143: Chapter 143 The Most Simple and Unadorned Evaluation

The next day.

"Who on earth would buy this trash? Isn't this just a complete scam?"

"Well, it's a case of 'a willing fish takes the bait.' There are definitely people who are greedy for a bargain, and that's exactly who Pinduoduo is scamming."

"But since these things are so cheap, the quality is probably terrible, too. A garbage app like Pinduoduo, which exists solely to scam people, shouldn't exist at all."

Shanghai.

In the living room of a spacious flat.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was the night view of the Huangpu River, and in the center of the living room stood an 85-inch LCD TV.

Ah Zhen, a Bilibili blogger, was staring at the low-priced clothing section of Pinduoduo on her computer screen with her husband.

On the coffee table in front of them were some snacks and two half-finished cups of coffee. Beside them, a phone stand with its light still on—the equipment she usually used for recording videos—sat nearby.

As one of the most popular lifestyle bloggers on Bilibili.

Ah Zhen always kept a close eye on the trending topics on the internet, watching what countless netizens were discussing, and then made videos in that direction to ride the wave of popularity.

Her husband would help her vet topics on the side, analyzing what kind of content was more likely to go viral.

And for the past two days.

The Great Xia internet was almost entirely filled with criticism of Pinduoduo.

Just a moment ago.

She had also seen a tech blogger on the same platform just release a video tearing down a 200-yuan TV from Pinduoduo.

In that video, the tech blogger had used a pile of professional equipment to test that TV for ages—screen brightness, color gamut coverage, refresh rate, response time.

Every piece of data was pulled out and compared with major brands on the market, followed by a conclusion: pure electronic garbage; things like this shouldn't exist on the market.

Although that video had only been uploaded for a short while, the number of concurrent viewers had already exceeded 100,000, and it was quite popular.

Therefore.

She also intended to make a similar video, finding a few low-priced items on Pinduoduo to unbox and roast.

But she couldn't tear down low-priced TVs; that wasn't her niche, and it wouldn't make for good content.

She chose the low-priced clothing section of Pinduoduo. The clothes were cheap; buying them, filming a video to roast the workmanship and fabric—the view count probably wouldn't be bad either.

Her computer screen was currently on the Pinduoduo interface. She had already scrolled through quite a few low-priced garments, shaking her head as she browsed, her face full of undisguised disdain.

"I've been scrolling for ages, and there aren't even a few things at a normal price. Pinduoduo is really planning to scam people to the very end."

Her husband leaned against the sofa armrest and chimed in.

"What era is this? Besides scamming people, I don't even know who would buy these cheap goods."

Just as her husband finished saying this, a wedding dress was pushed onto the computer webpage in front of them.

"A thirty-eight-yuan wedding dress. Isn't this the one on the trending search?"

Hearing Ah Zhen's voice, her husband leaned over as well.

"It should be. I didn't expect us to come across it."

"Aren't you planning to make a video? Just buy one of these wedding dresses and unbox it to roast it. The engagement will definitely be higher than that TV teardown."

Ah Zhen nodded; she was thinking the same thing.

"Do you still remember how much the wedding dress you bought for me cost when we got married?"

Her husband thought for a moment.

"Over thirty thousand, I think. I'm not exactly sure, but that's what you call a wedding dress."

"This thirty-eight-yuan one probably can't even make up a single piece of complete fabric."

Listening to her husband's words, Ah Zhen nodded while clicking into the review section.

She had originally wanted to see how other buyers were bashing this wedding dress and take a couple of screenshots to use as material in her video.

But she didn't expect that this wedding dress, priced at thirty-eight yuan, actually had a surprisingly high positive rating; she didn't even see many negative reviews for a moment.

Her husband looked over too.

"These positive reviews must be fake, right? Something this cheap—I don't believe anyone would actually praise it."

Ah Zhen didn't respond.

She scrolled down with her mouse wheel, and a review uploaded just last night appeared before them.

The review was very simple, only one sentence.

"My wife is disabled. It was a wish of hers, and she was so happy when she put it on. Look, you guys, it's very pretty and good quality, the price is cheap, and the shipping was fast."

The reason this review caught Ah Zhen's attention was that it was accompanied by a picture.

The attached picture was of a woman who was clearly disabled, wearing a white hoop skirt, making a 'six' gesture at the camera, with a very happy smile on her face.

But the medicine piled high on the cabinet behind her spoke of the hardships this family faced.

Almost instantly.

The moment they saw this picture and the text, both of them fell silent, the smiles on their faces freezing at the exact same second.

This text had no flowery embellishments; it didn't even have full punctuation, and the sentences were a bit disjointed.

But the simplicity and satisfaction that shone through the words had almost pierced right through the screen.

Countless feelings of regret and shame engulfed them within a mere few seconds.

Only then did they realize how ridiculous their conversation just now had been. Sitting in a multi-million yuan luxury home, they had called a thirty-thousand-yuan wedding dress "the real deal" and dismissed a wedding dress costing a few dozen yuan as industrial waste.

They had indeed earned a lot of money now, but it seemed they had forgotten that there were still many people struggling bitterly to survive.

Ah Zhen's husband stared at the blurry photo on the screen, instantly bursting into tears. He set his coffee cup on the coffee table and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but he couldn't stop the tears no matter what.

He just kept talking to himself, memories suddenly flooding his mind.

These memories.

He had never even told Ah Zhen about them.

"When I was a kid in the countryside, my mom was seriously ill and couldn't be cured. Her biggest wish back then was to wear one of those white wedding dresses from the TV."

His voice was incredibly hoarse.

"The night before my mom passed away, the whole family knew she wasn't going to make it. My dad and I ran to the only wedding dress shop in town, wanting to buy one to take back so she could see it one last time."

"But the wedding dresses were too expensive. We asked the owner about renting one, but even renting was very expensive—several hundred a day. At the time, we simply couldn't come up with that much money."

He leaned back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling.

"My dad knelt outside the wedding dress shop for two hours, and I just stood next to him."

"But in the end, we still didn't bring a wedding dress back."

"I've been thinking."

"If only there had been cheap wedding dresses like this back then. Even if it was just for her to see, even if she only wore it for a minute—as long as she had worn it once, I wouldn't have lived with this regret my whole life."

He lowered his head, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"If only Pinduoduo had existed back then..."

Ah Zhen leaned over and hugged her husband. She rested her head on his shoulder, and after a long while, she let go. When she spoke again, her voice had returned to calm, but her eyes were a little red.

"I know what video to make now."

"The voices of these people should be heard by others, too."