BLUE WHALES ARE EVERYWHERE ! by Tolea Postovei

https://www.facebook.com/Beware-of-Bluwhale-Erasmus

WHAT IS “BLUE WHALE” ? “Blue Whale also known as Blue Whale Challenge, is a social network phenomenon dating from 2016 that is claimed to exist in several countries, despite no cases having been confirmed. It is a "game" reportedly consisting of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period, initially innocuous before introducing elements of self-harm and the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide. "Blue Whale" first attracted news coverage in May 2016 in an article in a Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, that linked many unrelated child suicides to membership of group "F57" on the Russian-based VKontakte social network. A wave of moral panic swept Russia. However, the piece was later criticised for attempting to make a causal link where none existed, and none of the suicides was found to be as a result of the group activities. Russian journalist Galina Mursaliyeva first wrote about "death groups" in an article published in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in April 2016.The article described the "F57" groups on Russian social media site VKontakte, that she claimed had incited 130 teenagers to commit suicide. Mursaliyeva's article was criticised at the time of its release for lacking credible data and balance, with the 130 cases of suicide cited appearing to have been calculated by the author The origin of the name "Blue Whale" is uncertain. Some reports say that it comes from a song by the Russian rock band Lumen. Its opening lines are "Why scream / When no one hears / What we're talking about?" and it features a "huge blue whale" that "can't break through the net." Others believe it to be a reference to beaching, where whales become stranded on beaches and die. The game is said to run on different social media platforms and is described as a relationship between an administrator and participant. Over a period of fifty days the administrator sets one task per day; the tasks seem innocuous to begin with ("get up at 4:30 am", "watch a horror movie"), and move on to self-harm, leading to the participant committing suicide on the final day. Claims of suicides connected to the game have been reported worldwide but none has been confirmed.” ( Wikipedia) That was the context when we wrote the application at the moment when the game became very popular in Romania and partenrs’ countries.Even if more of events were finally without real support and turned out being used by journalists for audience, the problem of “cyberbullying” is a real one and continues to make victims all over the world. The interest of participants was higher than our expectations, their cases discovered in preparatory phase were not isolated and sketches, videos and forum theater tried to aware youngsters about problems and solutions.This exchange is another small step in educating youngsters in spirit of respect and responsibility in using internet and social networks…and more steps are to come and we hope we’ll have energy to continue. Tolea Postovei - organizer

“BEWARE ! BLUE WHALES ARE EVERYWHERE ! “" was an exchange that took place in Sarata Monteoru and Buzau between 7-17 may 2018.Partnership consisted in 43 participants from 8 countries : Cyprus,Czech Republic,Estonia,Italy,Lithuania,Macedonia,Slovenia and Romania.Project was financed by European Union through Erasmus + programme. The context of the project was increasing of cases of electronic violence at all levels of age. Aim of the project was to increase security of using social networks by youngsters and rise their role and responsibility in prevent and eliminate electronic violence and its effects. The methodology was based on nonformal education and consisted in games, presentations , role plays and theater, workshops, visual campaign, intercultural evenings Main activities were for preparation, introduction and getting to know eachother, trust and team building, presentation of participants and organizations, introduction of Erasmus + programme and youthpass certificate, cultural and study visits in Buzau region.There were be 6 thematic workshops where were presented results of preparatory phase,there were indentified causes and effects of electronic violence and methods and solutions to reduce it.In the creative workshops were created a visual campaign by producing 3 videoclips, flyers and a guide , 2 forum theater plays, all products being shared in the last day in Buzau together with local youngsters. We want to thank to our partners: PlanBe, Plan it Be it- Cyprus, European Youth Centre Breclav- Czechia, Viims Vallavalitsus- Estonia, Associazione di promozione sociale Joint- Italy, Asociacija “Aktyvus jaunimas”- Lithuania, VCS Skopje- Macedonia, CEZAM Ruse- Slovenia for their involvement, to wonderful group leaders for being totally devoted, to all participants for their contribution, to our wonderful hosts, “Casa cu Tei” in Sarata Monteoru and Hotel “Sport B90” in Buzau. Catalina Postovei - project coordinator on behalf of Hair Redivivus Buzau

GROUP DYNAMICS Definitely we were a wonderful team and that was because of all activities we did in mixed groups, because we really did almost everything TOGETHER and we found the perfect balance between fun and serious stuff and that’s why our results were so good and we are so proud of them. Of course a big role had our organizers, a perfect team and seeing them so punctual we were also very punctual saving time and energy for informal moments as useful as the “official ones”. Getting to know eachother activities and energizers, team building and trust games, coffee breaks, “secret friend” and “cup” games, evening activities contributes step by step to create this wonderful team….and of course if you have some “engines” like Rudi, Giuseppe, Isi, Rokas you don’t need anything else to have a perfect time…oh, yes, you also need a lot of lemons for enter the Cypriot spirit…

“We improved our cooperation skills, intercultural dialogue and became more fluent in english. Knowledge about social networks and cyberbullying, international friendship, arts and digital competences is what we are bringing back home.” “I learned a lot about cyberbullying and I appreciate very much forum theater. I’ ve changed totally my attitudes. Honestly, if I can compare with other projects, this project was THE BEST ONE.” “LIFE IS BETTER WITH LEMONS ! “

INTERCULTURAL LEARNING There were 3 “intergalactic” evenings during one week, a session about stereotypes, presentations of organizations and researches in local communities and lots of moments spending together and sharing our culture values.We understood that we are not lazy, alcoholics, violent, unfriendly, beggars, thieves as some of our sketches showed and above all we made the difference between what is a joke for us and what can be for others understanding that this different perception can lead to bullying and electronic violence with effects we saw in real life.

Our nights together were challenging every team preparing a promo moment or another country and it was amazing to discover that the others discovered things we didn’t know about our country.Tasting food and drinks (“Drink responsible ! “ as Tolea always aware us), dancing and singing, watching videos and telling jokes made us discover intercultural dialogue better and easier than definitions and bla, bla, bla stuff.Incredible Romanian evening around fire showed us a culture everybody would like to discover more…and we even had Dracula visiting us.

LAND ART in the forest was one of the most interesting activity in the first days not only by discovering nature but also by using it to express our creativity without harming it. Deep down in a Romanian forest,when you connect your self to the nature and cross the bridge,you will find endless possibilities of creativity. The legend says that you can even find there strong wi-fi. Ctrl+alt+del #cyberbullying â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this is the 3 keys combination to make social networks peaceful

The name of the project is dedicated to the dangerous application â&#x20AC;&#x153; Blue Whaleâ&#x20AC;? so we created a whale to rise awareness In next one you can see it shows the sign of peace and the logo of wifi, that means we would love to see peace and love at all the social medias

Away from the disturbing city noise,we can find in every single thing unexpected significations, so you can discover the forest and the nature secrets. At the same time you can discover the unbelievable ways your life can go. So for a bad person the roadwill end sooner, because sooner or later he will be discovered and punished, he will be all alone and then he will feel the same pain as the victim experienced. On the other hand, the people who decide to be good ones, the life possibilities will grow significantly, but it can also end tragically.

“SOCIAL NETWORKS” IN OUR COUNTRIES WHAT WE DISCOVERED HOME…AND SHARED WITH THE OTHERS It was really amazing on one side to discover realities in other countries but worrying to see how dangerous the numbers are. We made these posters in 5 mixed teams with members from each country. You can draw yourselves the conclusions…

Facebook: 2 Billion Users. On Facebook we can find live video bullying, spreading rumors and offensive comments. Twitter: 200 Million Users. A lot of aggressive messages. Instagram: 700 Million Users. Instagram is full of fake accounts, hate accounts and embarrassing posts. Snap-chat: 170 millions Users. Underage sexual content, tracking users and blackmailing with screenshot.

CYBERBULLYING - CAUSES, EFFECTS, SOLUTIONS, RESPONSIBLES More than the fact that we learnt a lot about cyberbullying from sharing (sharing is…scaring), we discover a combination of methods (“open space” and “world coffee”) that can be used widely for collecting opinions and debate free about any topic you can imagine. CAUSES: Aggressors: people making fun about the others, too confident people, people full of prejudices, pedophiles and rapers, unconscious people, criminals, fraudsters, mentally affected. Victims:children,insecure people,young girls,different people than the majority. Why:to feel part ofthe team,too much trust, no education,revenge,need to demonstrate superiority. When and Where: internet,social media,everywhere around us.

EFFECTS ON VICTIMS: losing self confidence, isolation, depression, school abandon, violence, suicide, losing jobs, breaking families, destroy relationship, aggression as response etc EFFECTS ON AGGRESSORS: power, popularity, ego, confidence, follow up, bossy attitude, worse action

SOLUTIONS: education from early school, strict control on social media for children, generate engines to detect cyberbullying, parental supervision, raise awareness for responsible using of social media, nonformal education campaigns, punishments, civic attitude, internet police, campaigns, better privacy protection, clear laws against aggressors etc RESPONSIBLES : school, family, society, media, friends, owners and hosts of platforms on internet, police, law, state and government, WE over all by responsible attitude

LET’S PLAY THEATER !

Yes, we like to play theater and this session showed it and also

show that some of us were really talented. Before project we tried to discover around us cases of electronic violence. In the beginning seemed to be not so dangerous just to leave your facebook profile open or not to check who accept as “friend” but then playing we discovered the dark face of our irresponsibility in using social networks.My friends, blue whale could be fake, but cyberbullying it’s not a joke ! CYPRUS:At a school two teenagers had an argument about a message that one of the two send to the others boyfriend. While they where fighting in front of their classmates, everyone was taking videos and photos instead of helping them. Eventually, after a long fight one of the two girls ended up in the hospital and the videos reached thousands of views in just few hours. For the weeks followed, both girls judged by users of social media

CZECHIA One of our schoolmates finished his studies on a high school. In contrast with his colleagues, he decided not to study university and to make money earlier than them - unfortunately, he did not choose the right way. He made a gay porn video that was soon found by some students of our school. As you can imagine, mostly everyone knew about that in a few days.What’s more, part of the video was broadcasted by one of the older students on a big screen in the school.Then the actor of this story started bothering our friend with messages where he was threatening with suicide There was a case in ESTONIA where one pupil posted an announcement to facebook, that he will go to school and shoot everyone. 5 minutes later the police came and arrested him.Later the police discovered that his friend made fun of him and posted the facebook post, when his phone was unattended.It wasn’t funny for the boy when the police kicked down the door and arrested him in his underwear.

ROMANIA Izabela’s birthday party. She wanted to create a private group to invite a few friends at her birthday. By mistake she create a public group. Everybody made fun of her because more than half of million people saw the group and wanted to go to the party. 9

ITALY: One morning at school, a boy was wearing a pink pants and his classmates started call him GAY, GAY. One of his classmate took a picture of him and then he posted it on Facebook, everybody offended him. Someone called him sweet baby.The next morning he killed himself because he could not deal it. At his funeral every single classmate was crying. It is easy to be a bully on Facebook. SLOVENIA: Two guys wanted to play and show their “power” and started to hit another guy in the same time filming and posted in direct on facebook how the victim was full of blood while they enjoyed the sow.Police reacted and had a fast intervention but eventually the guy attacked died on the way to hospital. LITHUANIA: A group of friends started to bully one of their mates “live”. Apparently a joke, it turn into a bad situation as the had a depression and was close to commit suicide.

POLICE IS COMING ! In the same day we had a visit of 2 officers from the prevention department from Buzau.They told us stories captured in their activitiy, instructed us about the main bully-activities and which is specific for each age, told us some tricks and trips on how to behave in social networks and then we had a very efficient and funny dialogue.

THEATER AGAIN – HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS ! This session was one of the most serious ones during the week as everything we found in our cases can happen to us, our friends, our families. We got 8 cases that went totally bad and we had the mission to solve them and to understand who, where and when was wrong. Not easy at all, but we did it and we were very happy to work in our teams. Of course we had a lot of fun together but we learnt a lot and what was dramatic and funny was that we recognized ourselves among the characters. This was also a good introduction for the forum theater workshop. Here are the stories…use your imagination and try to find a solution for everyone !

1.After a hot night with her girl-friend Angela,Karl took some very sexy photos of her .Karl joins Mark and Simon for a drink and after 3-4 beers they decided would be a nice joke to post the photos on facebook.Angela is a t work and her boss call her showing her the photos.Angela is shocked,leaves the office and the buiding very nervous.On the way back she stopped at a pharmacy.She didn’t appear home in the evening… 2.Mike ,George and David are in a summer camp and they are in a room watching some photos on Mike’s facebook profile from a previous exchange.They have fun and at a moment Mike leaves the room to bring some coffees. Mike tried previous evening to have a romance with beautiful Elena and David envy him,so very fast David sent from Mike’s profile a message to Elena saying she is a whore.Elena gets the message,became ashamed and left the camp without saying to anyone.Mike finds out the story and in the evening beated David in the toilet.David is found 2 hours later full of blood.

3.Anna is a nice teenager from Ukraina wanting to get a job like a dancer in Italy.She is checking every day some help or offers on internet.One day,she got a message from a guy,Carlo,who proposed her a job in his bar in Napoli and promised to cover her the flight ticket.Anna is now in Napoli airport meets Carlo and Giovanni,his friend and go to the car.Anna is blindfolded and taken to an apartment where the guys tied her and throw her in a cellar.She only could sent a short what’s up message to her friend Elena in Ukraina that said “ Help me “

4.Dimitris is a nice guy that love to dance and drink.At the intercultural evening he mixed a lot of spirits,got drank and fall asleep.Some participants draw naughty things with a marker on his forehead and took some photos that were uploaded on facebook group.Next day all the participants bullyied him and only one waiter ,Diana that didn’t know what’s the problem tried to speak with him.Last time he was seen in the evening running to the forest

5.Pepe ,Goran and Andrew arrived for an Erasmus student exchange in Riga.After 2 days they discovered that all three used to smoke marijuana home but here drugs are very difficult to find.They found out on facebook contacts of a guy that can provide drugs.Pepe contacted that guy and agrees to give to the dealer his credit cards details for payment as a guarantee.Goran said it’s not a good idea,Andrew is passive but Pepe was in need,so he made the order.Next day the guy didn’t come to the meeting and later Pepe found out that his card is empty and the profile of that guy is no longer available.Pepe become very nervous and broke the windows from a shop.The police arrested him. 6.Suzana is a very handsome young English teacher in a highschool.She has a wonderful body but she is quite decent.Tony and Daniel ,2 of her students took with the smartphone some photos and short videos of her during a party they had at school and create a “video chat” fake profile of her and sent immediately the link to the director,Mr.Duncan.Without knowing anything about fake profile,Suzana is invited to director office where he tries to harass her.She slaps the director into face and ran.In 2 hours the general inspector and a policeman visits the school….

7. Adrian and Peter are schoolmates in last grade.In their class Radu,a gypsy fat boy,was just transferred.Adrian and Peter started to bully him posting photos of him and writing unpleasant comments on instagram.From all the colleagues only Rita tries to help Radu asking the others to remove the photos and apologise but Adrian and Peter continue bullying both Radu and Rita on the way back from school.Next day before first class,bullying continued and at a moment Radu took out a knife and cut Peter on his right handâ&#x20AC;Śwhen the teacher entered the classroom 8.Maria is a young journalist in Belgrad, very active civic and all the time trying to reveal corruption of local politicians. This year she had a proposal to join a political party from opposition to candidate as a local councelor and after discussing with her best friend and colleague,Ivan, she accepted.After the elections campaign starts someone posted on facebook a sexy photo of Maria since she was participated in a beauty competition during university,5 years ago.There are a lot of comments and the leader of the party removed Maria from the list.Ivan and Zoran,boyfriend of Maria,discovered the author of that post was a corrupt politician,and without telling to Maria,they set his car on fire.Next day,Maria was found by her friends raped in the park.There were no more news about her in local mediaâ&#x20AC;Ś.

BLUE WHALE CAMPAIGN – What else to be said about that, you can wonder… but still more to work and learn to avoid cyberbullying.In different teams led by our group leaders but with great involvement of everybody else we created products to be proud of: flyers, videos, theater forum plays.Altogether they were shared in Buzau with local youngsters and they helped us in spreading the printed matherials but also to solve the situations in theater plays.Speaking about our final performance on the terrace of the hotel in Buzau we appreciate the impact of our work and were very happy to see local youngsters being spect-actors.Having congrats from the police officers that came again to see our show was a perfect evaluation for our efforts.

VIDEOS: “Spread Love Not Hate” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SA_5dQx0vQ&feature=youtu.be “Nightmare” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Us4RLdDNwI The third video “Don’t Judge” will stay only in our private group as, even the dialogue is part of cruel reality, some of the content can be declared unappropriate. 14

DO and DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T in SOCIAL NETWORKS â&#x20AC;&#x201C; It was time to discover in groups by creating responsible and irresponsible characters how to behave on line to avoid cyberbullying.Behind Darth Vader, Barbie 69, Cyber, Jack and the others during the discussions and debates we could easily see us, our friends and our enemies, our brothers and sisters ane people we interact with almost every day.

FUTURE PROJECT IDEAS â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so nice to think about future of Erasmus + and new opportunities to meet other people from Europe, share our experiences and learn how to find solutions to our problems.Ideas were about gender equality, discrimination, violence against women, children education, hearing impaired ( thanks to Andrei and Laurentiu, our deaf colleagues for sharing their problems) and some of us and our leaders are already working on them for future projects.

FORUM THEATER “SECOND CHANCE” Our main object was to address the various dangers of the Internet. We use the method of forum theatre and we focused on the human trafficking. The main character, the victim was a dancer from Ukraine that was searching on the Internet for job opportunities abroad. She found an opportunity in Italy. The oppressor, the owner of a bar, convince her through an online interview to visit Italy. The victim borrowed the money she needed for the tickets, from one of her friends. As it turned out, the aim of the oppressor was to kidnap the victim with the help of his loyal friend and force the victim in prostitution. The victim managed to communicate with her friend back in her home country who called the police. Due to lack of investigation, the prestige and the good name of the oppressor, the police did not investigate his premises and so the victim is now helpless. The audience helped actively the victim by intervening and changing the behaviour of the actors except those of the oppressor. They suggested that the friend of the victim should warn her about the dangers of her actions, that there are false or fraudulent advertisements all over the Internet and it is not safe to trust a totally stranger person. Another solution was that the friend of the oppressor could help the victim by letting her know what the real nature of the job was. Also, a possible and realistic solution suggested by the audience was that the police should do their duty and search the premises for any illegal activity according the information they had. Forum theatre is an interesting method of non formal education and very powerful in addressing social problems. Actors and audience have an active role and this helps to develop empathy for the victims which eventually leads to the solution of the problem. In conclusion this method helped to understand and analyse the dangers of the Internet and develop effective solutions. Andreas Kyprianides – Cyprus,”the joker” of the play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s4biz2ICEw

“BLUE WHALE DID IT AGAIN” As in the real world, there also is a dark side of the internet as well. Only by playing a game which seems innocent at the beginning, can become a threat to your life, to your family and to your friends, after a little while. Many people tend to ignore this important thing, so we tried to convince some people by using the forum theatre method. The main topic of the theatre play was the Blue Whale game, in which the head character, the victim, is a simple student in the highschool, who had only one friend, but whose father was an alcoholic and the girl he liked wasn't paying to much attention to him. The victim's passion was the video games, but because of his father addiction to alcohol, he didn't have enough money in order to buy a video game, so for most part he was playing online games along with his friend, until, one day he found a new game, which he decided to play by himself. There were different types of tasks that were given to him. He started playing The Blue Whale game. That's when his life changed completely. He obeyed all the tasks that were given to him, like cutting himself. And in the end the victim dies by taking a pill, even though he hesitates at first, a voice pushes him to do it , obeying the last task In order to change the story, the public's idea was to make his father aware of his son's behavior and also his friend to take some measures to stop the victim from playing that game. On the other side to make the oppressor's partner live and in the end the victim's father calls the police and finally catches The Blue Whale operator, before making any other people die. Renata Molnar- Romania,”the joker” of the play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Us4RLdDNwI 18

â&#x20AC;Ś we enjoyed all other moments togetherâ&#x20AC;Ś

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

https://www.facebook.com/Beware-of-Bluwhale-Erasmus