Say My Name

A man in Zhengzhou spent eight years living in a $42-a-month rental and sending every spare yuan home to his wife so she'd feel secure. When he finally asked to see the bank account, she refused. Then she broke down and told him it was gone — roughly $94,000 of it wired to a livestreamer she'd never met, in small amounts, over several years, in exchange for having her name read out loud on camera.The court finalized the divorce on November 20, 2025. Under Chinese law those gifts count as money already spent, so there was nothing left to recover.Almost nobody in this episode broke a law. That's what makes it worse.This is the story of what happens when the feeling of being known gets turned into a product with a price tag, a payment processor, and a percentage.It starts with a Canadian landscaper who lip-synced to Barry Manilow in the spring of 2020 and accidentally built a fandom of middle-aged women who called themselves the Grotto Girls — one of whom sent him something close to $200,000 just to hear him say her name on a livestream. When he slept with one of them, the whole thing detonated into jealousy, blackmail, leaked photographs, and women showing up at his parents' house. He left the country. Most of them didn't get to leave anything.From there it widens out. The BBC investigation that found families in Syrian refugee camps livestreaming for gifts while the platform kept as much as 70% of the money. The Reuters reporting that revealed the intimate messages men buy on OnlyFans are frequently written by contractors in the Philippines working eight-hour shifts at four dollars an hour, reading from a file on the customer. The FBI's 2025 numbers, where Americans over 60 lost more than $7.7 billion, and confidence and romance fraud alone took $584 million from them. A Twitch moderator who has now been arrested three times across six years for stalking the streamer whose chat he used to help run. A hoax phone call over a $1.50 video game bet that put Andrew Finch dead on his own porch in Wichita. Christina Grimmie, killed at her own signing table by a man who had never once sent her a message.And the newest version of all of it, where the company can simply switch the other person off.Underneath the cases sits a number that isn't in dispute. In 2003, the average American spent about an hour a day with friends. By 2023 it was 26 minutes. The hours didn't move to family or coworkers. They moved to being alone.The stalkers aren't the disturbing part. The living rooms are.Email BrianJoin Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteHave a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation?Send your suggestions to [email protected] History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past.Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets.Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.