Can I find eternal love... online?
In recent days, the incident of "Hong Ty Nam Kinh" - a 38-year-old man pretending to be a girl to deceive 1,691 young men who came to the house to have sex, secretly filmed and distributed sensitive clips has become the focus of public opinion.
According to Sanli News Network, for many years, the man named Hong Ty has appeared on social networking platforms with the image of older women being carefully decorated, speaking gently, often livestreaming to chat, confide and create an image that many men easily trust.
According to information from Chinese police, Hong Ty proactively made appointments to meet young men, offering conditions for "free sex" if the opponent brought some simple gifts such as cooking oil, fruit, etc.
The shocking incident was a warning bell about the gullibility and blindness of a part of social media users.
However, the fact that more than 1,600 men were scammed by a girl pretencer also raises the question: What do social media users expect in an unknown world that can turn real into fake, fake into real?
Gong Haiyan - founder of China's most popular online dating platform Jiayuan.com - believes that the biggest advantage of online dating is that each person can meet a large number of potential " gone".
However, in the virtual world, where everyone struggles to find eternal love as quickly as possible, the desire is unreasonable but very real.
From the pressure to get married, have children, settle down, many young people are forced by their families to date and find matchmakers to find partners.
Taking advantage of the desire to find a partner of many young people, scams are becoming more and more sophisticated, targeting the victims' psychology.
In the era of an explosion of dating apps, people tend to be more picky and demanding than in real life, because they have a mentality of being picky about many potential candidates. "People today can easily develop unrealistic expectations for a partner," said expert James Houran.
Loneliness becomes fear
In big cities, work pressure, living away from home, expensive costs... push people into a deep depression of loneliness after every long day of work. Strict "standards" of society such as getting married, buying a house, buying a car, having children... make many young people lost and hopeless.
Sociologist Trent Bax wrote in his book China's Youth and Internet Addicts: "Loness plays an important 'drive force' for young people in China, especially their first child, to access the Internet."
Duan Xinxing, a psychology professor at the University of Mining and Technology of China - who focuses on research on youth development, calls loneliness the disease of modern life.
The more technology develops, the more people rely on it and reduce social interaction. When they do not interact with each other, they become more lonely and "attached" to virtual connections online.
Tantan, one of China's largest dating apps, claims to have more than 300 million users, nearly 80% of whom are Gen Z.
According to Sixth Tone, dating apps in China are a fertile land for harassment, scams and fake news. But they bring something that young people crave: anonymousness.
