left in the game being dared to murder each other.

Secondly – in my view on if this exists or not – the idea of an online “digital dare” game that may or may not exist – it’s entirely possible, and it wouldn’t be hard for someone to start one if it doesn’t – that being said – you’d have to find people to play it and spread it – again – not impossible.  However, there is no proof that this game exists as stated in various articles – just a bunch of supposition.  But in the research that I did, while not proof, there *ARE* indications (let’s call it circumstantial evidence) that an online form of self-harm dare game does exist – however – the point of it culminating in suicide – that I could find no evidence of that whatsoever.

Thirdly – most self-harm is committed as a coping mechanism – a way to deal with emotional pain in a physical way and a way to remove feelings of disassociation and numbness.  This is well documented and there is plenty of evidence to back this up. To associate progressive self-harm with culmination in suicide simply does not make any sense and doesn’t track the data that I’ve seen and spent so much time looking at.

Forth – This is a medical issue – and I would argue strongly that much of what could result in the existence of something like this resolves around stigmas associated with self-injury, both within the medical fraternity and in the general population.  The simple fact is – that having spoken to many who engage in this behaviour – they go online looking for help often to stop – because approaches to the medical fraternity are rebuffed – strongly.  I know of at least 10 incidents where individuals who had cut themselves were refused anaesthetic in british NHS hospitals when seeking treatment – and many more in other health systems around the world – because the doctors themselves said it was attention seeking and if the person can face the pain of injury they can face the pain of treatment (bizarre – but it happens – frequently).

What this results in is the fact that people who are already pre-disposed to self-harm and to suicidal ideation do not seek help from professionals – they seek it online – which leaves them exposed to predatory influences which can lead them down very dangerous paths.  This however indicates significant problems with education and the handling of complex psychological issues within the medical community.  It does not indicate the need for knee jerk reactions to ban things which cannot be proven to exist.

Fifth – and this relates to the fourth point above – there is a belief that self-harm and even suicide attempts that are unsuccessful are a means of attention seeking and sometimes as a cry for help – which also explains why they are so ignored and stigmatized.  However, again, this is inaccurate in the extreme.  The majority of people who engage in this behaviour do everything they can to hide what they are doing outside of forums where like-minded individuals congregate to support each other and to find solutions to stopping.  This again, leads people to go online to find help, which can lead to significant issues.

Where I do however see a problem occurring in a game such as this is that self-harm is an addictive behaviour.  This is medical – many people who engage in this behaviour will speak of a high – which is induced by the flood of endorphins as a result of the injury.  Effectively there are many who feel no pain during an act of self-harm and it can in fact invoke a feeling of euphoria.  The danger from this comes that if a game does exist that encourages vulnerable people to start down the path of self-harm you may be introducing people to what is a destructive addition that could haunt them for many years and in many cases is an escalating behaviour that can result in *accidental* death.  That is *NOT* to say that it is suicidal in nature.

However, even with that said – I argue that this is not a technical issue – it is not an issue for a film and publication board to solve – it is not an issue for ISP’s to solve – it is a medical education issue, and the solutions here are found in sensitizing the medical community to the issues at hand, and working out treatment programs to treat people who suffer from NSSID (non suicidal self-injury disorder, as defined in the DSM IV).  Banning such a thing is impractical and impossible – it is not an application – it is a digital game of dare – and since you cannot filter individual tweets and Instagram posts – it cannot really be stopped in a technical manner.

What we really need to ask is – why there is such limited medical help available to individuals and why society is so stigmatized against the very things that would allow such games to exist in the first place.  I actually went searching – I could not find anywhere in Kenya that offers dialectical behaviour therapy for example, which is the de-facto therapy method used to treat both NSSI-D and Borderline Personality Disorder (there is a strong and deep correlation between these two things, and in fact in the DSM-4 prior to the DSM-5 they were actually clustered as one at the same thing).

What we need is for further education and dialog – not knee jerk reactions by people who have almost no fundamental understanding of the real issues in play here – because the issues in play here – are not technical – they are not online – they are not solvable by ISPs – they are medical – they are psychological – and they are a damning indictment of the state of our society that such little help is available that it is forcing people with real problems online to look for help where they may be exposed to such.

These views are stated in my personal capacity

Andrew
From: kictanet [mailto:kictanet-bounces+andrew.alston=liquidtelecom.com at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet
Sent: 14 May 2017 01:04
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>
Cc: Mwendwa Kivuva <Kivuva at transworldafrica.com>
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Blue Whale info

'Blue Whale': But Nechama Brodie - the head of Tri-Fact training and research at Africa Check - says there is nothing to suggest such an app or website exists. "What we've seen - and this is a pattern that gets repeated over and over again - is that sometimes viral stories that came out of someone's imagination, that were completely fictional, become real over time because we've invested so much interest in them. So it didn't exist before but not it exists as a concept." She says the information on Blue Whale fits a "very classic profile of typical hoaxes and scares that we see around vulnerable populations and around teenagers in particular." http://m.ewn.co.za/2017/05/11/blue-whale-a-new-online-suicide-game-targeting-teens

Although certain game groups on social media have been accused of promoting suicide, they have not been found to have directly caused an uptick in young people taking their own lives.
http://www.snopes.com/blue-whale-game-suicides-russia/

______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
twitter.com/lordmwesh<http://twitter.com/lordmwesh>

On 13 May 2017 at 12:50, Mark Elkins via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:
Here is an update on the Blue Whale stuff that was in local news in
South Africa

http://m.ewn.co.za/2017/05/11/blue-whale-a-new-online-suicide-game-targeting-teens

--
Mark James ELKINS  -  Posix Systems - (South) Africa
mje at posix.co.za<mailto:mje at posix.co.za>       Tel: +27.128070590  Cell: +27.826010496
For fast, reliable, low cost Internet in ZA: https://ftth.posix.co.za

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