(Image source from: China hosts world's largest shopping-spree for the loveless})

Chinese shoppers broke their own record for online spending as e-tailers lavished huge discounts on 'Single's Day' to pamper the loveless with retail therapy.

Within the first six hours, customers across the country frittered away $ 1.6 billion on China's largest online trading platform Alibaba Group. The total estimate went as high as $ 8 billion.

“November 11 - or 11.11 - was proclaimed Singles Day because of the number of ones in the date, with sellers promoting discounts on everything from boyfriend body pillows to wine to the nation's singletons,” wrote the Daily Mail.

'Male and female singles are no longer depressed now because all their attention is focused on the Internet to buy stuff,' said one skeptical poster on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
'But afterward they will realize their problems have not been resolved.'

Taobao and Tmall, the two online shopping websites run by Alibaba, garnered a whopping 340,000 transactions in just the first minute of the annual spree going live at midnight, earning more than $16.4million.

AW: Suchorita Dutta Choudhury