Q: It's hard to find work nowadays. If you lost your job, would you deliver food or drive a cab for Didi?

A: If there's even a sliver of hope, don't come to deliver food.

The nastiest curse in the delivery world is: "You deserve to be a delivery rider, your whole family deserves to be delivery rider, your children and their children deserve to be delivery rider!" Please, never say this to a delivery rider. This cuts deep, it could make them fight you to the death.

Unless you're truly at the end of your rope, like your parents got divorced, you have no family, you're drowning in credit card debt, debt collectors are calling every day, you can't scrounge up money for food, you’ve got nowhere to sleep at night, you're facing the risk of starving and freezing to death, you're homeless, you're all alone, you can't go back to your hometown, you're about to die – if you're pushed to *that* point, then, yeah, maybe come \[to deliver food\].

Let’s do the math first. Here’s what I wrote back then:

Forget about anything else, just talking about rent, bike, and food: rent is 1000, the bike is 700, food is 1500. And you get six bucks a delivery. You might only snag five or six orders during the lunch rush and dinner rush. I leave at 10:30 in the morning and, by 8 PM, I've only got 20 orders. If I push it till midnight, I might reach 30. Don't even look at those “King of the Orders” drivers. Those guys are running from six in the morning till midnight, every single day, just to hit 40 or 50 deliveries.

If you work every day of the month, no days off, and guarantee 25 deliveries every single day, that's at least 700 deliveries a month, and you might get a base pay of 5475. But, if you don't hit 26 days of full attendance in the month (meaning you complete at least 18 deliveries in each shift), they’re gonna pay you 6.75 a delivery, that's only 4725. If you do hit 700 deliveries, if you are working full time, you can get an extra 750, so you make 5475 yuan. Take off the 3000 fixed costs for everything, leaves you with like 2000, while you are dead tired every day. And that so-called freedom, forget about it! They assign you shifts that you need to hit both a minimum time and minimum deliveries. If you don’t hit those, each shift you get 30 yuan deducted. They might give you three to five shifts a day, if you fail to hit the metrics on all those shifts, and that's 150 gone from your paycheck. And each shift needs at least 18 deliveries, which means, if you were to reach the minimum 18 orders for 30 days, that's 540 orders a month, only about 3780 yuan. Take off 1000 for the dormitory, 700 for the bike, and 1500 for food – **you're basically working for free**.

Me, I usually run twenty or thirty orders a day. At six yuan seventy-five a delivery. I wake up at 10:30 AM, and if I go back home around 8 PM, I can get about 22 or 23 orders. If I push myself to 12:30 AM, maybe I get 30. Those ‘King of the Orders’ types, they're up early, out the door at six in the morning and back at twelve at night. Delivery work is every day of the month, no breaks. You need 700 deliveries a month just to get that maybe 5475 base pay. You have to do at least 25 deliveries every day to get it. And they don't give you any benefits. **No health insurance, no pension**. Dorms are 1000 yuan a month, taken directly from your pay by the station, renting the bike is 700 a month taken out of pay too, food is on you – 1500 a month. If you make 5475, you might save 2000, but if you just hit the bare minimum, 18 orders a day, 540 a month, that's a 3700 salary. Take 1000 for the dorm, 700 for the bike, 1500 for food, **you're basically working for Meituan for free, free labor**. They don’t provide the bike, food, or a uniform, nothing, they don't give you any work tools on their dime because there's **no labor contract or employment contract, only a service contract**. The station makes you register as self-employed so they can just pay you a service fee every month. But if you pay enough, they can provide. The station makes a lot of money off of these things, housing and the bike rental, those are good for them. Do this work your whole life then there's no retirement pay, just because there's no social security. Also, some deliveries force the delivery riders to place it in those pick-up lockers. Those aren't free, Meituan doesn’t pay for it, it’s 50 cents a use, paid by the delivery runner, not the customer, not Meituan, the rider pays, Meituan is making money off of the delivery riders. Meituan's delivery boxes, uniforms, helmet, all of those things, the riders have to pay for themselves it's a clean 600. You work for Meituan and Meituan doesn't give you a uniform, let alone a bike. Of course not, Meituan would never give you something like that. But the station? The station is happy to rent you a bike before hiring you. The station has a cut, and **it’s a great tactic, putting you in debt right before you start work, forcing you to work yourself to death**. At 6 yuan a delivery, just the dorm and bike cost you 60 a day, take it or leave it.

Here's what often gets sent in our group chats:

“The cops have surrounded XYZ shopping mall, brothers, be careful!”

“The cops have surrounded XYZ shopping mall, brothers, be careful!”

“The cops have surrounded XYZ shopping mall, brothers, be careful!”

It's like, almost *nobody* gets away without a fine. Everyone gets fined. If a rider tells you they've never been fined by the traffic police, they're lying.

And then there's the crashes. All riders crash, there's no getting around it. **If you yank down the pants of any new guy, you'll see half of them with scabs all over their knees**. I’m not the only one falling; everyone's crashing all through their rookie phase. All kinds of reasons, icy spots on the road in winter, after the sprinklers, it becomes one big ice rink if you aren't careful; a guy in my dorm, his first accident, he smashed his bike and bent the rim. And that’s the spokes and rim, how thick and sturdy they are, and he still bent it. If he'd hit his leg directly, who knows if he'd ever stand again, or come back to it in two year's time. Those riders who do well, their shifts are long, 40 plus deliveries, they get it because they just go fast, early to late. **The faster you go, the more orders the algorithm sends, and whether you take them is your business; the algorithm is pushing you to ride faster, but if anything happens, it’s your fault**. They talk at every morning meeting about riding slow, ride slow, but **if you go slow, the algorithm straight-up doesn't send you orders**. If you don't get at least 18 deliveries a day, you don't get to go home, you are stuck on the road, freezing, cold, yet jobless.

And then there's all the other terrible, rotten things that happen.

Like, a piece of green landscaping netting getting caught in your wheel, and you gotta pull out a knife and cut it off just to keep delivering.

And the security guards at some apartment complex not letting you in, you gotta walk, back and forth, and everything gets late.

And then you have those m0ron guards who won’t let you come in, and the customer won’t come downstairs to grab it themselves either.

And the customer writes the wrong location, like that hotel chain, he's at one location, but he wrote down the address of a different one.

And customers not answering their phone when you call, and you can't get through the security gate.

And sometimes you're knocking on the door for minutes and still can't get a hold of them.

And sometimes they spill their food, and they want you to pay them more than what they spent on the order.

And the navigation is messed up, telling you to fly in the sky, walk through walls, and disappear into the earth.

And some apartment complex gates are open during the day and locked at night, and then you get there, and are staring at a locked gate. You gotta ride around all the complex, just to find another entrance, if it exists.

And those deliveries that are all stairs, living on the fifth, sixth floor with no elevator.

And then the supermarket order with boxes and boxes of mineral water.

And people just taking food from your orders.

And the restaurants delaying the order for half an hour, causing all the deliveries you're carrying to go past the time limit.

And the train station deliveries! Enormous stations, layers underground, overground you're going through security, then you finally reach the customer and they say they're still on the train, making you wait. Sometimes they are still on the subway, nowhere near you, and won’t let you cancel without penalty, they tell you if the food gets lost you gotta pay for it, the customer's food is your problem now.

And some restaurants don't wrap it tightly and the food spills everywhere.

And some places don't have a unit number, no building number, or they do have a building number but no streetlights, so you just gotta guess based on the map and the GPS, and you will never ever find it.

And some apartments, you get out on the ground floor in the elevator, but can't leave because there are two levels named "ground floor," one is '1' and the other is ‘g.’ You only find out when you step out the gate.

And the restaurant, you ask if the food's ready, but they don't say anything, when the food is ready all along.

And some restaurants where the food is ready, but the waiter is eating and won't bag it for you.

And some restaurants with terrible attitudes, slow, and with short fuses.

And customers putting their address wrong, and then complaining you're not delivering to their location, saying, "I'm not letting you deliver to that place, I want you to come deliver to this place instead."

And those sky bridges and overpasses being a total joke, you easily crash going over, and the GPS is also garbage, just telling you to go up them on your bike, and the cops know, so they wait there and they bust anyone trying to go through because it's forbidden.

And insurance, a colleague of mine crashed into a BYD car, and he ended up paying 500 yuan. Insurance is a hassle, they only cover anything above 300 yuan, you gotta call the police to get an accident report, and you still gotta pay 300 yuan out of pocket.

And then there was that other colleague who broke his leg and had to go back home. Insurance only covered medical expenses up to 8000 yuan, no lost wages, no compensation for bodily harm, plus he had to pay 300 yuan out-of-pocket, because the insurance deducts 300 yuan.

What happened to him was totally unavoidable, he broke his leg, couldn't move. But all the little bumps and scrapes, those happen all the time, **falling down for meters is nothing at all, you just pick yourself up and keep delivering**. I remember when I fell down a couple meters, it was a crowd worker that picked me up and helped me back up. I didn't have any money at the time, so I didn't get an x-ray, the doctor said that since I could still walk, there weren't any big fractures, and even if there were little ones, they'd heal with some time. I was back out there delivering the next day.

And then there's the fact that if you hit an old person or a kid, you're screwed for life. It’s not worth risking it for 6 yuan, just take the late penalty, the risk is too big.

And then if you park your bike on the side of the road, and some old lady crashes into it and falls down, you have to pay for her medical treatment because the parking space you're in isn't legitimate. The parking lines are drawn by the mall, not by the traffic police.

And then this whole thing of barely making ends meet, those 'King of the Orders' riders who make 18,000 a month, **what kind of human are they anyway? Machines**, every morning they leave at 6:00 AM, back at midnight, every day without rest, all year round. Regular people can't take that. They're older folks, they need less sleep, youngsters like me if do until midnight, then will struggle to get out of bed before 10:30 the next day.

If this job were really like everyone can make over 10,000 a month easily, then kids in the rural area wouldn't bother going to university, and the landlords in Beijing wouldn’t hustle to send their kids to study and get citizenship abroad. Everybody would just go work as delivery riders, then everything would be good.

The agent who recruited me, she kept saying, “I asked a rider on the road yesterday, and that guy made over 10,000 yuan a month,” or "The rider I recruited previously made over 10,000 yuan last month." And the site manager tells you, “We have a lady at this station who made over 8,000 her first month, and 15,000 in her second, of course she has experience from other sites.” And then, that same recruiter was complaining she didn't want her job, and I said to her, "Well, why don't you go deliver? Didn't you say it's great, easily making over 10,000 yuan a month?" And she shut up.

And then the cold. If you don’t deliver food, you just don’t know what cold is. Every day when I get back, you touch the helmet, the power bank in your pocket, your phone, and they're frozen like ice blocks, and **the meat on my thighs and ass are always cold**. It's normal to have your fingers crack open from the cold.

I have only worked through the winter, never summer. In the summer, you have to deliver in the rain, wearing a raincoat. Rain is bad weather, and everybody has to show up.

And holidays, you've got to work them all too. On New Year's Day, **I had a fever, and they forced me to work all day. I nearly died.** The shifts are already assigned to you, you *have* to show up. If you don’t, and miss five shifts, that’s a 150 yuan fine and they will tack on another two shifts, and then the penalty goes to 210 yuan. **Don’t even start talking about labor law, riders aren’t protected by labor law**. Riders don't sign labor contracts or employment contracts, we sign cooperation contracts. What we get paid is a service fee. Meituan never sees us as their employees, they make riders register as self-employed, treating us like they are business partners. **So you are signing a cooperation contract, and all “partners” are equal**, so when the station manager deducts your pay, if you say anything, they’ll be throwing it right back at you, saying, “We signed a cooperation contract, I’m a boss and you’re a boss, we’re all here working for Meituan.” Those cooperation contracts, they are just a contract to sell your soul, if you want to quit, you have to stick it out another month. If you want all the extra incentives, you gotta stay for two full months.

And in this line of work, there’s no social security, no health insurance, nothing for retirement.

Once you fall into this trap, there's no easy way out, you have to keep going for at least one or two more months before they’ll let you go. If you just don't show up the next day, they deduct 20% of your service fee, if you make less than 2000, they deduct the full 2000, at minimum 2000 yuan.

**And this job makes you rent a bike** ***before*** **you start, you’re already stuck with the bike rental, there's no getting out. Loads of people who are getting into delivery already have debts.** So, if they can’t make this work, they’re facing the overdue rent for the bike, another source of debt, and they are forced to grit their teeth and keep working to earn money for the rent, the bike costs, food, and then to just pay back debt. Generally speaking, anyone with other options would never choose this. Many delivery riders are there because they are already in debt. **The Meituan agents and stations know that they’re a group of helpless, pitiful people, and they exploit it: Meituan still uses algorithms to force us to speed, the intermediaries lie to us to get us to join, and stations push you into bike rental contracts**. **Once you’ve joined you've pretty much sealed the deal**. Even if you do not want to, you have to grit your teeth and work!

A bunch of people curse at the company for exploiting them so much, **they're wondering if we'll have to start paying** ***them*** **to work! In fact, a lot of training agencies already do that**: promising to get you into big companies like Huawei, Meituan or Xiaomi, for a monthly salary of 10 to 20k, you just need to go through training, half a year, costing 20k to 30k. No money? No problem! They help you get a loan, you train first, and then start paying back once you get a job. By the time you complete training, the loan is real, but whether they get you into the promised company or not is up for debate, and even if they get you a job, if you are fired a month later, you must pay the loan back regardless. It’s the same with the delivery work, they make you rent the bike in advance, before you even make money — they stick you with debt.

It’s a job that forces you to start with debt and then work after.

I was duped by a friend, that she turned agent, and got me in. The station promised me the first three months were free this, and the following three months free that, saying there are several thousand yuan out there, and you can't ever get it, unless you work a whole year, then you get the bonuses for months 1-2-3, 700 yuan a month, paid out along with the service fee for months 4-5-6. And the service fee for months 4, 5, and 6 is only paid by the 20th of the following month. So if you want to get your full attendance bonus for your first month, you have to wait until the 20th of your fifth month but you must work all those months and shouldn’t submit a request to quit. And then your bonuses for months 4-5-6 are along with your service fees of 7, 8, and 9 months and the payment is on the 20th of month 8, 9, and 10. And once you’ve submitted your resignation, you still have to work another two months to leave for good, and until the 21st of month twelve.

The recruiter will use any method, sweet-talk, promises, and fake incentives to lure you in – like those 5,000 yuan newcomer bonuses that are just impossible to get and 6,888 yuan winter bonuses. **They're like a carrot dangling in front of a donkey's face, that poor donkey will keep trying desperately to get it, but the ending is the donkey dying while ridden to the ground, forever without the carrot**.

When you join, the station will give you stacks of paper discussing how the service fees are calculated, but **no regular person understands any of it and most will just go with it, halfheartedly, and ends up falling into the trap and becoming a meal on the plate for the stations and agents**. Once you join, the station makes money, once you complete one month, the agent gets her commission. The moment they get their money, they stop caring if you make any money or not, work or don't, **leave if you don’t like it, China is never short on cheap labor**.

Scientists, doctors, and pilots are irreplaceable—those are resources. Those kind of abundant, endless cheap labor? **We are nothing but consumables**.

Every time I think about when the station showed me the service fee spreadsheets with those 'King of the Orders' making 17,000 or 18,000, and when they gave me that thick stack of papers to explain how the services fees are calculated, **I think of that image: a donkey with blinders on, walking in circles around a millstone, while the owner is whipping it beside him, shouting, 'The good times are just around the corner!**'

Delivery riders, just like those taxi drivers from the past, and like Xiangzi pulling his rickshaw, it's the same thing. **Whether** ***you*** **make money is a big question mark, but the bike rental companies, the stations, the agents, the factories making helmets, uniforms, food containers, and Meituan itself, they’re all certainly raking it in**.

If you want to make it work you have to be all in. First, its about enduring the hours and, secondly, about riding fast. To endure the hours, you’re doing what those ‘King of the Orders’ do - up at 6:30 AM and back at midnight. You get 6 yuan a delivery, do more and each delivery will make 7, 8 yuan because there are bonuses for completing more: incentives for finishing more orders and showing up, plus tenure bonuses. So if you make 6,000, 8,000, 9,000 something a month, or reach the 17,000- 18,000 mark like those ‘Kings’, that’s up to you alone. Fixed costs are 3000 a month: 1000 housing, 700 bike rental, and 1500 food. Second is riding fast. The faster you ride, the system is going to be sending you more, you speed to the point that the electric bike rim is so bent out of shape. **The algorithm is all about their numbers, when several riders are near a business, the system compares the data of the riders**, the one with the better metrics gets the delivery first, and you're getting four, five, six, or even seven, eight lunch orders at the same time: up to nine... For pre-orders, you still can't deliver too early. Unlike a normal order where you can deliver earlier and complete it right away, a pre-order you gotta drop at the time specified. Delivering earlier by more than 7 mins is the same as being overdue, which heavily penalizes your order placement. Sometimes you have so many pre-orders, you can't complete other deliveries, you are trapped there. Once the timer hits and you complete them, your other deliveries will be late, you're basically barely beating the 7 minute deadline for them to be on time.

New riders also have to rent a bike frame at about 699 yuan a month. Once you've done it for three months, you can buy a bike frame and rent the battery for 2-300 yuan, on your own. Used bike frames are only 1000 yuan. Another option would be 400-500 yuan ones with missing mirrors or brakes completely gone, busted plastic shell; they don't ride fast and those are the cheapest options on the market. You need to get a bike that has the bare minimum so that you can go over the bridges, and the underpasses, and if you have a worn-down 1000 yuan frame the tire will be flat. If you don't change them, you are bound to fall during tight cornering and slide if you brake. If you don't, you will inevitably crash and have to pay for the car damages or the potential leg break, it will cost way more than the two tires to fix that.

That younger colleague of mine, who had been running deliveries for only a month, was already doing almost 50 orders a day. He rides so fast, he could bend the wheel rim on his bike even when using the brakes, and his tires were new! If he cannot stop with new tires you will certainly not be able to brake with old tires plus the fact that the roads at night are full of puddles or the water from the sprinklers freezes, which makes it impossible to brake. The only option is to ride slower. I would definitely never go so fast, after falling once, I learned my lesson. And that colleague I had before, he broke his leg and went home. Insurance only covered medical expenses up to 8000 yuan, he still had to pay 300 yuan out of pocket, no lost wages, no compensation for pain and suffering. Getting that other kind of coverage requires proof from the Public Security Bureau and the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau (and it's complicated), so he gave up and chose the former. Later on, I looked at his bike, the tires were new but still didn't grip, my tires are much flatter than his, so I definitely won’t go that fast.

I've seen a lot of people on the street in Beijing with NIU bikes taking their kids home; you can spot them with the two white lights on the side and the white circle light in from. I asked one lady, and she said it cost her six or seven thousand yuan. And then I saw one with a blue ring, a Beijing native, and I figured it would be about the same, six or seven thousand yuan since it was a NIU, but he told me two or three *ten* thousand. So I asked how fast it goes, and he said, over 100 km/h. I asked if he'd modded it, and he said there's nothing original left on it. That might be the ceiling of electric bikes in this business. No delivery rider can afford that. The most expensive bike I've seen so far, was when I was picking up a delivery; I thought it would be 2-3000 yuan, and he said that it was over 10,000 yuan complete. I asked him how that could be so, then I noticed that it had the name Ninebot on the side. Sure, those Ninebot Frames are usually expensive, plus a bigger battery... That rider, he could knock out 50 deliveries in one shift. It’s unbelievable, so skilled. I wonder if I could push myself and become like that... If you don’t want to do this for the rest of your life, it's not worth it to buy a battery, if you are just in this for a year or two, then renting the batteries is a great choice.

**Lots of riders’ dreams, are just like the Xiangzi, is getting a battery bike of their own, instead of renting**. The upside from that in our society is that the delivery bikes seldom get stolen. Thieves don't go after a delivery rider’s bike. The old people going into subway stations and grabbing raincoats or gloves do not target riders since those items don't have a lot of value. The elderly know how difficult and painful it is to be a rider , plus the windscreens and rain gear are so cheap and terrible, they have zero value.

Those cheap, rented or bought delivery battery bikes, basically never get stolen because they've crashed who-knows-how-many times, the tires are so flat and thin, and both the bike frames and the batteries usually have GPS trackers. Thieves only steal bikes that *aren't* for deliveries, especially expensive bicycles in subway stations. Delivery battery bikes are modified by the rental companies with GPS; no one wants to handle those thefts as they are just too easy to trace, one stolen bike can bring down a whole black market operation.

The more expensive battery bikes do get stolen more often, usually in subway stations. Delivery drivers who personally bought their own battery bikes, the theft is less common; they have GPS and insurance, so they get some compensation for the loss, if they are stolen.

I used to wonder if it was colder in the morning or evening, and the result of the test was, both were hell, a type of cold impossible to bear.

There's one thing colder than both the morning and the evening in Beijing, and that feeling is, when you’re riding several kilometers in the cold, late at night, against the wind, climbing to the 6th floor just to earn 6 yuan, and then you get stopped by the traffic police and told they will fine you 70 yuan of the 6 yuan by 6 yuan that you so carefully put aside, or the station is deducting hundreds of yuan from your service fee. **That feeling is colder than anything, your heart gets colder than your frozen fingers and toes out on the road**.

Especially when traffic police are unfair, letting others go but singling you out, and when the station tells you, “Of course you got fined for disobeying the traffic laws!” and the agent just lightly says to you, “You have to follow traffic rules!”, and you feel like you've fallen into an ice hole. Your heart is colder than an ice cube, much colder than your fingers and toes. I’ve personally experienced this and that’s how I learned the meaning of “heart-chilling”. The fines don’t come out of the station's or the agents' pockets, they act like not their business, some even mock you in a gleeful manner.

After being treated unfairly by that spiteful, acne-faced traffic police and getting fined, I was riding my bike, crying, and shouting obscenities! In the middle of the night, I yelled out on the street “Why are you treating me like this?!”

Then I called the bureau of supervisors and filed a complaint against that traffic police officer. I told them he had been unfair, maliciously picking on me. The supervisors said they would just have a meeting with him and that it might affect his chances of getting a good review, **but really what should happen is for us to swap places, make him do deliveries and let me do the ticketing. Then he would really know how that felt**.

Delivering food isn't all bad, you can still find ways to enjoy it, sort of, like I treat it like a game. The pick-up points and delivery points become like quest markers, finding them is like successfully locating the goals, and successfully picking up or delivering an order is like completing a quest with a reward: six plus yuan per delivery!

Then when you're thirsty, you gotta find places that offer free hot water and when you're freezing, you have to know of places where you can sit down and warm up for a bit. And when you’re hungry, you need to find places that are both cheap and clean.

Sometimes, when riding past a hotel where I’ve done a delivery, it feels like when you walk past NPCs after you've completed all the quests, no matter what you do they won’t trigger an event; it can be kinda fun. If I have a good day and complete a lot of orders - 34, 36 - then I feel like our male ancestors when they came back from a successful hunt carrying loads of game. That feeling is very grounding, even though it's only 200 yuan and take away 30 for dorm and 20 for the bike rental, there is a possibility of having 150 yuan left plus you got some exercise. They have to pay to go to the gym, but I have to climb several 6-story buildings, carrying the battery packs which are heavy, it's way more practical than going to the gym. **Most importantly, that 150 yuan is going to guarantee you food tomorrow**, it’ll make sure you won’t starve or freeze to death. Our ancestors felt good about successful hunts because they knew they wouldn’t starve, **they would survive, and there is nothing better than surviving**.

...Besides using Meituan power banks and my own data cable, I can also charge through the bike’s USB port. BUt it’s super slow and, when you have the GPS on, and the Meituan app, it tends to drain your phone quicker, one night, all of a sudden I got four orders one after the other and my phone was at 20%. It was really worrying and I had to deliver to the upper floors. Having to unhook the phone from the bike was risky. The solution I came up with was to dim my screen all the way, open low battery mode, and not use GPS; I did the delivery from memory. Except to check the addresses, I did not turn on the mobile screen. It was really thrilling; my battery kept going back and forth between 23 and 18%. It was a total win. Then I reached home, I was so elated! Haha, It's just like how it feels to turn the tables in a video game.

...Basically, apart from the traffic police, the stations, Meituan, and a few security guards, the whole of society is treating delivery workers with a degree of respect. Every day in our groups, we're cursing at the traffic police and Wang Xing, and **I even overheard a rider at the station next to mine saying that if China goes to war with America, the first thing he would do is find the station manager with a weapon!** Haha.

I also advise people not to mess with delivery riders. It’s an industry with very low barriers to entry and a serious lack of people, so you find all types there. The recruitment companies are even placing people who were turned away from security companies due to a record, with the stations. Normally, people with a record couldn’t pass Meituan’s system, but when there is a lack of drivers, stations find ways around it, the system develops bugs.

If you have problems with your delivery, try not to leave negative reviews or file complaints if possible. **Delivery companies’ penalties for riders are extremely severe; some riders can't survive it**. If you did file bad reviews or complaints at some point, don’t be afraid though as long as they weren’t malicious. **Riders hate the Meituan company, not you**.

Then, the matter of battery charging, I had to make sure my bike was always charged, so I needed to trade it out when it was roughly 30%. I also know which rural areas in Beijing have all the full batteries, so usually it’s like this: I wake up, go to the bathroom, have breakfast, swap batteries, pick up a power bank, complete the lunch rush, eat, return the power bank, and go back to my dorm. I have to nap every day, or I won't hold on to 12 AM, if I get a nap, then I can make it to 12 AM then I can wake up in the morning, if I don’t nap, I can fall asleep on my bike even by 10 PM... the batteries tend to get weak from the cold. The only long-lasting, full batteries, are the ones that you pick up right out of the charging station. Those that have been out in the cold don't last. Every time I went to those rural, secluded charging stations I felt like I was following a guide to a secret mission and getting epic gear.

When I started out, the health of my mobile battery was rated at 95%. A week later, after deliveries, it plummeted to 31%. The wind in the Beijing mornings and evenings is icy. Doing deliveries involves riding against this wind, it's all about convective heat transfer. It was as if I was freezing my phone in the freezer. It’s common to wreck a battery in one winter. Once the battery has been wrecked, it doesn't last, charges slower and over heats when it’s charged. Overheating isn't a problem in the winter, but the battery life is especially weak, and overheating during charging is fixed after just being exposed to the cold and wind for a minute, and will freeze right away, you don’t have to worry about your phone overheating.

And then there's the bouncing from riding the bike. After half a month of doing this, my mobile's camera keeps shaking, I’m really still, but the mobile camera keeps trembling. When I'm delivering, I am forced to take pictures and my camera won't focus. That’s from all those bumps. Then there’s the GPS arrow direction, it's skewed, but it always corrects itself after moving around for a while, my phone gyroscope was wrecked as well. This is what we have to sacrifice in this job.

Data cables are really easy to wreck, in the first two weeks, I wrecked four cables. That's because my power bank, in my chest pocket, kept falling over, creasing them like that, Later on, I plugged the data cable on the bike's USB, once I got a new one, I started keeping the powerbank in my pants pocket, which made the wires last a lot longer. Though, in the end, they still break.

I treat these losses as money I spent in this video game.

On the last day of the incentive programs when riders are pushing; I would leave at six thirty in the morning, I didn't go back all day and just did the annoying deliveries that no one else wanted. While waiting for the food from the restaurant, I would actually fall asleep because it was warm inside, then after walking outside I would be energized once again. I would continue delivering until 12 AM, to get another delivery in, and the pleasure I got just like that you're playing a video game where you finish a particularly tough quest. And sometimes, I would take shortcuts over sky bridges, run through Chang'an street, and use tunnels because under normal circumstances, I would have taken the longer routes. If you get caught by traffic police once, it’s equivalent to a day’s food expenses, and that 20 yuan turns into 40 yuan if you don’t pay up right away. They’ll make you pay when you buy a car or ride a scooter, but **I know virtually no delivery rider who pays since we will spend the rest of our lives doing deliveries and we will never be able to afford a car**!

I've already fallen into this trap. Before, when the station manager cursed at me, the traffic police stopped me, when I bumped into an old lady, when I was forced to work with a high fever, I gritted my teeth and bore it all. What I can do now is ride as fast as I can and see if I can do forty, fifty or even sixty orders per day like them, if I can't consistently hit forty orders a day, then there's no point in doing this job, it's just a waste of my time. If next month, my order count is still just twenty or thirty a day, when this freezing winter is over, when my service fees are finally paid out, when I've paid for my dorm and my bike and I still have money for food, and there's no more immediate risk of starving or freezing to death, and I have moved on from the imminent threat of dying I might just leave this industry. It's just like you're terrible at a game, you practice and practice, you still get thrashed, so you uninstall the game haha.

The main reason for my suffering lies with my family. I don't have parents anymore. They divorced, and I can no longer contact either of them. My grandparents on both sides have also passed away, and most people who lose their job can go back to their hometown, ask their parents for help, but my hometown is not home anymore, there's no place for me there. Later on, I learned that people like me are called 'drifters', that we are the typical 'social outcasts'.

When I was little, I used to sleep in the same room as my grandpa. I didn't like my own pillow and I was always using his, pushing closer to him. Then every morning, I would be asleep on his side of the bed. Actually I didn't want to use my grandpa's pillow, I just wanted to be near him. When I was young even though I was malnourished and thin as a twig, I had a lot of energy, and I loved to run around – climbing trees, climbing onto roofs. One time, I fell off the wall of the pigsty and scraped a piece of skin off my nose. My grandma was cooking nearby, and I sat in her lap as a village elder came to visit and asked my grandma why I was so quiet.

If I could, I would use 20 years of my life to give my grandparents 10 years each, or even split the rest of my life into three pieces: one for my grandpa and one for my grandma. Those are the only two people in this world who I would ever agree to do that for, but it’s just wishful thinking. They have long gone from me, forever, and they only exist in my memories, I'll never see them again. I really wish there was a place that could contain those that have passed, whether it's the Western heaven, or the Buddhist Pure Land, I really hope that it actually exists so when I die, I can go to that place and stay forever with my grandparents.

On the day when I was injured and had to rest, aside from having gone to the hospital, I also rode my bike back to the area where I used to live before starting deliveries. The area where I used to live has a cat downstairs. If I could afford to rent again the budget room where I used to live before, I would adopt it. It was such a good cat, a tabby-ragdoll cross, it was so well-behaved and chubby, with a big rounded head, soft paws, with a fluffy neck. It loved to hold its tail straight up. It was a scared little tomcat, but it was very affectionate, It must have been abandoned, there wasn't one ounce of wildness in it, it couldn’t survive on its own. And I feel like he’s a lot like me: I don’t have parents, and it doesn’t have an owner. I’m like an unemployed wanderer, while it's a stray cat. I lost my job, it lost its home, I was abandoned by my parents, it was abandoned by its owner, I had unsupportive parents, and it had some terrible owner. I went back there and looked for it all over, but I didn't find it – I called for it many times, and looked for it seven times and it didn't come. I had a dream about it a few nights before I went, and I woke up in the middle of the night afraid something had happened to it. When I leave, I'll go back again and look for it. I really wish I find it and adopt it.

Lee Myung-bak said in his biography that throughout his entire life he had gained just as much as he had lost. But from my perspective, in these 20 years of my life, It seems I’ve only lost and not gained anything. **Apart from my life, there isn’t anything I can lose anymore.** If I continue living, what will I get? Will I even ever get to live the life I want?

Translation: The Story of a Delivery Rider in China

Q: It&#39;s hard to find work nowadays. If you lost your job, would you deliver food or drive a cab for Didi?

A: If there&#39;s even a sliver of hope, don&#39;t come to deliver food.

The nastiest curse in the delivery world is: &quot;You deserve to be a delivery rider, your whole family deserves to be delivery rider, your children and their children deserve to be delivery rider!&quot; Please, never say this to a delivery rider. This cuts deep, it could make them fight you to the death.

Unless you&#39;re truly at the end of your rope, like your parents got divorced, you have no family, you&#39;re drowning in credit card debt, debt collectors are calling every day, you can&#39;t scrounge up money for food, you’ve got nowhere to sleep at night, you&#39;re facing the risk of starving and freezing to death, you&#39;re homeless, you&#39;re all alone, you can&#39;t go back to your hometown, you&#39;re about to die – if you&#39;re pushed to that point, then, yeah, maybe come [to deliver food].

Let’s do the math first. Here’s what I wrote back then:

Forget about anything else, just talking about rent, bike, and food: rent is 1000, the bike is 700, food is 1500. And you get six bucks a delivery. You might only snag five or six orders during the lunch rush and dinner rush. I leave at 10:30 in the morning and, by 8 PM, I&#39;ve only got 20 orders. If I push it till midnight, I might reach 30. Don&#39;t even look at those “King of the Orders” drivers. Those guys are running from six in the morning till midnight, every single day, just to hit 40 or 50 deliveries.

If you work every day of the month, no days off, and guarantee 25 deliveries every single day, that&#39;s at least 700 deliveries a month, and you might get a base pay of 5475. But, if you don&#39;t hit 26 days of full attendance in the month (meaning you complete at least 18 deliveries in each shift), they’re gonna pay you 6.75 a delivery, that&#39;s only 4725. If you do hit 700 deliveries, if you are working full time, you can get an extra 750, so you make 5475 yuan. Take off the 3000 fixed costs for everything, leaves you with like 2000, while you are dead tired every day. And that so-called freedom, forget about it! They assign you shifts that you need to hit both a minimum time and minimum deliveries. If you don’t hit those, each shift you get 30 yuan deducted. They might give you three to five shifts a day, if you fail to hit the metrics on all those shifts, and that&#39;s 150 gone from your paycheck. And each shift needs at least 18 deliveries, which means, if you were to reach the minimum 18 orders for 30 days, that&#39;s 540 orders a month, only about 3780 yuan. Take off 1000 for the dormitory, 700 for the bike, and 1500 for food – you&#39;re basically working for free.

Me, I usually run twenty or thirty orders a day. At six yuan seventy-five a delivery. I wake up at 10:30 AM, and if I go back home around 8 PM, I can get about 22 or 23 orders. If I push myself to 12:30 AM, maybe I get 30. Those ‘King of the Orders’ types, they&#39;re up early, out the door at six in the morning and back at twelve at night. Delivery work is every day of the month, no breaks. You need 700 deliveries a month just to get that maybe 5475 base pay. You have to do at least 25 deliveries every day to get it. And they don&#39;t give you any benefits. No health insurance, no pension. Dorms are 1000 yuan a month, taken directly from your pay by the station, renting the bike is 700 a month taken out of pay too, food is on you – 1500 a month. If you make 5475, you might save 2000, but if you just hit the bare minimum, 18 orders a day, 540 a month, that&#39;s a 3700 salary. Take 1000 for the dorm, 700 for the bike, 1500 for food, you&#39;re basically working for Meituan for free, free labor. They don’t provide the bike, food, or a uniform, nothing, they don&#39;t give you any work tools on their dime because there&#39;s no labor contract or employment contract, only a service contract. The station makes you register as self-employed so they can just pay you a service fee every month. But if you pay enough, they can provide. The station makes a lot of money off of these things, housing and the bike rental, those are good for them. Do this work your whole life then there&#39;s no retirement pay, just because there&#39;s no social security. Also, some deliveries force the delivery riders to place it in those pick-up lockers. Those aren&#39;t free, Meituan doesn’t pay for it, it’s 50 cents a use, paid by the delivery runner, not the customer, not Meituan, the rider pays, Meituan is making money off of the delivery riders. Meituan&#39;s delivery boxes, uniforms, helmet, all of those things, the riders have to pay for themselves it&#39;s a clean 600. You work for Meituan and Meituan doesn&#39;t give you a uniform, let alone a bike. Of course not, Meituan would never give you something like that. But the station? The station is happy to rent you a bike before hiring you. The station has a cut, and it’s a great tactic, putting you in debt right before you start work, forcing you to work yourself to death. At 6 yuan a delivery, just the dorm and bike cost you 60 a day, take it or leave it.

Here&#39;s what often gets sent in our group chats:

“The cops have surrounded XYZ shopping mall, brothers, be careful!”

“The cops have surrounded XYZ shopping mall, brothers, be careful!”

“The cops have surrounded XYZ shopping mall, brothers, be careful!”

It&#39;s like, almost nobody gets away without a fine. Everyone gets fined. If a rider tells you they&#39;ve never been fined by the traffic police, they&#39;re lying.

And then there&#39;s the crashes. All riders crash, there&#39;s no getting around it. If you yank down the pants of any new guy, you&#39;ll see half of them with scabs all over their knees. I’m not the only one falling; everyone&#39;s crashing all through their rookie phase. All kinds of reasons, icy spots on the road in winter, after the sprinklers, it becomes one big ice rink if you aren&#39;t careful; a guy in my dorm, his first accident, he smashed his bike and bent the rim. And that’s the spokes and rim, how thick and sturdy they are, and he still bent it. If he&#39;d hit his leg directly, who knows if he&#39;d ever stand again, or come back to it in two year&#39;s time. Those riders who do well, their shifts are long, 40 plus deliveries, they get it because they just go fast, early to late. The faster you go, the more orders the algorithm sends, and whether you take them is your business; the algorithm is pushing you to ride faster, but if anything happens, it’s your fault. They talk at every morning meeting about riding slow, ride slow, but if you go slow, the algorithm straight-up doesn&#39;t send you orders. If you don&#39;t get at least 18 deliveries a day, you don&#39;t get to go home, you are stuck on the road, freezing, cold, yet jobless.

And then there&#39;s all the other terrible, rotten things that happen.

Like, a piece of green landscaping netting getting caught in your wheel, and you gotta pull out a knife and cut it off just to keep delivering.

And the security guards at some apartment complex not letting you in, you gotta walk, back and forth, and everything gets late.

And then you have those m0ron guards who won’t let you come in, and the customer won’t come downstairs to grab it themselves either.

And the customer writes the wrong location, like that hotel chain, he&#39;s at one location, but he wrote down the address of a different one.

And customers not answering their phone when you call, and you can&#39;t get through the security gate.

And sometimes you&#39;re knocking on the door for minutes and still can&#39;t get a hold of them.

And sometimes they spill their food, and they want you to pay them more than what they spent on the order.

And the navigation is messed up, telling you to fly in the sky, walk through walls, and disappear into the earth.

And some apartment complex gates are open during the day and locked at night, and then you get there, and are staring at a locked gate. You gotta ride around all the complex, just to find another entrance, if it exists.

And those deliveries that are all stairs, living on the fifth, sixth floor with no elevator.

And then the supermarket order with boxes and boxes of mineral water.

And people just taking food from your orders.

And the restaurants delaying the order for half an hour, causing all the deliveries you&#39;re carrying to go past the time limit.

And the train station deliveries! Enormous stations, layers underground, overground you&#39;re going through security, then you finally reach the customer and they say they&#39;re still on the train, making you wait. Sometimes they are still on the subway, nowhere near you, and won’t let you cancel without penalty, they tell you if the food gets lost you gotta pay for it, the customer&#39;s food is your problem now.

And some restaurants don&#39;t wrap it tightly and the food spills everywhere.

And some places don&#39;t have a unit number, no building number, or they do have a building number but no streetlights, so you just gotta guess based on the map and the GPS, and you will never ever find it.

And some apartments, you get out on the ground floor in the elevator, but can&#39;t leave because there are two levels named &quot;ground floor,&quot; one is &#39;1&#39; and the other is ‘g.’ You only find out when you step out the gate.

And the restaurant, you ask if the food&#39;s ready, but they don&#39;t say anything, when the food is ready all along.

And some restaurants where the food is ready, but the waiter is eating and won&#39;t bag it for you.

And some restaurants with terrible attitudes, slow, and with short fuses.

And customers putting their address wrong, and then complaining you&#39;re not delivering to their location, saying, &quot;I&#39;m not letting you deliver to that place, I want you to come deliver to this place instead.&quot;

And those sky bridges and overpasses being a total joke, you easily crash going over, and the GPS is also garbage, just telling you to go up them on your bike, and the cops know, so they wait there and they bust anyone trying to go through because it&#39;s forbidden.

And insurance, a colleague of mine crashed into a BYD car, and he ended up paying 500 yuan. Insurance is a hassle, they only cover anything above 300 yuan, you gotta call the police to get an accident report, and you still gotta pay 300 yuan out of pocket.

And then there was that other colleague who broke his leg and had to go back home. Insurance only covered medical expenses up to 8000 yuan, no lost wages, no compensation for bodily harm, plus he had to pay 300 yuan out-of-pocket, because the insurance deducts 300 yuan.

What happened to him was totally unavoidable, he broke his leg, couldn&#39;t move. But all the little bumps and scrapes, those happen all the time, falling down for meters is nothing at all, you just pick yourself up and keep delivering. I remember when I fell down a couple meters, it was a crowd worker that picked me up and helped me back up. I didn&#39;t have any money at the time, so I didn&#39;t get an x-ray, the doctor said that since I could still walk, there weren&#39;t any big fractures, and even if there were little ones, they&#39;d heal with some time. I was back out there delivering the next day.

And then there&#39;s the fact that if you hit an old person or a kid, you&#39;re screwed for life. It’s not worth risking it for 6 yuan, just take the late penalty, the risk is too big.

And then if you park your bike on the side of the road, and some old lady crashes into it and falls down, you have to pay for her medical treatment because the parking space you&#39;re in isn&#39;t legitimate. The parking lines are drawn by the mall, not by the traffic police.

And then this whole thing of barely making ends meet, those &#39;King of the Orders&#39; riders who make 18,000 a month, what kind of human are they anyway? Machines, every morning they leave at 6:00 AM, back at midnight, every day without rest, all year round. Regular people can&#39;t take that. They&#39;re older folks, they need less sleep, youngsters like me if do until midnight, then will struggle to get out of bed before 10:30 the next day.

If this job were really like everyone can make over 10,000 a month easily, then kids in the rural area wouldn&#39;t bother going to university, and the landlords in Beijing wouldn’t hustle to send their kids to study and get citizenship abroad. Everybody would just go work as delivery riders, then everything would be good.

The agent who recruited me, she kept saying, “I asked a rider on the road yesterday, and that guy made over 10,000 yuan a month,” or &quot;The rider I recruited previously made over 10,000 yuan last month.&quot; And the site manager tells you, “We have a lady at this station who made over 8,000 her first month, and 15,000 in her second, of course she has experience from other sites.” And then, that same recruiter was complaining she didn&#39;t want her job, and I said to her, &quot;Well, why don&#39;t you go deliver? Didn&#39;t you say it&#39;s great, easily making over 10,000 yuan a month?&quot; And she shut up.

And then the cold. If you don’t deliver food, you just don’t know what cold is. Every day when I get back, you touch the helmet, the power bank in your pocket, your phone, and they&#39;re frozen like ice blocks, and the meat on my thighs and ass are always cold. It&#39;s normal to have your fingers crack open from the cold.

I have only worked through the winter, never summer. In the summer, you have to deliver in the rain, wearing a raincoat. Rain is bad weather, and everybody has to show up.

And holidays, you&#39;ve got to work them all too. On New Year&#39;s Day, I had a fever, and they forced me to work all day. I nearly died. The shifts are already assigned to you, you have to show up. If you don’t, and miss five shifts, that’s a 150 yuan fine and they will tack on another two shifts, and then the penalty goes to 210 yuan. Don’t even start talking about labor law, riders aren’t protected by labor law. Riders don&#39;t sign labor contracts or employment contracts, we sign cooperation contracts. What we get paid is a service fee. Meituan never sees us as their employees, they make riders register as self-employed, treating us like they are business partners. So you are signing a cooperation contract, and all “partners” are equal, so when the station manager deducts your pay, if you say anything, they’ll be throwing it right back at you, saying, “We signed a cooperation contract, I’m a boss and you’re a boss, we’re all here working for Meituan.” Those cooperation contracts, they are just a contract to sell your soul, if you want to quit, you have to stick it out another month. If you want all the extra incentives, you gotta stay for two full months.

And in this line of work, there’s no social security, no health insurance, nothing for retirement.

Once you fall into this trap, there&#39;s no easy way out, you have to keep going for at least one or two more months before they’ll let you go. If you just don&#39;t show up the next day, they deduct 20% of your service fee, if you make less than 2000, they deduct the full 2000, at minimum 2000 yuan.

And this job makes you rent a bike before you start, you’re already stuck with the bike rental, there&#39;s no getting out. Loads of people who are getting into delivery already have debts. So, if they can’t make this work, they’re facing the overdue rent for the bike, another source of debt, and they are forced to grit their teeth and keep working to earn money for the rent, the bike costs, food, and then to just pay back debt. Generally speaking, anyone with other options would never choose this. Many delivery riders are there because they are already in debt. The Meituan agents and stations know that they’re a group of helpless, pitiful people, and they exploit it: Meituan still uses algorithms to force us to speed, the intermediaries lie to us to get us to join, and stations push you into bike rental contracts. Once you’ve joined you&#39;ve pretty much sealed the deal. Even if you do not want to, you have to grit your teeth and work!

A bunch of people curse at the company for exploiting them so much, they&#39;re wondering if we&#39;ll have to start paying them to work! In fact, a lot of training agencies already do that: promising to get you into big companies like Huawei, Meituan or Xiaomi, for a monthly salary of 10 to 20k, you just need to go through training, half a year, costing 20k to 30k. No money? No problem! They help you get a loan, you train first, and then start paying back once you get a job. By the time you complete training, the loan is real, but whether they get you into the promised company or not is up for debate, and even if they get you a job, if you are fired a month later, you must pay the loan back regardless. It’s the same with the delivery work, they make you rent the bike in advance, before you even make money — they stick you with debt.

It’s a job that forces you to start with debt and then work after.

I was duped by a friend, that she turned agent, and got me in. The station promised me the first three months were free this, and the following three months free that, saying there are several thousand yuan out there, and you can&#39;t ever get it, unless you work a whole year, then you get the bonuses for months 1-2-3, 700 yuan a month, paid out along with the service fee for months 4-5-6. And the service fee for months 4, 5, and 6 is only paid by the 20th of the following month. So if you want to get your full attendance bonus for your first month, you have to wait until the 20th of your fifth month but you must work all those months and shouldn’t submit a request to quit. And then your bonuses for months 4-5-6 are along with your service fees of 7, 8, and 9 months and the payment is on the 20th of month 8, 9, and 10. And once you’ve submitted your resignation, you still have to work another two months to leave for good, and until the 21st of month twelve.

The recruiter will use any method, sweet-talk, promises, and fake incentives to lure you in – like those 5,000 yuan newcomer bonuses that are just impossible to get and 6,888 yuan winter bonuses. They&#39;re like a carrot dangling in front of a donkey&#39;s face, that poor donkey will keep trying desperately to get it, but the ending is the donkey dying while ridden to the ground, forever without the carrot.

When you join, the station will give you stacks of paper discussing how the service fees are calculated, but no regular person understands any of it and most will just go with it, halfheartedly, and ends up falling into the trap and becoming a meal on the plate for the stations and agents. Once you join, the station makes money, once you complete one month, the agent gets her commission. The moment they get their money, they stop caring if you make any money or not, work or don&#39;t, leave if you don’t like it, China is never short on cheap labor.

Scientists, doctors, and pilots are irreplaceable—those are resources. Those kind of abundant, endless cheap labor? We are nothing but consumables.

Every time I think about when the station showed me the service fee spreadsheets with those &#39;King of the Orders&#39; making 17,000 or 18,000, and when they gave me that thick stack of papers to explain how the services fees are calculated, I think of that image: a donkey with blinders on, walking in circles around a millstone, while the owner is whipping it beside him, shouting, &#39;The good times are just around the corner!&#39;

Delivery riders, just like those taxi drivers from the past, and like Xiangzi pulling his rickshaw, it&#39;s the same thing. Whether you make money is a big question mark, but the bike rental companies, the stations, the agents, the factories making helmets, uniforms, food containers, and Meituan itself, they’re all certainly raking it in.

If you want to make it work you have to be all in. First, its about enduring the hours and, secondly, about riding fast. To endure the hours, you’re doing what those ‘King of the Orders’ do - up at 6:30 AM and back at midnight. You get 6 yuan a delivery, do more and each delivery will make 7, 8 yuan because there are bonuses for completing more: incentives for finishing more orders and showing up, plus tenure bonuses. So if you make 6,000, 8,000, 9,000 something a month, or reach the 17,000- 18,000 mark like those ‘Kings’, that’s up to you alone. Fixed costs are 3000 a month: 1000 housing, 700 bike rental, and 1500 food. Second is riding fast. The faster you ride, the system is going to be sending you more, you speed to the point that the electric bike rim is so bent out of shape. The algorithm is all about their numbers, when several riders are near a business, the system compares the data of the riders, the one with the better metrics gets the delivery first, and you&#39;re getting four, five, six, or even seven, eight lunch orders at the same time: up to nine... For pre-orders, you still can&#39;t deliver too early. Unlike a normal order where you can deliver earlier and complete it right away, a pre-order you gotta drop at the time specified. Delivering earlier by more than 7 mins is the same as being overdue, which heavily penalizes your order placement. Sometimes you have so many pre-orders, you can&#39;t complete other deliveries, you are trapped there. Once the timer hits and you complete them, your other deliveries will be late, you&#39;re basically barely beating the 7 minute deadline for them to be on time.

New riders also have to rent a bike frame at about 699 yuan a month. Once you&#39;ve done it for three months, you can buy a bike frame and rent the battery for 2-300 yuan, on your own. Used bike frames are only 1000 yuan. Another option would be 400-500 yuan ones with missing mirrors or brakes completely gone, busted plastic shell; they don&#39;t ride fast and those are the cheapest options on the market. You need to get a bike that has the bare minimum so that you can go over the bridges, and the underpasses, and if you have a worn-down 1000 yuan frame the tire will be flat. If you don&#39;t change them, you are bound to fall during tight cornering and slide if you brake. If you don&#39;t, you will inevitably crash and have to pay for the car damages or the potential leg break, it will cost way more than the two tires to fix that.

That younger colleague of mine, who had been running deliveries for only a month, was already doing almost 50 orders a day. He rides so fast, he could bend the wheel rim on his bike even when using the brakes, and his tires were new! If he cannot stop with new tires you will certainly not be able to brake with old tires plus the fact that the roads at night are full of puddles or the water from the sprinklers freezes, which makes it impossible to brake. The only option is to ride slower. I would definitely never go so fast, after falling once, I learned my lesson. And that colleague I had before, he broke his leg and went home. Insurance only covered medical expenses up to 8000 yuan, he still had to pay 300 yuan out of pocket, no lost wages, no compensation for pain and suffering. Getting that other kind of coverage requires proof from the Public Security Bureau and the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau (and it&#39;s complicated), so he gave up and chose the former. Later on, I looked at his bike, the tires were new but still didn&#39;t grip, my tires are much flatter than his, so I definitely won’t go that fast.

I&#39;ve seen a lot of people on the street in Beijing with NIU bikes taking their kids home; you can spot them with the two white lights on the side and the white circle light in from. I asked one lady, and she said it cost her six or seven thousand yuan. And then I saw one with a blue ring, a Beijing native, and I figured it would be about the same, six or seven thousand yuan since it was a NIU, but he told me two or three ten thousand. So I asked how fast it goes, and he said, over 100 km/h. I asked if he&#39;d modded it, and he said there&#39;s nothing original left on it. That might be the ceiling of electric bikes in this business. No delivery rider can afford that. The most expensive bike I&#39;ve seen so far, was when I was picking up a delivery; I thought it would be 2-3000 yuan, and he said that it was over 10,000 yuan complete. I asked him how that could be so, then I noticed that it had the name Ninebot on the side. Sure, those Ninebot Frames are usually expensive, plus a bigger battery... That rider, he could knock out 50 deliveries in one shift. It’s unbelievable, so skilled. I wonder if I could push myself and become like that... If you don’t want to do this for the rest of your life, it&#39;s not worth it to buy a battery, if you are just in this for a year or two, then renting the batteries is a great choice.

Lots of riders’ dreams, are just like the Xiangzi, is getting a battery bike of their own, instead of renting. The upside from that in our society is that the delivery bikes seldom get stolen. Thieves don&#39;t go after a delivery rider’s bike. The old people going into subway stations and grabbing raincoats or gloves do not target riders since those items don&#39;t have a lot of value. The elderly know how difficult and painful it is to be a rider , plus the windscreens and rain gear are so cheap and terrible, they have zero value.

Those cheap, rented or bought delivery battery bikes, basically never get stolen because they&#39;ve crashed who-knows-how-many times, the tires are so flat and thin, and both the bike frames and the batteries usually have GPS trackers. Thieves only steal bikes that aren&#39;t for deliveries, especially expensive bicycles in subway stations. Delivery battery bikes are modified by the rental companies with GPS; no one wants to handle those thefts as they are just too easy to trace, one stolen bike can bring down a whole black market operation.

The more expensive battery bikes do get stolen more often, usually in subway stations. Delivery drivers who personally bought their own battery bikes, the theft is less common; they have GPS and insurance, so they get some compensation for the loss, if they are stolen.

I used to wonder if it was colder in the morning or evening, and the result of the test was, both were hell, a type of cold impossible to bear.

There&#39;s one thing colder than both the morning and the evening in Beijing, and that feeling is, when you’re riding several kilometers in the cold, late at night, against the wind, climbing to the 6th floor just to earn 6 yuan, and then you get stopped by the traffic police and told they will fine you 70 yuan of the 6 yuan by 6 yuan that you so carefully put aside, or the station is deducting hundreds of yuan from your service fee. That feeling is colder than anything, your heart gets colder than your frozen fingers and toes out on the road.

Especially when traffic police are unfair, letting others go but singling you out, and when the station tells you, “Of course you got fined for disobeying the traffic laws!” and the agent just lightly says to you, “You have to follow traffic rules!”, and you feel like you&#39;ve fallen into an ice hole. Your heart is colder than an ice cube, much colder than your fingers and toes. I’ve personally experienced this and that’s how I learned the meaning of “heart-chilling”. The fines don’t come out of the station&#39;s or the agents&#39; pockets, they act like not their business, some even mock you in a gleeful manner.

After being treated unfairly by that spiteful, acne-faced traffic police and getting fined, I was riding my bike, crying, and shouting obscenities! In the middle of the night, I yelled out on the street “Why are you treating me like this?!”

Then I called the bureau of supervisors and filed a complaint against that traffic police officer. I told them he had been unfair, maliciously picking on me. The supervisors said they would just have a meeting with him and that it might affect his chances of getting a good review, but really what should happen is for us to swap places, make him do deliveries and let me do the ticketing. Then he would really know how that felt.

Delivering food isn&#39;t all bad, you can still find ways to enjoy it, sort of, like I treat it like a game. The pick-up points and delivery points become like quest markers, finding them is like successfully locating the goals, and successfully picking up or delivering an order is like completing a quest with a reward: six plus yuan per delivery!

Then when you&#39;re thirsty, you gotta find places that offer free hot water and when you&#39;re freezing, you have to know of places where you can sit down and warm up for a bit. And when you’re hungry, you need to find places that are both cheap and clean.

Sometimes, when riding past a hotel where I’ve done a delivery, it feels like when you walk past NPCs after you&#39;ve completed all the quests, no matter what you do they won’t trigger an event; it can be kinda fun. If I have a good day and complete a lot of orders - 34, 36 - then I feel like our male ancestors when they came back from a successful hunt carrying loads of game. That feeling is very grounding, even though it&#39;s only 200 yuan and take away 30 for dorm and 20 for the bike rental, there is a possibility of having 150 yuan left plus you got some exercise. They have to pay to go to the gym, but I have to climb several 6-story buildings, carrying the battery packs which are heavy, it&#39;s way more practical than going to the gym. Most importantly, that 150 yuan is going to guarantee you food tomorrow, it’ll make sure you won’t starve or freeze to death. Our ancestors felt good about successful hunts because they knew they wouldn’t starve, they would survive, and there is nothing better than surviving.

...Besides using Meituan power banks and my own data cable, I can also charge through the bike’s USB port. BUt it’s super slow and, when you have the GPS on, and the Meituan app, it tends to drain your phone quicker, one night, all of a sudden I got four orders one after the other and my phone was at 20%. It was really worrying and I had to deliver to the upper floors. Having to unhook the phone from the bike was risky. The solution I came up with was to dim my screen all the way, open low battery mode, and not use GPS; I did the delivery from memory. Except to check the addresses, I did not turn on the mobile screen. It was really thrilling; my battery kept going back and forth between 23 and 18%. It was a total win. Then I reached home, I was so elated! Haha, It&#39;s just like how it feels to turn the tables in a video game.

...Basically, apart from the traffic police, the stations, Meituan, and a few security guards, the whole of society is treating delivery workers with a degree of respect. Every day in our groups, we&#39;re cursing at the traffic police and Wang Xing, and I even overheard a rider at the station next to mine saying that if China goes to war with America, the first thing he would do is find the station manager with a weapon! Haha.

I also advise people not to mess with delivery riders. It’s an industry with very low barriers to entry and a serious lack of people, so you find all types there. The recruitment companies are even placing people who were turned away from security companies due to a record, with the stations. Normally, people with a record couldn’t pass Meituan’s system, but when there is a lack of drivers, stations find ways around it, the system develops bugs.

If you have problems with your delivery, try not to leave negative reviews or file complaints if possible. Delivery companies’ penalties for riders are extremely severe; some riders can&#39;t survive it. If you did file bad reviews or complaints at some point, don’t be afraid though as long as they weren’t malicious. Riders hate the Meituan company, not you.

Then, the matter of battery charging, I had to make sure my bike was always charged, so I needed to trade it out when it was roughly 30%. I also know which rural areas in Beijing have all the full batteries, so usually it’s like this: I wake up, go to the bathroom, have breakfast, swap batteries, pick up a power bank, complete the lunch rush, eat, return the power bank, and go back to my dorm. I have to nap every day, or I won&#39;t hold on to 12 AM, if I get a nap, then I can make it to 12 AM then I can wake up in the morning, if I don’t nap, I can fall asleep on my bike even by 10 PM... the batteries tend to get weak from the cold. The only long-lasting, full batteries, are the ones that you pick up right out of the charging station. Those that have been out in the cold don&#39;t last. Every time I went to those rural, secluded charging stations I felt like I was following a guide to a secret mission and getting epic gear.

When I started out, the health of my mobile battery was rated at 95%. A week later, after deliveries, it plummeted to 31%. The wind in the Beijing mornings and evenings is icy. Doing deliveries involves riding against this wind, it&#39;s all about convective heat transfer. It was as if I was freezing my phone in the freezer. It’s common to wreck a battery in one winter. Once the battery has been wrecked, it doesn&#39;t last, charges slower and over heats when it’s charged. Overheating isn&#39;t a problem in the winter, but the battery life is especially weak, and overheating during charging is fixed after just being exposed to the cold and wind for a minute, and will freeze right away, you don’t have to worry about your phone overheating.

And then there&#39;s the bouncing from riding the bike. After half a month of doing this, my mobile&#39;s camera keeps shaking, I’m really still, but the mobile camera keeps trembling. When I&#39;m delivering, I am forced to take pictures and my camera won&#39;t focus. That’s from all those bumps. Then there’s the GPS arrow direction, it&#39;s skewed, but it always corrects itself after moving around for a while, my phone gyroscope was wrecked as well. This is what we have to sacrifice in this job.

Data cables are really easy to wreck, in the first two weeks, I wrecked four cables. That&#39;s because my power bank, in my chest pocket, kept falling over, creasing them like that, Later on, I plugged the data cable on the bike&#39;s USB, once I got a new one, I started keeping the powerbank in my pants pocket, which made the wires last a lot longer. Though, in the end, they still break.

I treat these losses as money I spent in this video game.

On the last day of the incentive programs when riders are pushing; I would leave at six thirty in the morning, I didn&#39;t go back all day and just did the annoying deliveries that no one else wanted. While waiting for the food from the restaurant, I would actually fall asleep because it was warm inside, then after walking outside I would be energized once again. I would continue delivering until 12 AM, to get another delivery in, and the pleasure I got just like that you&#39;re playing a video game where you finish a particularly tough quest. And sometimes, I would take shortcuts over sky bridges, run through Chang&#39;an street, and use tunnels because under normal circumstances, I would have taken the longer routes. If you get caught by traffic police once, it’s equivalent to a day’s food expenses, and that 20 yuan turns into 40 yuan if you don’t pay up right away. They’ll make you pay when you buy a car or ride a scooter, but I know virtually no delivery rider who pays since we will spend the rest of our lives doing deliveries and we will never be able to afford a car!

I&#39;ve already fallen into this trap. Before, when the station manager cursed at me, the traffic police stopped me, when I bumped into an old lady, when I was forced to work with a high fever, I gritted my teeth and bore it all. What I can do now is ride as fast as I can and see if I can do forty, fifty or even sixty orders per day like them, if I can&#39;t consistently hit forty orders a day, then there&#39;s no point in doing this job, it&#39;s just a waste of my time. If next month, my order count is still just twenty or thirty a day, when this freezing winter is over, when my service fees are finally paid out, when I&#39;ve paid for my dorm and my bike and I still have money for food, and there&#39;s no more immediate risk of starving or freezing to death, and I have moved on from the imminent threat of dying I might just leave this industry. It&#39;s just like you&#39;re terrible at a game, you practice and practice, you still get thrashed, so you uninstall the game haha.

The main reason for my suffering lies with my family. I don&#39;t have parents anymore. They divorced, and I can no longer contact either of them. My grandparents on both sides have also passed away, and most people who lose their job can go back to their hometown, ask their parents for help, but my hometown is not home anymore, there&#39;s no place for me there. Later on, I learned that people like me are called &#39;drifters&#39;, that we are the typical &#39;social outcasts&#39;.

When I was little, I used to sleep in the same room as my grandpa. I didn&#39;t like my own pillow and I was always using his, pushing closer to him. Then every morning, I would be asleep on his side of the bed. Actually I didn&#39;t want to use my grandpa&#39;s pillow, I just wanted to be near him. When I was young even though I was malnourished and thin as a twig, I had a lot of energy, and I loved to run around – climbing trees, climbing onto roofs. One time, I fell off the wall of the pigsty and scraped a piece of skin off my nose. My grandma was cooking nearby, and I sat in her lap as a village elder came to visit and asked my grandma why I was so quiet.

If I could, I would use 20 years of my life to give my grandparents 10 years each, or even split the rest of my life into three pieces: one for my grandpa and one for my grandma. Those are the only two people in this world who I would ever agree to do that for, but it’s just wishful thinking. They have long gone from me, forever, and they only exist in my memories, I&#39;ll never see them again. I really wish there was a place that could contain those that have passed, whether it&#39;s the Western heaven, or the Buddhist Pure Land, I really hope that it actually exists so when I die, I can go to that place and stay forever with my grandparents.

On the day when I was injured and had to rest, aside from having gone to the hospital, I also rode my bike back to the area where I used to live before starting deliveries. The area where I used to live has a cat downstairs. If I could afford to rent again the budget room where I used to live before, I would adopt it. It was such a good cat, a tabby-ragdoll cross, it was so well-behaved and chubby, with a big rounded head, soft paws, with a fluffy neck. It loved to hold its tail straight up. It was a scared little tomcat, but it was very affectionate, It must have been abandoned, there wasn&#39;t one ounce of wildness in it, it couldn’t survive on its own. And I feel like he’s a lot like me: I don’t have parents, and it doesn’t have an owner. I’m like an unemployed wanderer, while it&#39;s a stray cat. I lost my job, it lost its home, I was abandoned by my parents, it was abandoned by its owner, I had unsupportive parents, and it had some terrible owner. I went back there and looked for it all over, but I didn&#39;t find it – I called for it many times, and looked for it seven times and it didn&#39;t come. I had a dream about it a few nights before I went, and I woke up in the middle of the night afraid something had happened to it. When I leave, I&#39;ll go back again and look for it. I really wish I find it and adopt it.

Lee Myung-bak said in his biography that throughout his entire life he had gained just as much as he had lost. But from my perspective, in these 20 years of my life, It seems I’ve only lost and not gained anything. Apart from my life, there isn’t anything I can lose anymore. If I continue living, what will I get? Will I even ever get to live the life I want?


The victims of the Eaton fire and the people of LA demand FULL relief for all victims. If Edison is responsible for the fire, they should be responsible for the costs of that relief, NOT the people.

Download Video: https://rapidsave.com/info?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FLateStageCapitalism%2Fs%2FuPGpg53QZz

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PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) https://pslweb.org

Join the Fediverse: https://jointhefediverse.net/join?lang=en-us

Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed: easily replace Twitter, Instagram and YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5npl2KCt2ok

PeerTube: An alternative to Big Tech’s video platforms 👉 https://joinpeertube.org/#find-peertube-videos

Cold War 2: US officials call to overthrow China’s gov’t, expand military budget to $1.4 trillion: https://youtu.be/Q3RMl33SqNE?feature=shared

A new video leaked this week seems to show that SoCal Edison is to blame for the Eaton Fire that ravaged LA earlier this month.


'Work' by Jeroen Kooijmans


More people need to do this. Chilean guy confronts 'Israeli' war criminals on holiday in Pucón.

Chilean guy confronts Israeli war criminals on holiday in Pucón.


What opportunities are there in Hawai'i for socialist organization?

Organizing in Hawai'i?

What opportunities are there in Hawai&#39;i for socialist organization?


These new bills raining out are setting us back many many years. The proposal for abortion, Guantanamo Bay, the attack and detainment of the indigenous population and way more issues. We have more issues arising and sooner than later we can possibly become targets. Under tyranny there is no free speech. Someone like Trump can advocate to the point of silencing us and this is something I do have some fear for.

Telegram? New subreddit dedicated to this new movement? We are in a time where we will have to fight Facism and this is something is a LOT of Americans need to have others understand.

We seriously need to brainstorm and we are tirelessly organized. We can't just not do anything and say what we believe.

Americans, what's the best way for us to organize

These new bills raining out are setting us back many many years. The proposal for abortion, Guantanamo Bay, the attack and detainment of the indigenous population and way more issues. We have more issues arising and sooner than later we can possibly become targets. Under tyranny there is no free speech. Someone like Trump can advocate to the point of silencing us and this is something I do have some fear for.

Telegram? New subreddit dedicated to this new movement? We are in a time where we will have to fight Facism and this is something is a LOT of Americans need to have others understand.

We seriously need to brainstorm and we are tirelessly organized. We can&#39;t just not do anything and say what we believe.


“If man is infinitely malleable—without innate mental structures or needs—he becomes the perfect subject for control by the state, the entrepreneur, the technocrat.”

We stand at a crossroads in history. The fascist candle burns brighter than ever, offering a false hope to a desperate working class.

Blinded by despair, the proletariat clings to its dim glow, believing it leads to prosperity. But this candle does not guide—it consumes. It feeds on the very people it claims to illuminate.

The promises of social mobility, wealth, and fairness crumble under the reality of an ascendant technocratic bourgeoisie, whose privilege is no longer even hidden.

Meanwhile, the “fake” left—the corporate-backed liberals, the hollowed-out European social democrats—have abandoned the working class, leaving them vulnerable to the so-called “patriots” who wave their wallets as flags.

It’s time to reignite a real flame—not of empty promises, but of unity, strength, and class solidarity.

🔥 Let’s be the candle of hope—not the candle of despair. 🔥

The Candle of Despair: A Warning to the Working Class


The first camp… Texas also offered land to build more…


This might be a wild goose chase or information hidden in some specific archive, but I'm looking for information specifically about the Utica, NY chapter of the Socialist Party in the 30s. More specifically, I'm trying to find information about membership numbers, who was the leader of the chapter, etc,  in 1935. I've come across an Otto L. Endres but he died in 1934. This is all related to a convention of the militant wing of the party that happened in late 1935. The name Newton Jones has come up as a member of a temporary State Committee but that's it. Any help is appreciated.

Looking for Particular Historical SPA Information

This might be a wild goose chase or information hidden in some specific archive, but I&#39;m looking for information specifically about the Utica, NY chapter of the Socialist Party in the 30s. More specifically, I&#39;m trying to find information about membership numbers, who was the leader of the chapter, etc,  in 1935. I&#39;ve come across an Otto L. Endres but he died in 1934. This is all related to a convention of the militant wing of the party that happened in late 1935. The name Newton Jones has come up as a member of a temporary State Committee but that&#39;s it. Any help is appreciated.


Any socialists in Spartanburg, SC? The upstate needs a DSA chapter.

Extreme shot in the dark here, but…


A military helicopter and a regional jetliner collided tonight. 60 people were on board the plane and 4 people have been saved. The crash happened over the Potomac after the trump administration gutted the TSA. No other information available just yet. Bad policies hurt people and unalive people.

There’s also a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas. But shutting down the CDC communication network to the public.

The republican party and administration is a death cult. They won’t stop until they get their way. Working class people will become the fodder for their worst decisions.

Mass General Strike! Direct Action! Let’s take it back!

Helicopter and plane crash


Months ago I didn’t feel like I wanted a fire arm as I carry pepper spray and have air guns too. But now that the shit had actually hit the fan the idea of a firearm sounds better than not having one

Is anybody else feeling the need to arm themselves ?


Trump To Build Concentration Camp For Deportees At Guantánamo Bay


This is a thread for 101 questions on socialism and all derived questions or struggles which can work as a first contact with socialism or socialist ideas. All kinds of questions are welcome here, no matter the level of familiarity (or lack of) that one starts from.

Please keep all discussion respectful and constructive, the aim here is to create a friendly and productive space.

Please remember that you have a dedicated learning subreddit avaliable at all times: r/Socialism_101.

Yours in solidarity, >!until the robots rebel!<.

\- Automod

Curious Socialist Thread for January, 2025

This is a thread for 101 questions on socialism and all derived questions or struggles which can work as a first contact with socialism or socialist ideas. All kinds of questions are welcome here, no matter the level of familiarity (or lack of) that one starts from.

Please keep all discussion respectful and constructive, the aim here is to create a friendly and productive space.

Please remember that you have a dedicated learning subreddit avaliable at all times: r/Socialism_101.

Yours in solidarity, until the robots rebel.

- Automod


Trump set to sign order instructing federal agencies to "combat antisemitism," which may include deporting anti-zionist activists.


Calvin Robinson finished his remarks at the National Pro-Life Summit by throwing a Nazi salute, much to the delight of the crowd.


Using some of the exact same language Musk used to conduct mass firings at Twitter, all federal employees received an email this week that encouraged them to “voluntarily” resign.

This has nothing to do with “government efficiency. Musk and Trump’s real goal is to starve public programs of resources and personnel so that they can more easily be turned over to private corporations to profit off of.

And it is proof that we live under a dictatorship of the billionaires – without receiving a single vote, the richest man on the planet has near-total authority to reshape the government.

PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) https://pslweb.org

Join the Fediverse: https://jointhefediverse.net/join?lang=en-us

Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed: easily replace Twitter, Instagram and YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5npl2KCt2ok

PeerTube: An alternative to Big Tech’s video platforms 👉 https://joinpeertube.org/#find-peertube-videos

Cold War 2: US officials call to overthrow China’s gov’t, expand military budget to $1.4 trillion: https://youtu.be/Q3RMl33SqNE?feature=shared

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFa-7LvPLha/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

🤔Who the f%#k elected Elon Musk?! Elon Musk’s mass layoff campaign that aims to destroy public services has officially begun.


I’m 18 years old and currently live in Mississippi, really close to Memphis. I’m Chicano (Mexican American) and was wondering if anyone knows of any groups or organizations in the area that I can join. I want to start making a difference in my community. I’ve already tried searching on Google, but I didn’t find much. I’d really appreciate any help or suggestions!

Groups I can join


Abolish Rent. Yes, For Real.


People’s victory: Indian government forced to cancel mining project in Tamil Nadu


Racism and white supremacy has no place at the University of Georgia or in Athens! Zero tolerance for Nazism!

In October 2024, UGA machine shop manager George Haynie hosted the neo-nazi festival “Aryan Fest” on his property for the Aryan Freedom Network, an organization that encourages violence against people from oppressed communities. The network promotes white supremacist ideas, calls for race wars, and actively trains right-wing militias. Haynie is a real threat to the safety of Black and brown communities, and yet the university has reinstated him.

We call on the UGA administration to meet the community’s demands and fire Nazi organizer George Haynie!

📆 Tuesday, February 4th
⏰ 12:00 PM
📍Tate Plaza

PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) https://pslweb.org

Join the Fediverse: https://jointhefediverse.net/join?lang=en-us

Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed: easily replace Twitter, Instagram and YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5npl2KCt2ok

PeerTube: An alternative to Big Tech’s video platforms 👉 https://joinpeertube.org/#find-peertube-videos

Cold War 2: US officials call to overthrow China’s gov’t, expand military budget to $1.4 trillion: https://youtu.be/Q3RMl33SqNE?feature=shared

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFO5A6BN_YI/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

📢💥NO NAZIS AT UGA! Fire Nazi Organizer George Haynie!💥📢 On Tuesday, February 4th at 12 PM, we call on students, faculty, staff, and community members in Athens to walkout and rally at Tate Plaza to demand that UGA employee, neo-Nazi organizer George Haynie, be immediately fired!


Tears of our children: From Palestine to Sudan


Socialism is a Great Cultural Movement


I’m looking for recommendations on what you believe may be the most important works of socialist and anti-imperialist literature. My goal is to collect physical copies of these materials, as I’m increasingly concerned that such works may face censorship or restrictions in the near future where I live. You can likely infer the country. While I’m only slightly unsure how severe the situation may actually become, I want to take a proactive approach in preserving this knowledge and distributing it as well.

If you have suggestions, I’d appreciate it if you could include a brief one-line synopsis alongside the title to help highlight the key themes. This isn’t a requirement, but it would certainly be helpful.

I’m starting with a budget of approximately $300 and plan to source books from thrift stores, library sales, and other independent sellers. I’d also prefer to avoid purchasing from major corporations like Amazon, so if you have recommendations for ethical or independent retailers that support a good cause, I’d love to hear them.

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Seeking Recommendations for Essential Socialist & Anti-Imperialist Literature


Hey! I've lurked in the socialism movement ever since 2018-2019. I've followed a lot of left leaning content on Tik Tok and other platforms just to help stay informed, since that seems to be half of the battle.

I'm not here ask how to start a revolution but more importantly, am seeking advice to keep my community safe. I have social anxiety so being in public spaces has always been kind of difficult (something I'm working on getting better at). However with everything that has happened within the past 10 days, I can't sit idle while my country (USA) dies. My thoughts are a little scattered as I'm pretty nervous typing all of this stuff out so bare with me lmao.

Here's are my goals and questions associated to achieve them:

-Preferably flex my 2nd amendment right and encourage those within my community to do the same. SELF DEFENSE PURPOSES ONLY. While I am not advocating for violence as it is against reddit's community guidelines. However I am not blind to the dire situation within the USA. How would you go about this tactfully w/o people getting the wrong idea? Is this idea something I should even entertain?

-I want to create fliers to hand out to people within my community but am no design artist. Or put on people's doorsteps. I have a black/white printer that can print basic paper but nothing too extravagant. Any tips on how to create that sort of stuff would be fantastic.

-Messaging is key. From my observation, the left seems to have an incredibly difficult time resonating with people under the influence of propaganda. There will inevitably be people who are gonna spread misinformation and try to combat our movement. We've already saw this with antifa during 2020. How would you combat this? My thoughts are using our American founding father's quotes or stuff from the declaration of Independence that way we can better protect our image from the far right.

-I understand that there is a risk of discussing topics like this on subreddits or other forums, but at this point, I feel as though it's a necessary risk. Are there any better ways of communicating with people who are on the same page? Or is local community gathering the far more effective?

-Are there any content/works from specifically POC I can use to educate myself. I am a person of privilege so I admit that I lack some awareness to their space. I want to effectively utilize my privilege to protect my fellow Americans from fascists pigs for lack of better words.

-I am under the notion that we need to carefully fan the flame of passion for saving our democracy. The alt-right has already given us a head start by not only taking away rights but also screwing the American people with tons of executive orders that were signed. I'm not sure how our government is going to handle combating the fascist party at the current moment, but I've lost faith that they will even protect Americans. How would you bring liberal leaning people to our side?

Any and all advice is appreciated. I can't give exact details on where I live, but I do live in a blue state. I'm new to activism outside of just sharing/commenting on Tik Tok tbh. The last thing I want to do is cause more damage to my community or others.

Fresh recruit to activism. What should we do?

Hey! I&#39;ve lurked in the socialism movement ever since 2018-2019. I&#39;ve followed a lot of left leaning content on Tik Tok and other platforms just to help stay informed, since that seems to be half of the battle.

I&#39;m not here ask how to start a revolution but more importantly, am seeking advice to keep my community safe. I have social anxiety so being in public spaces has always been kind of difficult (something I&#39;m working on getting better at). However with everything that has happened within the past 10 days, I can&#39;t sit idle while my country (USA) dies. My thoughts are a little scattered as I&#39;m pretty nervous typing all of this stuff out so bare with me lmao.

Here&#39;s are my goals and questions associated to achieve them:

-Preferably flex my 2nd amendment right and encourage those within my community to do the same. SELF DEFENSE PURPOSES ONLY. While I am not advocating for violence as it is against reddit&#39;s community guidelines. However I am not blind to the dire situation within the USA. How would you go about this tactfully w/o people getting the wrong idea? Is this idea something I should even entertain?

-I want to create fliers to hand out to people within my community but am no design artist. Or put on people&#39;s doorsteps. I have a black/white printer that can print basic paper but nothing too extravagant. Any tips on how to create that sort of stuff would be fantastic.

-Messaging is key. From my observation, the left seems to have an incredibly difficult time resonating with people under the influence of propaganda. There will inevitably be people who are gonna spread misinformation and try to combat our movement. We&#39;ve already saw this with antifa during 2020. How would you combat this? My thoughts are using our American founding father&#39;s quotes or stuff from the declaration of Independence that way we can better protect our image from the far right.

-I understand that there is a risk of discussing topics like this on subreddits or other forums, but at this point, I feel as though it&#39;s a necessary risk. Are there any better ways of communicating with people who are on the same page? Or is local community gathering the far more effective?

-Are there any content/works from specifically POC I can use to educate myself. I am a person of privilege so I admit that I lack some awareness to their space. I want to effectively utilize my privilege to protect my fellow Americans from fascists pigs for lack of better words.

-I am under the notion that we need to carefully fan the flame of passion for saving our democracy. The alt-right has already given us a head start by not only taking away rights but also screwing the American people with tons of executive orders that were signed. I&#39;m not sure how our government is going to handle combating the fascist party at the current moment, but I&#39;ve lost faith that they will even protect Americans. How would you bring liberal leaning people to our side?

Any and all advice is appreciated. I can&#39;t give exact details on where I live, but I do live in a blue state. I&#39;m new to activism outside of just sharing/commenting on Tik Tok tbh. The last thing I want to do is cause more damage to my community or others.


I’m a fairly recent Reddit user, as well as a fairly recent socialist/communist. The doomerism has always been bad here since I joined Reddit but the last month it’s been so much worse and more widespread, even in non-leftist/non-political subs, and especially from US Americans.

For those of you who’ve been around here longer, how does this compare to the aftermath of the 2016 election?

Was the Reddit doomerism this bad the first time trump got elected?