No, I’m not going to post any of those pictures of the Momo Challenge. Yeah you know the ones, the pictures of that creepy lady with big eyes. She’s probably found on your Facebook.
Creepy lady associated with a suicide game aimed at kids. Yeah flip, be worried about that one. She and it are the stuff of nightmares.
I’ve had a dig around the internet about the Momo Challenge. While there seems to be concerning stuff there, its worth bearing in mind some of the following…
The Momo challenge is an alleged form of cyberbullying which spreads over the phone messaging service WhatsApp. Children receive threats from an anonymous number associated with a picture of “Momo” – an alien-like woman with bulging eyes, an eerie stretched smile, and straggly hair. Momo allegedly forces children to undertake dangerous tasks – up to and including suicide – by threatening them with violence.
https://inews.co.uk/
Creepy, but The Daily Mail could only manage this
A 12-year-old girl from Argentina allegedly took her life after playing the game
dailymail.co.uk
Allegedly. The Buenos Aires Times article from the time can be found here. While it says a link was investigated. There doesn’t seem to be anything confirmed.
The BBC article on this seems to focus on the (in comparison) more basic data security issues that Momo presents:
Momo may be creepy, but police believe it is clear it is being used by hackers to harvest information.
Officers in Northern Ireland moved to reassure parents about the doll figure with bulging eyes and a creepy grin.
https://www.bbc.co.uk
But should people be concerned? The answer from rollingstone.com is no…
The Momo Challenge and the subsequent moral panic it has spawned is eerily similar to that inspired by the “Blue Whale” challenge, a Russia-based phenomenon that went viral last year. According to reports in the Russian media, the Blue Whale challenge involved teenagers following a series of increasingly self-harmful tasks over the course of 50 days, culminating with them being encouraged to take their own lives.
Additional reports linking Blue Whale to other teen suicides, like that of 15-year-old Isaiah Gonzalez from San Antonio, have proven to be largely uncorroborated. “There’s no real truth to [games like the Momo Challenge] or evidence that it’s a real threat,” says Benjamin Radford, a folklorist and research fellow for the Committee for Skeptic Inquiry.
https://www.rollingstone.com
The independent, suggests the we (parents) should be more concerned about our own wellbeing
“In terms of whether Blue Whale did cause the deaths of any children as was reported, this has been difficult to validate – however there is more evidence to suggest parents talked about their fears of their children undertaking the challenge, rather than their children actually doing so,” Sugiura says. Momo, she says, seems to be following the same pattern. “It is more likely to endanger the well-being of parents and carers, concerned about their children.”
https://inews.co.uk
I guess this is all a drawn out way for me to say. Can we please stop sharing pictures of that creepy lady character. She’s creepy. We’re creeping ourselves out, and possibly terrifying any kids who see the images over our shoulders.
Please read the above links for more information, and dont have nightmares.
