Chinese teenager goes bankrupt after spending more than $ 37,000 on "girlfriend" live, Business Insider



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The teenage son of a couple spent almost all of his savings for his "girlfriend" online.
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A couple from east China was bankrupted by his teenage son after spending almost all of his savings (over $ 37,000) to try to win favor with his host, who would have been his girlfriend , the continental press.

When the 19-year-old, dubbed Lee, started working in Jinan, Shandong Province, he began spending a few thousand yuan a month on gifts for guests on the Juxing Kuwo website, Sina reported. News Wednesday.

The website is one of more than 150 social media sites in China where "hosts", mostly women, broadcast themselves singing, dancing or even just eating a meal to win "gifts" of the viewers – 80% of whom are men.

Popular hosts can earn more than 100,000 yuan ($ 14,300) a month in payouts.

Lee soon realized that he had to spend more to get the guests' attention, and he began to tap into the family's savings so he could offer them more expensive gifts.

"It was great to go to the website and have people call me" sir "as if I were super rich," Lee told Thepaper.cn.

But 260,000 yuan of the money Lee spent was drawn from his parents' savings – including parental loans – that they planned to use as a down payment for a new home, Sina News reported.

He fell in love with one particular guest and in August she asked him to pay more to boost his popularity on the site. In five days, Lee had spent 210,000 yuan to maintain his "relationship" with the host, according to the report.

His spending spree was only discovered on October 19, when his father attempted to transfer the money and found less than one yuan in his account.

Since then, Lee has been diagnosed with depression and a "low IQ" of 75. Despite several attempts to negotiate with Juxing Kuwo, the family has not been able to recover the money, according to Sina News.

At the same time, the "girlfriend" to whom Lee was speaking on the WeChat social network denied being a live broadcast host, reported Thepaper.cn.

With 34 million more men than women in the country, single men have turned to the current to face loneliness. The management companies have capitalized on the willingness to spend for some people, creating studios where women live three times a day.

YY and Momo, two of the largest live streaming platforms, have market capitalization of $ 6 billion and $ 9 billion, respectively.

Deloitte estimates that live broadcasting platforms in China, including e-sport, will generate $ 8 billion in direct revenue this year. The number of people viewing live streams is expected to reach 456 million, more than half of the number of Internet users in China.

But the industry has also faced Chinese government crackdown over the past year. China now requires anyone streaming live to have a license and platforms to censor live broadcasts.

Earlier this year, China controlled over 5,000 live streaming applications and blocked 370 for illegal content such as pornography or "crime-inducing content". China Daily reported. Some of the most popular websites such as Huajiao and Douyu have also been the subject of an investigation for pornographic content. Meanwhile, the Meipai application, live from the Hong Kong-based Meitu, has banned minors as a result of a scandal involving elementary schoolchildren who broadcast nudity online.

SOUTH AMERICAN POST OF CHINA

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