30x Leverage Shorting Best Friend

“Shorting your best friend” has recently become extremely popular. Many people might find it baffling—what does it mean to short a best friend, and with 30x leverage? In fact, there is a brutally harsh survival logic behind it, one that truly exists within women’s social circles. Watching this video, you'll understand why many men now feel that the women they meet on the dating market have somewhat abnormal thought patterns.

Let me give a real-life example.

There is a girl named Xiao Ya, whose overall conditions are quite average. She married early, asked for only 10,000 yuan in bride price, and lives a simple, stable life. But she then told a shocking lie to several high-value, well-educated, self-important best friends around her: she said that the country paid a bride price of 300,000 yuan to marry her, and she kept every penny, and her husband even knelt to ask her to deposit the money as a fixed-term deposit.

This is the “30x leverage,” turning 10,000 into 300,000. This is a typical case of false information “entry.” Meanwhile, those best friends who are much better off than Xiao Ya completely broke down emotionally at that moment. Their internal “mate selection standard” K-line chart skyrocketed like a shot of adrenaline. They thought: if even someone like her can get a 300,000 yuan bride price, and find a husband who can give 300,000, then if I don’t offer 50,000 or 100,000, and don’t find a husband with a Rolls-Royce, I’d be losing out completely.

Ten years later, Xiao Ya’s children are in elementary school, and her family is stable; meanwhile, her several best friends are still circling around that 300,000 yuan obsession, bouncing around the dating market, and have become “older leftover women” by force.

What is this behavior called in the financial world? It’s called “malicious market manipulation.” Xiao Ya only used one sentence to (indirectly) short all her best friends’ youth.

People might wonder, since these girls are highly educated and well-informed, why are they so easily duped by such clumsy lies? This is the most intractable trap in psychology—the anchoring effect.

The moment the “300,000 yuan” figure is thrown out, it becomes an anchor. From then on, when these girls go on dates, they no longer look at whether the man has a good personality, strong ability, or potential; instead, they first use this false measure to gauge him. As long as the bride price can’t reach 300,000, or the property isn’t registered in his name, no matter how excellent the man is, in their eyes he’s a “loser,” an insult to them.

They’re not dating the man in front of them; they’re dealing with the “ex-husband” of that fictional, nonexistent Xiao Ya.

For us men, this phenomenon explains many confusions that leave us scratching our heads. You might have encountered a blind date where your own salary is five or six thousand, but she demands an annual income of a million; or she clearly has no assets herself but insists you must buy a house outright. You think she’s crazy, but she’s not—she’s been “shorted.” Her cognition has been “manipulated” by her vain, lying best friends around her, who have “spoiled” her. She lives in a false prosperity woven from lies.

Worse, this kind of game involves “sunk costs.” As women age from 25 to 35, or even 45, have they truly realized the market has changed? They might have realized it, but they dare not lower their standards or admit defeat. Because once they accept a man with a bride price of 200,000 yuan or one without a house or car, it’s equivalent to admitting that their ten-year persistence was a joke, that they are worse off than Xiao Ya, and that they’ve been deceived.

This high psychological cost forces them to continue “leveraging up,” stubbornly fighting to the end.

Thus, an absurd situation emerges: the liar posts a warm family photo in their social circle, while the deceived person scrolls through social media late at night, looking at those fake, exquisite lives, sighing, “Good men are extinct.”

What you see might be a screenshot of a 52,000 yuan transfer posted by a best friend, but in reality, it was edited with photo software or immediately reversed after the transfer. What you see might be her drinking afternoon tea at a high-end restaurant, but in fact, it was a group purchase of a set meal shared among six people, each taking turns to go in and take three-minute photos.

These “shorting” moments are constantly happening. This bitterness isn’t just about being single; it’s also because they’ve become obsessed with these “fake benchmarks.” Their partners around them look at them with disdain, and they see all the dating prospects as trash. They use others’ “scripts” to measure their own lives, and fake “financial statements” to guide their emotional investments. No wonder they’re trapped.

As adults who have been through society’s grind, we must see through this situation. Dating is never a duel; it’s a game based on real strength. When you see a woman with that inexplicable sense of superiority and outrageous conditions, you should realize she might also be fixated on a (or several) “anchor points” left by Xiao Ya.

In this “30x leverage” scam, the most terrifying thing isn’t the lying best friend, but the pathological comparison mentality. They turn themselves into high-leverage financial products, forgetting that they are just ordinary people who need genuine emotions and stable lives.

When a woman, for a nonexistent inflated standard, makes the man who matches her conditions and is emotionally stable seem worthless, the liar is secretly laughing behind her. Her inferiority is compensated by destroying others’ happiness. And the best friends she “shorted” become sacrifices for her sense of superiority.

Life isn’t a short video filter, nor is it the bragging of best friends. Those so-called bottom lines in choosing a partner, if detached from real market conditions, are just accelerators toward destruction.

So, if any female friends see this, please stay alert. Don’t use your genuine youth and beauty as stepping stones for others’ vanity.

And for us men, if we encounter women deeply trapped in “virtual leverage,” the best approach isn’t to argue with her but to politely withdraw. Because you can never wake up someone who chooses to maintain a proud persona and willingly gets caught in the trap.

We are all ordinary people trying to get by in life. Let go of those unrealistic leverage ideas, assess the real gains and losses, and see if the man in front of you can truly bring you happiness. That’s the rational attitude adults should have. Otherwise, in the end, the one who gets “liquidated” in this shorting game will only be yourself.

Do you have such “older leftover women” around you?