Editing Philipp Budeikin (section)

== The Blue Whale Game ==
{{Quote|Yes. I truly was doing that. Don’t worry, you’ll understand everything. Everyone will understand. They were dying happy. I was giving them what they didn’t have in real life: warmth, understanding, connections.|Philipp Budeikin}}The Blue Whale Game''' '''is a social media suicide game created by Budeikin that gained notoriety and popularity across the world in 2015 and 2017. Supposedly starting in Russia, reports of players came as far from Russia as Portugal in Europe, and Chile/Brazil in general.
Players have to sign up to play or download a supposed app. Either options of play will let the ones behind the game hack into the mobile device, and they'll use it as a threat, threatening players to play or have their information released to the public, including exactly where they live thanks to the IP address.
[[File:Blue-whale-challenge-a-game-of-death.jpg|thumb|228x228px|One of the challenges of the Blue Whale Game, carving a blue whale on your arm.]]After signing up or downloading the app, players must complete up to 50 challenges, said to range from watching a horror movie, to self-harm. Photographic proof is also said to be given to the instructor so the player can move on. Some people say the challenges get more and more gruesome as the player moves up until the last challenge. The player must commit suicide to win the game. Unfortunately more than a hundred teenagers have successfully taken their lives as an attempt to win.

Russia is said to have 130 suicides as a result of the suicide. Seven different Brazilian states have reported players, some committed suicide, others were stopped during their attempt. No actual deaths have been reported in Chile, but cases of self-mutilation as a result of the game have been reported. Colombia has an investigation on three minors who are said to be players. Portugal also had no reported deaths of the game, but some people had to be hospitalised as a result injuries from the game. Spain has one reported player, who has been accepted into a psychiatric unit. Other countries with players of the game include United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, United States of America and several other countries.

The game went viral due in part to Social media, leading to a rapid spread of the game globally.

=== Momo Challenge ===
[[File:49326014 399985167210884 534435228876167150 n.jpg|thumb|237px|The sculpture "Mother Bird", which was used as the image to represent Momo. In content relating to the hoax, the legs of the sculpture were cropped out, which fooled others into believing it was a real person.]]
In July 2018, an urban legend started spreading on the internet about someone named "[https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Momo Momo]", who allegedly caused children to commit suicide through gruesome text messages and graphic images. While it was later discovered that the Momo Challenge was purely a hoax and never actually existed, it nevertheless caused widespread panic on the Internet and in schools, particularly when the challenge became popular again in February and March 2019.

In reality, Momo was actually just a sculpture called "Mother Bird", created by artist Keisuke Aso Aisawa in the summer of 2016. In March 2019, Aisawa revealed that he had destroyed the sculpture shortly before the Momo hoax became popular on the internet.

While Budekin was not directly involved with the Momo Challenge hoax, his Blue Whale Challenge was likely the inspiration behind Momo. The two challenges are very similar, both of which involving the player doing dangerous activities and committing suicide at the end of the challenge.