Talk:Choking game

The Game bolded

I lsost the game when I saw it :( ANd it's kind of pointless, so I'd rather have it taken out.

Wrong explanation is wrong explanation

217.132.53.93 wrote quite correctly: The mechanism suggested above cannot be right. It does not explain why fainting occurs within seconds after hyperventilation. If supression of the breathing reflex was all that was happening, then the practitioner would still need to hold his breath for a couple of minutes to pass out. Isn't there an M.D. here who can straighten things out? 217.132.53.93 17:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)I Ex nihil 08:04, 14 March 2006 (UTC) wrote in response:

• Yes, you are right, even 'though I wrote that, there is another step involved and I have now added it. I have always been aware that this mechanism is much more complicated than previously stated but have never gotten around to articulating what is actually happening. 217.132.53.93's objection made be try and has resulted in a rewrite of self-induced hypocapnia. The fact that it is so complicated is what makes it so dangerous, I have enough trouble communicating the shallow water blackout mechanism, I don't know if you can get this one across. Hypocapnia changes your whole body chemistry, its behind this, behind diving accidents and high altitude disease. Ex nihil 08:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Wrong explanation!

The second method given for fainting, - hyperventilation followed by heart squeeze is wrong and dangerously so. The actual mecahanism is self-induced hypocapnia via hyperventilation depressing CO2 levels and thus supressing the urge to breathe. The squeeze is a schoolboy red-herring and just serves as the inducement to breath hold in a hypocapnic state. The mechanism is properly described under shallow water blackout. It has nothing whatever to do with stopping and releasing blood. In our day the breathhold was induced by a bear hug, actually you can do it all by yourself by hyperventilating and just holding your breath. Misunderstanding the mechanism stops kids from avoiding hyperventilation to extend dive times. The real mechanism is rather subtle and probably not understood by most teachers either so its not surprising that the blood surge idea got a hold.

I am happy to edit sometime if no major objections but it will be a big edit.Ex nihil 05:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

If you know something about it, go ahead. Dismas|^(talk) 11:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The way we always used to do it was to hyperventilate and then have a friend press the base of their hands against your carotid. I've never heard of pressing on the heart; I don't see how that would work. I don't really see a twelve-year-old kid being able to exert enough pressure on a rib cage to have any effect on the heart.

I disagree about the squeeze being a red herring, though. Maybe the bear hug is, but the method that uses carotid pressure is certainly not. You can make someone pass out by squeezing the carotid even without the hyperventilation part (like in a sleeper hold). The hyperventilation just makes it work faster. It's really not similar at all to shallow water blackout; that method doesn't even require holding your breath when pressure is exerted.

I'm taking out the part explaining the method of "squeezing the heart area" because it doesn't make sense and is largely irrelevant (these kids aren't dying giving each other bear hugs; they're strangling themselves, so it's obvious which method they're using). I'm going to put a link to shallow water blackouts in the "see also" section. I think that should be sufficient. Kafziel 13:14, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• • I think the "heart squeezing" is a misunderstanding by the practitioners, and is merely a form of Compressive asphyxia, I seem to remember this happening when I was in Junior high, when a large person would stand 2 to 3 feet away from the participant and lean forward placing their weight on the participants chest.Compgeek86 06:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Ex nihil 00:57, 6 February 2006 (UTC) I think the problem is there are two completely different games here, one involves cutting blood supply by strangulation, the other involves self induced hypocapnia through hyperventilation. There are a number of dangerous children's games, perhaps we should handle them all under either a directory called "Dangerous children's games" of an article heading and then discuss each one seperately so the Choking game would only involve stragulation. We also need to be careful not to end up encouraging kids to try this stuff. What think?

I disagree for two reasons. First, the adjective "dangerous" denotes a certain point of view. Kids die playing football or hiking with the Boy Scouts; it would be a huge article if we tried to cover every "dangerous" game. In fact, considering that the fainting game has been played since time immemorial, by countless millions of children, the rate of fatalities is exceptionally low. I'm willing to bet that more children have died skiing than by playing the fainting game.

Secondly, it is not Wikipedia's purpose to dissuade anyone from doing anything. We are not a forum for public service announcements. The article should state the facts without any judgement upon the relative safety of the situation. There are plenty of other websites for that. The aspects of the game need to be presented in a balanced manner. Have people died doing it? Yes. Is it said to be enjoyable? Yes. It is not our job to keep kids from smoking, drinking, shooting heroin, or hanging themselves with belts.

There are already more than enough external links to extremely POV sites at the bottom of the article (which will probably also need to be removed or at least edited). The article needs to be kept neutral, as hard as that may be for families and friends of victims. Kafziel 03:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

• Ex nihil 03:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC) OK, I'll remove rhe Warning but want to reintate the other changes because as it stands the article is dangerously wrong.

I'll revert delete the warning and you can consider the changes.

I also just removed the warning and your re-write, for the same reasons as stated above. See the risk disclaimer; we do not put warnings on articles and we do not include personal judgements in article content. I'm sorry to have to remove all of your work, which you obviously put a lot of time and effort into, but there is no way any of those changes pass the POV test. It's clear from your user page that you have a personal interest in this subject, but I reiterate that this is not the forum for it. Kafziel 03:46, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The changes you reinstated are still not acceptable. Lines like, "killing and maiming many of them" are not neutral language. Inserting redundant external links at every victim's name is obviously POV, especially considering the number already at the bottom of the page. The article was clear and informative before these changes; now it's rambling and biased. It doesn't work. Kafziel 03:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I also disagree that there are two distinct games. There is one game, and several instances of kids doing it wrong and choking to death. The right way, the way it's been done forever, is to hyperventilate and cut off blood flow. Any variation is just due to bad form. Why didn't the game come to light back when I played it in the 80s? Or when my father played it in the 50s? Because we did it right, so nobody died. We didn't use ligatures and we didn't do it by ourselves. If you play football with your shoelaces tied together, you're not playing a "different version" of football; you're still playing football, you're just playing it wrong. That's your fault, not the fault of the game. I don't want to turn this into an edit war, but I want you to understand how all of your content seems very biased to me, and why I feel it needs to go back to the way it was. Kafziel 04:23, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

• Ex nihil 04:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC) Please delete the links you don't like but actually I did the links because previously it linked to things such as 2005 or United States of America or Idaho, which are quite meaningless. We do have a basic problem in that the article is talking about two quite distinct things going on and may perpetuate the schoolboy myth about shunting blood etc etc. There may be a better way to handle it but we need to seperate the mechanisms otherwise this article just perpetuates the ignorance. Let me de-emotionalise it a bit and then you have a go.
• Ex nihil 04:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)Ok, I'm done. I really couldn't find a lot emotional in it, I changed it but it really does kill and maim a lot of kids. Took out the external links in text. I think we should just leave it and put it to the public test. What do others think? Also, I would like to hear people's opinion on Warnings, in some cases they may not be out of place in an encyclopedia, someone just showed me one in Encyclopedia Britiannica, more a disclaimer, advice to combat is OK. We may actually have an obligation to put a warning in of some kind especialy if we have an expectation that kids will read it. The nature of Wikipedia notwithstanding.
• Ex nihil 04:57, 6 February 2006 (UTC) I've added headings to address your comment about structure, I think it's pretty clear now. Now I really am butting out until there is some reaction.

• • Links like "Idaho" and "United States of America" aren't meant to be directly relevant to this article. That's not why they're there. They're there in case someone is wondering where Idaho is. They shouldn't be removed. Links in the text should be relevant to he article otherwise the whole text will be linked, if they don't help the arguement along leave them out.
  • Naming a few random victims in the introductory paragraph, completely out of the blue, doesn't make any sense at all. To be brutally honest, I don't find any of their names relevant at all. Certainly not worthy of inclusion in the introduction to the game. Maybe you could make a separate article listing the victims, and just link to that from the "see also" section. That might be any easy way to remove a lot of the POV from here. I agree totally, they were there before I got there, I don't think they help but I don't want to change everything. I'd like to take them out but soemone else can
  • It's absurd to say that it copies Flatliners, when the game is far older than that movie. And, again, if the reference is going to be used, it should be linked (and spelled correctly). Of course the game is older than Flatliners but kids doing it now are saying they are currently motivated by this. There is no Flatliners article to link anyway. Please put it in
  • I fail to see how it is "dangerous" for kids to misunderstand the driving forces behind the game. If those things are "red herrings" and don't actually do anything, then they don't do anything and they're not dangerous. They're dying from belts around their necks, not from bear hugs. No, you don't get it. Strangulation is not the only thing they are doing, some versions of the game involve no stragulation at all, hyocapnia is killing them because they don't understand about that, they are dying from hypoxia induced by hypocapnia not always from strangulation. That's the point. We haven't said the hugs themselves are dangerous, only that they play a part after hyperventialtion in inducing breath hold they can black out with no hug, we used to play this game with bear hugs and we had just such silly explanations, that was a part of the ignorance and that is what is dangerous.
  • There already is a warning. As I said, it is at Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer. And it's really not an opinion, or open to public debate, whether or not a warning belongs here. It doesn't. I posted the link above for your reference about how Wikipedia is never censored for the protection of minors. That's an official policy, not a suggestion. Just like anything else on the internet, if you don't want your kids to see it, keep an eye on them. Kafziel 04:57, 6 February 2006 (UTC) OK

Ex nihil 06:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC) made the notes in bold above.

• Ex nihil 06:13, 6 February 2006 (UTC) I have gone back over your comment on 3 Feb and I think the real problem here is it's too confusing to combine the choking game with the fainting game. Both kill but they are both quite different in action. Perhaps they should be split and cross referenced. Strangulation is the simple one, not many kids do it because it is so extreme and looks dangerous, I'd never heard of it at school but I personally now know recent cases, the most insidious one is the hyperventilation one because it doesn't look bad, no ligaments, no strangles and the mechanism is too hard to grasp. What would you think of that?

Kafziel, try this. Find a friend to stand behind you to catch you should you fall, but have no contact at any time. Clear hard sharp objects from the vicinty and off youyr body. Hyperventilate hard until you feel lightheaded and have tingly fingers. Now hold your breath hard and wait. Does that explain things better? This is the fainting game, no strangulation, no pressure, but it also kills. Signing out now, need to do some work. I'll look in tomorrow but I'd like to get out of this now.

Some of your latest edits were good. I've made a few small changes to the overall article:

• I took out the names from the intro
• I took out some of the text about misunderstandings and red herrings; let's explain how it works, not how it doesn't work. How it doesn't work isn't relevant. There's no need to try to address every misconception, because by putting the correct information here, people can educate themselves.
• I removed small amounts of original research, like "This combination is particularly dangerous as recovery may be much delayed and the danger of brain damage or death greatly increased." There's no evidence that hard breathing combined with a sleeper hold is any more dangerous than one or the other on their own. (In fact, most sleeper holds are applied during wrestling matches or fights, when hard breathing is a given, and it's actually much safer than being knocked out with a fist.)
• I still don't agree with the wording on the two "different" types; saying that the use of thumb pressure on the carotid is "strangulation" is misleading; the most common meaning of strangulation is restricted breathing, and with manual carotid pressure there is no restriction on the windpipe at all. Anyone playing the "choking" game is just doing it wrong (there shouldn't be any choking involved at all) and a lot of the bad press is just a typical "adults don't get it" kind of thing. If not for all the press that misunderstands the game, this article would rightly be located at "fainting game"; paranoid parents have given "choking game" much more google hits, so that's the name it gets. You may be right about separating the articles between choking and fainting; the choking game is dangerous and pointless, the fainting game (played the right way) isn't. At least, as I said at the beginning, not any more dangerous than football, hiking, skiing, bicycling, skateboarding...

I've left that section alone for now, though, while I think of what needs to be done with it. Kafziel 13:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Other names

Would be nice to have references for these other names. Or at least cut them down a bit? - FrancisTyers 15:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Old Days

This is crazy, kids doing it with belts and ties and stuff... Remember back in the day where you held your breath and someone pushed you and you were only out for 10 seconds? No one died then... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.131.66.186 (talk • contribs) 01:44, 3 January 2006.

Cutting down Other Names list

Considering that children are using all of these alias' to refer to this activity, paring down the list might lessen to usefulness of the article. Although, it would be good a good idea to link these all in to either the Choking game or the Fainting game since those are the most commonly used names. (Yeahkt 19:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC))

I did a bit of research and could find no evidence for the existence of these names so I have deleted them. Some have suspiciously toptical origins derived from current PC games. I suggest that if you have a source or other evidence reinstate the name and drop a note here. Some of the remaining names are a bit suss too, someone might want to invesigate. Ex nihil 08:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I read about this in the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, and came here to see if there was an article on it. I wondered if this is actually a widespread phenomenon, or just a case of moral panic. The newspaper article "Deadly 'game' hits close to home", in a sidebar (which is in the paper edition, but not the online edition) cites The Sacramento Bee/New York Times in giving this list:

Airplaning, America dream game, Blackout, Breathplay, California high or California choke, Choke out, Cloud nine, Dream or dreaming, Fainting, Flatline or flatliner, Funky chicken, Gasp, Ghost, Hanging, Hawaiian high, Hyperventilation, Knockout, Pass out or passing out, Purple dragon, Natural high, Rising sun, Something dreaming, Space sowboy, Space monkey, Suffocation or suffocation roulette, Teen choking, Tingling.

The entire sidebar is a reprint from the Sacramento Bee article "A deadly game". The list of other names for the 'game' is a nearly verbatim copy of a list found at http://www.dylan-the-boy-blake.com/. Now for the punchline: That website cites, as one of its sources, this very article!

I was about to add some of those names back in, using the newspaper I have in front of me as a source, but now I'm not very sure about that, since Wikipedia may have been the publisher of first instance for some of those names. — MSchmahl… 19:11, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Removed California Blackout and Godd Child Game as no evidence offered or found. Add back in with evidence. Ex nihil 10:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Category

I know some people are going to flip out about the categorization of the fainting game as an "extreme sport", but please hear me out.

Categorizing it simply as "death" isn't accurate. Millions of people have played it (myself included) and are just fine. I'm sure more people have died fixing television sets, but Television isn't categorized as "death".

In its way, this is a game. Dangerous, yes. So is mumblety peg. But this seemed a little more extreme even than mumblety peg, and simply listing it as a game seemed not to do the article justice.

The fainting game isn't really a competition, so maybe "sport" is inaccurate, but bungee jumping isn't all that competitive either. Both are non-competitive, both are potentially deadly, so it makes sense to group them in a similar category. The fainting game is the very definition of extreme sports. For lack of a better category, that's where I've put it. Kafziel 20:24, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV?

This seems like a heavily biased article to me - apart from the method description, it's nearly entirely a warning-against. Plenty of games are dangerous, and the Wiki articles on them aren't devoted to advising against playing them. I'd like to see a neutrality-questioned tag on this, but I think I'm supposed to discuss it first, so here you are. Mushroom Pi 03:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Seems pretty factual to me, with the possible exception of the first sentence. "How the choking game works" is OK, the Education section is factual about education. This article once had a warning on it, which was removed. The fact is the activity kills and maims a lot of kids, I don't think there is an upside to it unl;ess its contrived and it would be irresponsible to portray it that way. Ex nihil 23:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Corrections

I made two minor corrections. In the explaination of the second mechanism, I removed step four ("respiratory alkalosis"), because respiratory alkalosis is defined as an increase in blood pH due to respiratory effects. Steps one through three are describing respiratory alkalosis, so therefore listing respiratory alkalosis as step four is redundant. If people want to put it back in for didactic purposes that's fine, but I think it's unneccessary.

The second correction I made was to remove the statement in the "other mechanisms" section that says that the carotid sinus is above the heart. This is not correct, they (R and L) are in the neck.

copyrighted image - fair use?

I read and was impressed by the Wikipedia's "Choking Game" article just a few days ago. Today (Tuesday 18 July 2006) I saw a picture from Reuters included in the Day In Pictures feature of sfgate.com[1] which would make an astounding illustration for the "Choking Game" article. The caption says "Panhandling with a twist: With help from his brother, a 12-year-old boy wraps thick steel wire around his neck to entice handouts from passersby in Wuhan, China." This picture made the phenomenon of voluntarily choking oneself and/or allowing oneself to be choked in public spectacularly real to me, and I feel that it should be seen in connection with the Wikipedia article, but after reading about copyright and fair use, I'm afraid to upload it. I would like to know what other, more knowledgeable and experienced Wikipedians think about this. Thanks! --A. L. "Tony" Biggs 15:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

• Drop an email to photo editor craig@sfgate.com saying can you please use beg4.jpeg from www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/dip?o=3&f=/g/archive/2006/07/17/dip.DTL to illustrate Wikipedia article [2] with appropriate attribution and link to sfgate. Ex nihil 08:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Unreferenced tag

I added the {{unreferenced}} tag to this article because it has no inline citations. All Featured Articles, Good Articles, and A-Class Articles require inline citations. This article is thorough, so to reach a higher level of quality, it should have in-line citations, even if they're all from the same book (e.g. California Gold Rush.) Jolb 18:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

2 forms

i don't know how i found this area anyway but i thought i would chip in that there are two forms of the game... how each affects you medically i'm unsure but when i was a kid we would hyperventilate while bent over with our butt on a wall and then stand up as quickly as possible, lean against the wall, with arms across the chest, then another person would use two hands and lean their entire body weight into the point where the arms were crossed over the chest, exerting extreme pressure on the thoracic cavity (not just a "bearhug"), until the person passed out. When I became a teenager a boyfriend and i were discussing it and he mentioned the occluded carotid version. He explained that the person would hyperventilate and then another person would occlude both carotids until the person passed out. It seems to me that latter would be the more dangerous version being that blood supply to the brain is cutoff, however the aforementioned method is quite effective and in my opinion more clearly produces the hallucinagenic, dreamlike, effects; the loss of conciousness in this version is brief (<45seconds)but seems to last forever in the dreamlike state and does not usually result in a headache or sense of impending doom. The latter method on the other hand (yes i've done both) is very brief in actuallity and in the way it feels, there is more of a flash of light (no dreamlike state or "visions"), a sense of impending doom, and horrible headache. Hope that helps. I just associated a third version called the natural whippit and it is actually done in a group. Acircle of people (6 or more) cross arms at the elbows with the forearm behind the head of the person beside you and form a circle then everyone leans back taking a deep breath in and then leans over as they exhale; this repeated 10x on the 11th inhale everyone inhales very rapidly and deeply, holds their breath, closes their eyes, and leans back as far as the can (the arms linked behind heads gives you something to lean into), then everyone in the whole group passes out and everybody ends up unconcious on top of one another, add any other mind altering substance and you've got quite a ride.216.61.127.241 07:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC) JB May 6, 2007—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.61.127.241 (talk) 07:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC).

POV

Undid delete of "It is also free, legal and appears innocuous to those without a proper understanding of the mechanism involved" made on grounds it was POV. The perception by potential users that it is harmless is a key factor in its adoption by children, this is relevant here and is a known problem in the deterent education of children in this matter. Ex nihil 00:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm just thinking about potential problems with this article, and your post here brings up some excellent points. This could be somewhat like bomb making articles, honestly, whereas just making the information itself has the potential to be harmful. Wikipedia is not censored, and doesn't side with any given side of an argument, but that just makes it all the more dangerous. I understand your point, but the act of removing the statement could be taken to be POV as well. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Why was this moved?

Why was the page moved from Choking game to Fainting game? Dismas|^(talk) 08:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• After all the discussion about renaming it on the deletion page Shem has just changed the name anyway! Having recovered from the shock I think I like the rename, it retains the information in the article while making it less attractive as an actvity to try. I renamed the subheading "How the choking game works' to match and I think it works better that way. I think it should be retained. I suspect that it tends to be called the Choking game in the US and the Fainting game in the UK as I remember it being called that at high school in the 1970s and I think I have references under that name going back to 1925 at my Dad's school. I'd say it should be kept this way. Ex nihil (talk) 11:28, 26 November 2007 (UTC)