Key Takeaways
- A Chinese man drained his family’s savings in order to donate them to a streamer.
- After being cut off by his family, the man turned to theft, stealing around $316,000 worth of copper materials and sustaining himself on steamed buns in order to keep donating as much as possible.
- The man turned himself in after local police began investigating the thefts. He confessed to donating approximately $550,000 in total, all in hopes that the unidentified streamer would call him “brother.”
A Chinese man has reportedly drained his family savings and then resorted to crime in order to keep donating money to a female streamer that he grew obsessed with. Some media in the Far Eastern country have labeled this unusual episode as exemplifying the growing problem of streaming addiction.
Top content creators on Twitch have been making thousands of dollars per hour as of early 2022, with an August 2024 Statista study suggesting that the streaming market has only grown since then. Virtually every remotely popular streaming platform offers native support for donations nowadays, with most taking a cut from such transactions.
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The widespread practice of donating money to streamers has recently attracted some public scrutiny in China, following reports that a man with the surname Hong, based out of Ningbo in Zhejiang province, drained his family’s savings in order to support a content creator that he became obsessed with. As reported by The Star, Hong donated more than 4 million yuan—the equivalent of over $552,000—to an unidentified female streamer over the course of 2024. Roughly 40% of that figure was taken from his family’s savings accounts, from which he was eventually cut off, as per the same source.
Chinese Man Admits to 40 Thefts Motivated by Streamer Obsession
After his access to family savings was restricted, Hong is said to have turned to stealing copper and selling it to waste recycling stations. He was reportedly able to do so because he worked in the hardware industry, with his everyday responsibilities involving delivery of various materials. He was caught after a local factory noticed that it was missing a sizable quantity of materials, reporting the issue to Hengjie police on October 15. It’s presently unclear whether local authorities completed their subsequent investigation because Hong didn’t take long to turn himself in after it started. He admitted to committing over 40 thefts between May and October 2024, stealing materials worth a total of 2.3 million yuan (~$316,000).
Copper Thief Wanted the Streamer He Was Obsessed With to Call Him ‘Brother’
Elaborating on the motivation behind his downward spiral, Hong insisted that he had no desire to see the streamer face-to-face. “I didn’t want to meet her; I just wanted to hear her call me ‘brother,’” he reportedly told the police. At the height of his obsession, Hong said he was forced to eat nothing but steamed buns just so that he could keep donating as much money as possible to the streamer.
I didn’t want to meet her; I just wanted to hear her call me “brother.”
Over 1 million yuan (~$138,000) that Hong obtained by stealing copper materials has already been recovered and returned to the factory targeted by his thefts. It’s currently unclear how much of that figure was refunded directly by the streamer he was obsessed with, and how much was retrieved before he was able to donate it.
Source: Statista
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