Jiang A-po, a 70-year-old living in Shanghai, was known for her thriftiness: she would haggle over groceries, calculate her water and electricity bills carefully, and buy clothes for her son that cost only tens of yuan. Yet half a year ago, she spent all of her son's savings and her own life's pension in livestream rooms, tipping two male hosts who called her "family."
Since November of last year, Jiang A-po started sitting in front of her phone every day, watching a young male streamer dance. When the streamer said, "Sister, you are my eternal guardian angel," she refused to log off even at midnight. At most, she once tipped 180,000 yuan (about 104,400 ringgit) in a single night: she didn’t know how many 3,000 yuan (about 1,740 ringgit) "Peach Blossom Islands" she sent. She gave everything in support of the streamer’s PK battles, just to help him reach the annual leaderboard.
When Jiang A-po’s son, Zhan Li, hurried back home from out of town and checked the family’s bank cards, there wasn’t even enough left to pay the electricity bill. In total, 3.36 million yuan (about 1.95 million ringgit) was all tipped away by Jiang A-po to two male streamers. Of that, the dancing streamer alone received 2.8 million yuan (about 1.62 million ringgit).
They filed police reports, complaints, appealed to the platform—so far to no avail. Zhan Li has yet to recover the tipped money, and Jiang A-po has been diagnosed with depression and anxiety.
Hu Liangyi, a lecturer at the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics Journalism School, describes elderly people who are obsessed with tipping in livestream rooms as "floating grass"—people in need of emotional purpose.
"When a real person suddenly appears in her life and provides her with warmth she's never felt before—and when that warmth can even be modulated by her own financial power—it forms an emotional dependency." Hu Liangyi has observed that more elderly users like Jiang A-po are appearing in livestreaming rooms; the harm of huge amounts of gifting to them is not just material, but also emotional.
Zhan Li left for western provinces for work in July last year. That same July, Jiang A-po discovered a young male streamer dancing beside a red wall in a livestream. The streamer was handsome, danced beautifully, and caught her attention. His account showed he graduated from the Central University for Nationalities dance program and was a winner of the Lotus Dance Award along with various other awards.
Jiang A-po told China Newsweek that after following the streamer’s account, she made her first tip, then became more and more invested every day, watching two or three hours every night. Unconsciously, Jiang A-po also began to increase the amount she tipped.
At first, Jiang A-po just watched the streamer dance. Later, she joined in the streamer's daily essential activity: livestream PK battles. The rules are simple: two to four streamers connect, and during the set time, whoever receives more gifts wins. The losing side accepts a "punishment," usually doing some funny moves, singing a song they don't want to sing, or in exaggerated cases, writing big characters on their face.
Jiang A-po didn’t understand concepts like “traffic” or “algorithm,” she simply didn’t want to see the streamer she liked punished. Of course, she often heard her favorite streamer plead: "Family, help me guard the stage!"
After witnessing his mother's huge tips, Zhan Li began seeking advice from various lawyers on how to recover the money she had gifted away. However, he found that after chat records were deleted, "even if you call the police or file a lawsuit, you only have testimonies." He wanted to recover the chat history, but realized it wasn’t that simple: "This is very complicated; you have to go through the public security bureau for everything."