"Delivering Food with Kids" May Be Staged: Economic Daily Warns Against Fake Heartstring Videos Draining Social Trust

Recent typical cases show that some "heart-wrenching stories" about food delivery riders may actually be staged. These fabricated narratives crowd out the space for genuine hardship, interfering with society's ability to identify and respond to real problems. Cracking down on fake sob stories protects the recognition capacity of the social assistance system and keeps a channel open for those who truly need help.

A mother rider carrying a lunch box, with a baby just a few months old hanging in a pouch on her chest; a father rider placing a foam box on the scooter踏板 with his little child asleep inside... Seeing such scenes, who wouldn't feel for these struggling parents and pitiful children?

But what if you were told that such "delivering food with kids" scenes might be staged fakes?

Recently, Jiaozuo police in Henan province reported a typical case: netizens surnamed Jing and Kang self-directed and self-performed scripts titled "I Deliver Food with My Child in Henan" and "Single Mom Delivering Food." They posted over 90 pity-baiting videos that accumulated more than 10 million total shares, likes, and comments. The pair exploited public sympathy to gain followers and traffic, and were ultimately subjected to administrative penalties in accordance with the law.

This is far from the first time. From "single father delivering orders with a sick child on his back" to "female rider putting a baby in the delivery box," and most recently the platform-verified false account "Guizhou Xiaohong 6868," the tearjerker script of "delivering food with kids" keeps being replayed.

Why are so many people keen to impersonate delivery riders? Not because they love the job, but because creating a "rider persona" offers far greater rewards than risks.

Crowdsourced delivery riders can register and accept orders through a simple process. On e-commerce platforms, a yellow or orange vest costs just 9.9 yuan ($1.37), and a full outfit runs only one to two hundred yuan ($14-28). Add an electric scooter, and a "rider persona" is established.

Riders brave wind and rain and work hard, easily evoking public empathy. Some fabricators have precisely seized on this, deliberately designing tearjerker content. From fake personas and fake props to fake scripts, from individual packaging to MCN agency operations — behind the fake riders, a gray-to-black industrial chain of "fabrication → follower-grabbing → monetization" has taken shape.

Take the recently exposed "Guizhou Xiaohong 6868" for example. Verification found that after registering as a crowdsourced rider, he logged in only 5 days in over 90 days and completed just 19 orders — yet he posted 15 videos of himself delivering food with a child on his back. He simultaneously opened a storefront for product promotion and regularly started live streams. Delivering orders was a side hustle; making videos for product promotion was his real business. Making kind people cry, share, and hit "like" — all for the sake of commerce.

When a certain theme is repeatedly used as a staged script, what we should be wary of is more than just "being fooled again." Fabricated content is squeezing out the attention space for genuine hardships, disrupting society's ability to recognize and respond to real problems. This is the most alarming aspect of "delivering food with kids" being turned into a business.

Food delivery riders serve millions of households and are an indispensable part of urban life. Accordingly, cities have a responsibility to provide them with resting places in wind and rain, and to offer safety nets and support in times of difficulty. The prerequisite for all this is that society can see the real them and recognize genuine needs.

Short video platforms have hundreds of millions of users, with many people spending hours scrolling every day. They aggregate massive attention and could serve as the most sensitive "sensor" of this social assistance system. But fake sob stories blur that "vision" — when real suffering and fictional scripts are mixed together and pushed to the public, those who truly need help become submerged in the traffic泡沫, waiting in vain for attention.

Cracking down on fake pity stories is not about picking fights with a few influencers. It is about protecting the recognition capability of the social assistance system, and keeping a visible channel open for the millions who truly need help.

Of course, governance cannot rely solely on delivery platforms. Video platforms need to optimize their content review mechanisms and algorithmic recommendation logic to prevent "pity-baiting" content from repeatedly becoming viral hits. Regulators also need to continue intensifying penalties against violative accounts and the MCN agencies behind them. Since the start of this year, China's Cyberspace Administration has guided website platforms to clean up over 520,000 violative short videos involving staged shoots and other fakes, and severely punished more than 68,000 violative accounts. But each case reminds us that governance is far from the point where we can relax.

The value of the rider profession stems from the sweat and dedication of millions of workers. If we truly care about them, we should stop fabricating sob stories. Instead, we should push for better social security, focus on road safety, and open up career development pathways — that is the most meaningful respect we can show to workers.