At first, the show appeared like any other livestream on a Chinese shopping platform. A man and a woman stood in a packed warehouse, ready to present a series of products to the camera. Then, the yelling started.

The two hosts began a furious argument. The woman accused the man of cheating on her, but the man refused to give ground. As the situation escalated, the man pushed the woman to the floor, causing the camera to shake violently.

Seconds later, the woman jumped back on her feet, a bottle of sunscreen in her hand. Staring down the camera, she made a shocking announcement.

“My family is falling apart, and I’m closing down the store,” she cried. “I’m selling off the remaining stock at rock-bottom prices. This sunscreen is just 3.88 yuan ($0.55), and there are only three left.”

It may sound like an outtake from a bad soap opera, but melodramatic scenes like this one are becoming a real problem in China’s fast-growing livestream e-commerce market.

Livestream e-commerce has emerged as a massive industry in China over the past few years, with nearly 600 million consumers now buying goods via livestreams. The market was estimated to be worth 4.9 trillion yuan ($691 billion) in 2023, up 35% year over year.

But as competition on China’s live commerce platforms get ever more intense, livestreamers are increasingly employing underhanded methods to gain an edge. In some cases, hosts are even faking serious life crises to win their viewers’ sympathy and convince them to make purchases.

The sob stories range from impending divorces, to children who have fallen severely ill and relatives who have been abducted. Though some platforms post messages warning that some scenarios may be dramatized, in many cases large numbers of viewers believe the stories and express sympathy for the hosts in the comments.

The issue has attracted nationwide attention this week, after state media outlet China Youth Daily published an investigation on the growing number of livestreamers employing “tragic” storylines to manipulate viewers and drive sales.

Peng Li, a consumer from the southwestern city of Chengdu, told China Youth Daily that her mother had been duped by livestream hosts on several occasions. The hosts reportedly begged their viewers for help, leading Peng’s mother to buy a series of mediocre products out of sympathy.

According to Peng, her mother had even ended up purchasing three bottles of shampoo from one host for over 300 yuan, a highly inflated price. The family was still unsure if it was possible to get a refund, she added.

Inside China’s live commerce market, an increasingly elaborate and organized cottage industry has emerged to create fabricated personal tragedies for livestream hosts. Industry insiders told China Youth Daily that agencies, hosts, actors, and scriptwriters increasingly work together to craft and perform these scenes.

“The more melodramatic the story, the more twists and turns in the plot, the more traction it will get, making it easier to entice viewers into making purchases,” one insider explained.

Another industry insider, surnamed Song, told China Youth Daily that livestreamers usually update their scripts on a regular basis to keep their performances fresh. “If a script is performed too many times, it becomes too fake and the audience gets tired of it,” Song said.

Livestreamers using fake life tragedies usually target the “local” section of social platforms like Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, according to Song. The main reason for this is that viewers are more likely to trust a host who is speaking their local dialect.

Chinese authorities are growing increasingly concerned by such scams. In late October, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a two-month campaign to clamp down on misinformation in social platforms’ local sections. These investigations focused on influencers using fabricated personas and tragic narratives to manipulate viewers’ emotions, according to the body.

In August, a high court in the eastern Jiangxi province published a report on 10 exemplary cases it had handled in 2023, which offered insights into how Chinese law enforcement is dealing with the issue.

One of the cases involved an influencer surnamed Jiao, who had been charged with fraud for telling his followers that he was trying to help rescue a little girl, named Lingling, from her evil stepmother.

Jiao reportedly claimed that the stepmother was holding Lingling and her biological mother captive in her home. He had led several rescue missions to try and convince the stepmother to release them, but all these efforts had failed. He urged his followers to help him continue his work, adding that Lingling and her mother were being held in dire conditions.

These entreaties eventually led one viewer, surnamed Xie, to purchase over 10,000 yuan worth of goods in an effort to support Jiao’s campaign. But Xie later realized their mistake and decided to take legal action.

The court in Jiangxi ultimately found Jiao guilty of intentionally engaging in fraudulent behavior, and ordered him to reimburse Xie for the goods and pay them compensation worth three times that amount.

As such scams become more common, consumers appear to be becoming increasingly wary of livestreamers with tales of woe. Liu Yiqing, a 30-year-old from Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that she’d encountered several livestreamers trying to exploit personal tragedies to sell products.

“Their exaggerated acting and manipulative tactics are off-putting,” said Liu. “My parents might sometimes be convinced to make purchases out of sympathy, but I always intervene to prevent them falling for it.”

(Header image: A screenshot of a news report on state broadcaster CCTV showing a livestreamer claiming to have suffered a personal tragedy. From Weibo)