Hello there, if you are not a confrontational person then finding yourself in a situation where you have to argue with someone can be quite overwhelming. However, the Chinese marketplace Taobao offers people such as you the opportunity to hire professional quarrelers who will argue on your behalf!
Taobao is known as the world’s largest e-commerce platform for a good reason; you can find anything, literally anything, on it. We are not kidding; you can find products such as a smartphone to robots that can do your homework for you and even hire people to eat your favorite treats so that you don’t have to eat them. The latest addition to Taobao’s infinite list of goods and services is ‘quarreling by proxy’. This service enables people to hire strangers for arguing or simply harassing someone on their behalf for a small fee.
For obvious legal reasons, professional quarreling is an ambiguous service. That is why interested parties have to search for specific phrases such as ‘???” or “???’ – Chinese for substitute quarrel’ to find the available listings. Once you have found the listings, you will be able to go through dozens of offers from different professional quarrelers that are willing to argue on your behalf. The cost ranges between 5 yuan to 20 yuan. All of the arguings is done over a phone or texting, not face to face.
Some professional quarrelers even have a screening process before they accept a request. They will ask for information about the kind of argument you want, what exactly do you want them to argue about, and how long should the argument continue. Once both parties have laid down the terms and agreed on them, the deal is made, and the payment is made via WeChat or QQ. Sounds strange? Well, Taobao’s native payment app, Alipay, is quite strict when it comes to services that overlap with harassment and such a deal on Alipay would land both teams in harsh waters with the company’s legal team and/or the police.
