The result of conversations - only scary avatars and no communication.
Since the beginning of July, a new virtual game, Momo, has been distributed on the network. The bottom line is this: in the WhatsApp messenger, you need to call a number with a special avatar, which depicts a terrible girl with bird's legs. Then the game begins - you will be given tasks, heaped curses, and in the end it will lead to suicide. We decided to check what could actually happen.
The scale is amazing
We decided to start communicating with Momo by searching for the numbers of potential “curators” - people who will give users various dangerous tasks. It turned out to be not so difficult: for example, by request “momo number” on “VKontakte”, one can find thousands of links and hundreds of groups in which a database of “curators” is published daily.
Vkontakte is replete with Momo numbers.
Momo came to us from South America and Asia, therefore, along with Russian numbers, foreign ones are also published: Brazilian, Japanese, Argentinean, Chilean and many others.
Promotional video:
Silence on the wire
We decided to add some numbers from the database and try to talk to them on WhatsApp. First of all, we started with foreign numbers - since the game started from there, it means that it is still popular there and they will definitely answer us. But the first attempt turned into disappointment: the Colombian Momo did not answer the phone and did not answer messages.
Colombian Momo refused to speak to us.
The same story happened with the Russian Momo: he stubbornly did not pick up the phone and did not answer messages.
The Russian clone Momo didn't answer either.
We checked a few more numbers - the result was the same everywhere. Momo didn't pick up phones, didn't answer messages.
Then we decided to check if other users have problems finding Momo. It turned out that there is - many really could not find “curators”, although they also tried a bunch of options.
Twitter users' reactions to unsuccessful calls:
Who will make money on the scarecrow
Momo is probably just a marketing gimmick, a desire to play on childhood fears. Remember how in our childhood everyone was afraid to watch horror movies, read horror films and anxiously expected to find a monster under the bed. Now the processes have moved to the Internet. We won't be surprised if Momo T-shirts, key chains and dolls appear on the market soon. Someone can make good money on the "sinister" game.
On the other hand, there was a wave of publications about Momo around the world, it is possible that law enforcement agencies (we believe in the best) quickly took up the administrators of the dangerous game.
GRIGORY PUSHKAREV