Staged short dramas earn clicks, tears, money with fake stories

Today people of all ages and professions are tickled by short videos. When you visit a public restroom, you are likely to hear peals of hysteric, canned laughter from the squatters' mobile phones. The satisfaction is cheap, fleeting and decidedly in bad taste.

But the business-savvy are also warming to the emotional and financial value of a good, sad story, with its potency for tears and online traffic, which can translate to profitable e-commerce deals. The more susceptible viewers tend to shift into a more charitable frame of mind when confronting scenes depicting depths of suffering, misery or perseverance.

Take Xiao Song, said to be a single-parent deliveryman rushing about with takeout orders, with his daughter in tow on a motorbike. After a hard day's hustle, Xiao Song murmured, "Now we have finished our last order for the day. I have handled 43 orders today ... but the kid's face was scraped in an accident ... Do you still feel hurt, my darling daughter? Do tell papa about it!"

This heartrending scene earned Xiao Song 400,000 likes, with many viewers leaving solicitous messages about the current conditions of the poor girl, not knowing Xiao Song is not a single-parent, nor a deliveryman. On the strength of over 100 similarly made out videos, "Xiao Song" had acquired fans to a tune of 400,000, until he was recently investigated.

Nor was this an isolated case. Deliverymen have became such a favored persona in tearjerking short dramas, Meituan, a takeout platform, has reported to the police dozens of similar cases involving influencers masquerading as deliverymen since last year.

Behind all this show are MCN entities with sophisticated, professional teams adept at all the details of the makeup show. They are acutely aware of the emotional potency of the right kind of personas, having people responsible for crafting the personas, writing the script, and shooting.

Those pathetic scenes, in portraying people confronting depths of hardships and despair, easily draw public attention, attracting clicks and internet traffic in a short time, which can be monetized in the form of advertisement revenues and other business deals.

By September, nationally the police had handled over 27,000 cases, involving 31,000 people, which led to a suspension of over 199,000 social media accounts.

Other favored personas include impoverished children in Liangshan in backwater Sichuan Province who have dropped out of school to take care of siblings, or simple peasants burdened with farm produce trekking long, hard roads to a market place.

"Once a sort of video went viral, you would soon witness a host of similar videos, obviously hasty copycats," said one MCN insider. "To make sure people take it for real, some videos choose not to label it as 'Fictitious'."

A v-logger revealed that staging such a performance can be quite affordable. Take the instance of a takeout man. All it takes is to purchase a uniform, and then a drama can be created using a mobile phone.

At a small price, scripts can be procured online, from shops specializing in video dramas ranging in category from the emotional, the inspiring, to rural topics. One item bundling up 10,000 scripts sell at only 6.6 yuan (90 US cents). There are also premium tailor-made services whereby scripts are written in light of specific client requirements and solely purveyed to a specific customer.

Such falsified dramas, by disseminating misinformation and disinformation, are hugely disruptive to the cyberspace and social order.

In a nationally coordinated campaign launched in April, such made up videos aiming for clicks and fans were among those singled out for a crackdown.

But eradicating this shady production chain would require greater regional coordination. For instance, in cases where videos are made in one location and then published in another area, the issue of jurisdiction might lead to delayed regulation, or differences over the regulatory protocol that should be applied.

Insiders also believe that, given the rampant falsehoods circulating, the only effective means is to hold platforms responsible for the falsehoods they host.