The Cult of Suicide and the Rampant Media
Something sinister is in the air these days. And it is targeting our kids. There is a playfulness almost about the demonic ways of the profiteers. They want our kids to pay the price for curiosity with their blood.
In northwest Colombia small municipality of Barbosa, a 16 year old boy and 12 year old girl committed suicide last year. The cause?
A WhatsApp game called “Momo suicide game”. Momo is a “bird-like woman with eyes protruding out of her head” who exhorts users to do self harm or commit suicide. If the user fails to do that, they get threatening messages saying that they will be cursed by evil spells. The game spreads via WhatApp contacts and has even infiltrated the very popular Minecraft.
This was after the extremely infamous Blue Whale game which led to many suicides the world over. That was a game where the user committed to 50 tasks in 50 days. In the Russian speaking countries, this game became a menace really soon.
Across Russia and the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, alarming Blue Whale headlines have become a nearly daily occurrence: a child or teen being encouraged to commit suicide through participation in a ghoulish online “game” driven by Russian-language hashtags including “blue whale,” “sea of whales,” “I’m in the game,” “Wake me at 4:20,” “F58,” and many others. (source)
Now, a Netflix series called “13 Reasons Why” – where a girl commits suicide and leaves behind a series of 13 tapes explaining in detail the reasons why she chose to end her life has caught on to the imagination of teenagers as well. Leading them to commit suicides in large numbers. In the month after the show, the suicides in ages 10-17 rose by a whopping 29%!
The Netflix show “13 Reasons Why” was associated with a 28.9% increase in suicide rates among U.S. youth ages 10-17 in the month (April 2017) following the shows release, after accounting for ongoing trends in suicide rates, according to a study published today in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. (source)
The first season was released in March 2017, and the second season in May 2018. The third is under production.
The cult of suicide, where the push to take one’s life, specifically in case of impressionable teenage minds, is becoming huge! And it is serious.
The spread is indiscriminate yet deliberate, targeted yet widespread and goes after the whole generation once it has tunneled into the very foundations of our social engagement and interaction.
It is a termite. And we all are the targets. And we are the vehicles as well.
How do we save our kids from our follies?