The media makes up a "horror story" pounced on the panic, churning out hoaxes with little regard for truth. Which results in higher ratings. Fear has always been sold well.
Police and courts jumped at the opportunity to display toughness, launching investigations and crackdowns that looked good on paper but led nowhere real.
Teachers organized lectures, discussions, and "preventative measures," more for show than substance, ticking boxes rather than reaching students.
School administrators collected these efforts into glossy reports, proudly submitted up the chain, proving they had "responded."
In reality, the so-called threat was a ghost. An enemy manufactured from several memes (4:20, weed, etc) few lines from a popular back then depressive song (something about a giant blue whale in the net).
That served everyone's interests:
Authorities tightened their grip on censorship, institutions justified their budgets, and the public was distracted.
A few teens were demonized, a few unlucky ones punished. Such systems always need scapegoats.
It was never about saving anyone.
It was about control, censorship and profit. And the system played it quite well.
Unfortunately.
