AI-generated dramas used to sell low-cost products on social platforms

AI-generated melodramatic stories are being used on social platforms to drive sales. Hosts promote products such as honey and belt buckles by fabricating interview-style content in the style of "Legendary Stories," such as the touching tale of Uncle Wang guarding honey in the mountains for 20 years. These videos exploit the emotional empathy of older audiences, packaging syrup costing just a few yuan per jin as precious treasures. Some account protagonists are AI-generated characters, like “Aliyah,” a fictional Black woman who supposedly sells tens of thousands of units monthly. Merchants can produce hundreds of videos in just three days, with the same AI-generated actor portraying multiple roles. While technology lowers the barrier to deception, it is eroding societal trust—when a genuine entrepreneur next shares their authentic story, viewers will instinctively doubt its legitimacy.

Article author and source: CoolPlay Lab

How many elderly people are being drained of their savings by AI-generated melodramatic stories?

Have you ever watched the old TV show called "Legendary Stories"?

In the show, host Jin Fei sits behind a table and calmly recounts bizarre, twist-filled true stories: a husband drove a 10-centimeter iron nail into his wife’s head to claim a massive insurance payout; a pregnant woman, eight months along, was found dead by the river in a park, and hours later her husband was found stabbed three times at the entrance of a pig farm; an 11-year-old boy vanished mysteriously, sparking widespread rumors—six months later, the truth uncovered by police left everyone stunned.

That’s basically how it goes—these stories once had countless viewers glued to their TVs, complaining about how absurd they were while still watching every episode without missing a single one, and afterward, they’d sigh and wonder: Is this a decline in morality, or a distortion of human nature?

Now, you don’t need to turn on the TV to binge-watch these dramatic stories! On social media, a group of accounts post content like this: “My Parents Sold My Brother to Pay Off Gambling Debts—So I Sent Them to Prison Myself,” “My Father Fell Ill, but My Daughter at Tsinghua University Didn’t Care,” “I Quit My Stable Job to Return to the Village—Then My Mother Kneeled Before Me, but I Refused to Open the Door.”

Compared to Jin Fei, they produce far more content, updating dozens of posts daily; their stories are more dramatic and emotionally gripping, targeting precisely the psychological triggers that excite audiences; and their monetization pathways are much broader—many viewers immediately get inspired to place orders for four pounds of honey.

When you come across a video like this, don't you also find yourself unable to stop watching?

Uncle Wang, you’re the most mysterious person I’ve ever met—you’ve hidden in the mountains for a full 20 years, with no ID, no phone, and no way to be contacted. The villagers say you’re a fugitive, but I checked, and you’re not. So what exactly are you hiding from? Why have you been hiding for 20 years?

Yes! What is Uncle Wang, who looks so ordinary, hiding? Now Uncle Wang is about to begin telling his legendary story.

Uncle Wang, with tears in his eyes, began to speak: In 1999, a young man saved my life. He said, “Uncle Wang, please guard something for me for 20 years—it’ll be payment for my life.” He gave me an item and asked me to keep it hidden in the mountains, so I stayed there for 20 years until I finally came out this year.

What exactly is so mysterious? The host, like a comedic foil, picked up the thread at the right moment: “Who is that young man who saved your life? Why did he ask you to guard something in the remote mountains?”

Uncle Wang said that back then, he was a construction contractor working on a site when he accidentally fell from the third floor; his savior used his body to shield him from the falling rebar. “He broke three ribs, and I stayed in the hospital for three months—he stayed in the next room for five months.”

At the time of discharge, the rescuer held Brother Wang’s hand and shared a secret he wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to tell him: his grandfather had been a herbalist who discovered a beehive on a cliff over 2,000 meters above sea level. The grandfather collected some honey, ate it, and subsequently enjoyed excellent health, living to the age of 98. Before passing away, he revealed this secret to his grandson, telling him it was a gift from nature and must be guarded by someone with integrity, to be used only when truly needed to save a life.

It’s truly moving—the audience below was already wiping away tears as they listened.

But that’s not all—Uncle Wang continued, “After going into the mountains, I found a cave, cleared some land nearby, grew vegetables, raised chickens, and hunted. I spent every day tending to my beehives. Everyone thought I had vanished from the world.”

Twenty years passed, and this spring, a stranger found Uncle Wang’s cave, saying his savior was gravely ill and the doctors predicted he had less than three months to live. At that moment, the savior remembered the honey left by his grandfather and asked Uncle Wang to harvest it and deliver it to him.

When I heard the news, I burst into tears. I’ve guarded the mountains for 20 years, all for this moment. Then, Uncle Wang, in his sixties, risked his life to harvest the honey. The honey was on a cliff—extremely dangerous. Hanging from a hemp rope, Uncle Wang gritted his teeth and descended, with a bottomless abyss beneath his feet. It took him a full three days to collect all the honey from the hive (we don’t know if he was stung by the bees).

Uncle Wang brought the honey back to the city and gave it to his savior. When the savior took a spoonful of honey, something completely unexpected happened! “Host, I witnessed it with my own eyes—he started running a fever and broke out in sweat immediately after eating it. The doctors were terrified and wanted to give him a fever-reducing injection. But Lin Tao stopped them, saying this was a positive reaction.”

After eating it for seven days, he began to improve; three months later, the doctor held his test results, his hands trembling, and said it was a medical miracle.

At this point, Uncle Wang’s task of guarding the honey was complete. But Uncle Wang had a kind heart—he wondered if the honey, which had saved his benefactor, could also help more people. So he discussed with his benefactor the idea of selling the remaining honey.

The benefactor is also a kind person—he said sure! His grandfather had harvested a lot of honey back then, and there are still hundreds of pounds left! (Why didn’t you say so earlier? Now Uncle Wang had to risk being stung, hanging from a rope deep inside the beehive.)

Uncle Wang isn’t trying to make a profit—these honey jars are just $69.9 for four pounds, with free shipping to your door. “This is draining the mountains’ stockpile, so hurry up and click to order through the window—once it’s gone, you’ll kick yourself!”

Even a dog would shake its head in disbelief—no drama series would dare script something this wild. This ten-minute video features Uncle Wang speaking with such emotion that the audience below is in tears; yet you and I, after watching, have just wasted 600 seconds of our lives—and possibly $69.90 as well.

The author’s homepage storefront lists this honey, which has sold 25,000 units—each weighing four jin, totaling 100,000 jin—far exceeding the “a few hundred jin left” that Uncle Wang mentioned, by hundreds of times.

Moreover, the honey is shipped from Zhengzhou, Henan, where there are no cliffs at an altitude of 2,000 meters, making it even more unlikely to produce high-altitude honey at 2,000 meters.

It’s outrageous, right? But many people really do believe and place orders—they might be our grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other relatives who, after watching the video, are deeply moved and want to experience the miracle of the mountains themselves.

Uncle Wang is a sneaky old man! At his age, he’s still deceiving people—doesn’t he worry about tripping and falling? Of course he doesn’t, because Uncle Wang is an AI-powered digital being!

On social media, there are countless similar videos that mimic the format of programs like "Focus Interview," featuring protagonists narrating their bizarre experiences in the first person: stranded on a snowy mountain, sold to a foolish husband, raised by wolves—each video opens with an irresistible hook.

The story themes vary widely, but the plots all follow roughly the same template: begin by portraying a protagonist in a desperate situation, betrayed by a loved one and fighting for survival; midway, create a turning point with a “miraculous survival”; and at the end, reveal the true intent—pushing products like honey, farm eggs, and lotus root powder, because these items have low unit prices, low return rates, and are popular among middle-aged and elderly buyers.

Actually, if you look closely, it’s quite strange—the author reused the same AI actor across multiple videos to cut costs. Yet many elderly viewers, after watching these sensational videos, impulsively place orders without having time to verify the truth.

Or perhaps they never even considered that such videos could be fabricated: the professional studio backdrop, the host, the live audience, and the interspersed authentic footage—how could this be fake?

Technology itself is neither good nor evil, but using it to deceive the elderly is despicable. At 69.9 yuan for four pounds, the honey comes to less than 18 yuan per pound. In contrast, common honey on the market typically retails between 30 and 60 yuan per pound, and pure wild honey costs even more.

Honey priced at just a few yuan per jin is below the production cost of most genuine honey; much of it is artificially blended by unscrupulous sellers using corn syrup, rice syrup, flavorings, and thickeners, offering no nutritional value whatsoever.

Now, they are packaged as rare mountain treasures through a myriad of emotional AI stories—raised by a wolf child who grew to 1.8 meters tall, or saving stranded mountaineers in desperate survival situations. A completely ordinary syrup has been gold-plated with fabricated tears.

The barrier to creating such AI videos has been lowered to an extreme level; with the help of AI tools, hundreds of videos can theoretically be produced in a single day, filling up a profile homepage in just three days.

The platform is also taking action. In September last year, Douyin E-commerce announced a round of governance results, removing and banning a number of merchants and influencers who abused AI technology. However, the speed at which new accounts reappear under different identities always outpaces the rate of enforcement.

Switch accounts—Uncle Wang becomes Aunt Zhao, and they can keep playing the sob story to sell honey.

The "Snow Mountain Honey Survival Stories" on TikTok are already outrageous enough, right? But in reality, AI-generated sob stories know no borders—similar plots are unfolding simultaneously around the world.

Over the past few years, a unique group of accounts has emerged on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook—some are elderly artisans with gray hair, others are young entrepreneurs who have experienced business failure, some are single mothers struggling to make a living while raising their children, and others are young girls living in impoverished areas who craft goods by hand.

For example, this Black woman who says her name is Aliyah posted a video in March of herself crying into the camera, with the caption: “Even though I’m a Black woman, I believe white women would stop for 13 seconds to save my belt buckle business.”

Her account has 40,000 followers; her most popular video received 814,000 likes and 6.5 million views, with many netizens commenting that they strongly support her career. She also used AI to generate photos of herself on her website, stating that each of her belt buckles is handcrafted, unique, personalized, durable, and crafted with great care.

In fact, Aliyah does not exist at all, and the author cannot even make crafts by hand—his products are bulk-purchased from wholesalers. The same belt buckle featuring sunflower patterns and detachable knife decorations can be found on the fast-fashion platform Shein, priced at only about one-fourth of the price in his videos.

The extra premium is called a "stupidity tax," right? These accounts love casting Black people as the main characters in their scripts: Black elderly men, Black women, Black children—telling stories of financial hardship, struggling businesses, and needing help, then conveniently adding the product to the cart. "Me, Black, send money."

In these stories, Black identity is a prewritten plot element that precisely aligns with audience psychology—people feel that by simply clicking a button and spending a small amount of money, they are actively opposing racism and supporting entrepreneurship among marginalized communities.

However, repeatedly portraying Black individuals as the protagonists in a “victim” narrative reinforces another racial stereotype—that Black people are always in need of rescue, vulnerable, and waiting for sympathy. What appears to be assistance is actually exploitation, and even Black individuals themselves dislike it.

On TikTok, a Super Mario-themed resin lamp was simultaneously sold by numerous accounts, each portraying different personas—designer, small shop owner, dad—but all using identical studio backdrops, photography poses, and sales scripts: “You’re a 32-year-old man, yet you’re making Mario lamps for your kids in your bedroom.”

Comments repeatedly contain phrases like: “Your work is amazing.” “I’ll support you right away.” “Don’t give up on your dreams.”

What a dream! These AI people are selling counterfeit products.

Looking back at decades of advertising history, traditional marketing has most favored cultivating authority: doctors tell you what to buy, experts tell you what to believe, and professors explain how advanced a product is—the core strategy of advertising has always been to gain trust by establishing a professional image.

Today’s AI-driven shopping accounts take a different approach: they no longer emphasize authority, but instead highlight vulnerability; they no longer say “trust me,” but rather “help me.”

This is a very typical shift in the age of social media. In an environment of information overload, people naturally remain cautious toward authority; experts, institutions, and brands can no longer command the unconditional trust they once did. Yet at the same time, people’s capacity for empathy toward individual persons continues to grow—images of someone crying, someone suffering misfortune, or someone who appears to need help trigger emotional responses far more readily than any expert credential.

It targets a mechanism long validated by psychology—the identifiable victim effect. Research shows that people tend to remain relatively calm when confronted with abstract data. “Tens of millions of children worldwide are suffering from hunger”—this vast number is so overwhelming it becomes emotionally numbing and rarely triggers strong personal reactions. But if phrased differently: “Twelve-year-old Jimmy didn’t have dinner today because chronic malnutrition keeps him falling behind in school”—the situation changes instantly. Abstract statistics become a real person, and empathy is immediately activated.

For this reason, merchants are increasingly favoring the "victim narrative": elderly artisans on the verge of losing their livelihoods, single mothers struggling to get by, small shop owners being oppressed by capital, and young people with disabilities in need of everyone’s help.

In the past, creating this kind of content came with costs—suitable real-life cases, professional actors, believable personas—each step required money and time. Today, AI has drastically reduced these costs to near nothing. A honey seller can generate dozens of versions of melodramatic stories, each featuring a “specific person” who deserves your help.

Twenty years ago, one of the key reasons "Legendary Stories" attracted audiences was that people were willing to believe the narratives presented on camera. Everyone knew the show would create suspense and amplify dramatic conflict, but most people assumed that behind these stories were real people and genuine experiences.

Today, stories are still everywhere—only the storytellers have changed. Uncle Wang, who sells honey, might be AI-generated; Aliyah, who sells belt buckles, may not exist at all; and the craftsperson busy at their workbench could be nothing more than an AI-generated image paired with a drop-shipped product.

What AI creates is increasingly indistinguishable from reality—real wrinkles, tears, sighs. When all of this can be mass-produced, trust becomes the truly scarce resource.

A merchant successfully sold hundreds of thousands of pounds of honey by fabricating a story, but the loss extends far beyond consumers’ dozens of dollars—it erodes trust in others. Next time, when a real beekeeper appears on camera to introduce their product, people will first wonder if it’s AI. Next time, when a small business owner shares their entrepreneurial journey, people will immediately say, “It’s definitely scripted.”

Trust is inherently an expensive social resource—it takes a long time to build, but can be destroyed in just a few viral videos.

The trust that has been exhausted will ultimately be paid for by every honest person. Each additional AI-generated Uncle Wang forces those who tell the truth to spend even more time proving themselves.

And yet, are we still willing to believe?