Chapter 142 It's a Mess

"It's just as you guessed..."

On the other end of the phone, Fang Xuyang sighed, "That last black trending search was just the beginning..."

Look, before one wave subsides, another wave rises!

However, "Judging from the method used to expose this information..."

Fang Xuyang flipped through the documents in his hand, the papers rustling on the other end of the phone. "It doesn't look like the same person or company as before..."

Xie Tinglan responded, "That 'Royal Family (hot search)' thing, which agency was responsible..."

The purpose is easy to guess. It is nothing more than that Xia Linxing, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, made them feel threatened.

Even though Xie Tinglan has a thick filter for Xia Linxing, he has to admit that the reason Xia Linxing was able to stay in the show before was purely because she was a hot topic, so the program team gave her enough shots.

Even though Xia Linxing was on the hot search many times before, his ranking was only around the elimination line, and he almost advanced by the bar every time, so people from other brokerage companies did not take Xia Linxing seriously.

But it was different during the fourth public performance - Xia Linxing won the best performance this time.

The program team arranged a total of four performances, with only four "Best of the Show" awards, but one of them was taken by Xia Linxing, whom they had never taken seriously.

Although Xia Linxing was able to win this honor in large part due to the perfect cooperation with Xie Tinglan, who seemed like a match made in heaven, but being the "Best of the Show" in every performance is still a strong candidate for debut!

So these companies are anxious, they can't wait to take action——

They wanted to use black material and dirty water to bring Xia Linxing down before the finals.

——This is also a common tactic used by these brokerage companies in these talent shows; these dirty waters are true or false, and the purpose is not to spread rumors about Xia Linxing, but to make passers-by and fans disappointed in Xia Linxing, affect Xia Linxing's votes, and let the program team reconsider the candidates for debut (trainees with serious black material will not be among those who debut).

So Xie Tinglan was not too surprised about that hot search.

However, this time the hot search for the revelations seems... more like the work of an individual.

Because the marketing account only accepts submissions, all that was posted were screenshots from private chats. The personal emotions of the contributors were quite obvious between the lines.

"And..." Xie Tinglan seemed to be lost in thought: "Xing... when Xia Linxing and Shen Sibai had a conflict, the program recording hadn't even started yet."

In other words, at that time, neither fans nor agencies had paid attention to the show, so no one cared about the incident. The only people who knew about the whole thing were the trainees and staff.

Speaking of which... Xie Tinglan seemed to have suddenly thought of something, and he paused.

Xia Linxing… If he remembered correctly, Xia Linxing seemed to have been hospitalized after this fall. When he came back, he had become a completely different person…

What on earth is this...

"Thank you, boss?"

"Thank you, boss?"

"Xie Tinglan!"

Fang Xuyang was speechless on the other end of the phone. Why did Xie Tinglan fall silent again?

"Hmm?" Xie Tinglan snapped out of his thoughts and decided to suppress his suspicions for now. He returned to the previous topic and continued, "I remember that Xia Linxing and the production crew always got along very well..."

That’s why it was so easy for Fang Xuyang to ask the staff for help in clarifying the last performance costume incident.

So… "It's highly likely that this was done by a trainee who had a conflict with Xia Linxing, disguised as a staff member."

And it is too easy to guess that he is the trainee who has conflicts with Xia Linxing.

"So what are you going to do? Fight back first, or dispel the rumors first?"

Fang Xuyang gave his opinion: "I think we should dispel the rumors first..."

You can counterattack at any time. After all, it is never too late for a gentleman to take revenge. However, refuting rumors requires timeliness. If it is too late, the effect will not be good even if the rumor is refuted.

"No……"

Xie Tinglan shook his head: "I don't choose either..."

"This time, I plan to use another method..."

Fang Xuyang: “?”

…

Just when the onlookers were immersed in Xia Linxing's "black material", they suddenly discovered that new black material had emerged.

But when they clicked in with great interest——

"Everyone, look what I discovered! The trainee who tried to portray himself as a top student on that popular talent show is actually just a junior college student. His classmates even revealed that this trainee was constantly skipping classes and not doing homework, and he often failed his final exams. He was always seen at the make-up exams before the start of the semester..."

Hey, the onlookers were stunned.

This doesn't seem to be... Xia Linxing's negative material, eh? After all, no matter how poor Xia Linxing's business skills were, he was still a rich young man who had received the best education since childhood. Even if his grades were poor, the Xia family could still send Xia Linxing abroad to gain experience, so the word "junior college" had nothing to do with him at all.

Then who is saying this...?

The crowd was jumping up and down in the comments waiting for someone to give the answer, but before they could figure out the answer, another trending search popped up:

I'm sure everyone's been enjoying the gossip about a certain talent show lately, so I'm going to share a new piece of gossip with you today:

In that talent show, there was a trainee who already had quite a few fans before joining the show, and he always portrayed himself as a fan-favorite. During the recording of the show, every time after the rankings were announced, he would bow and thank his fans, acting as if he sincerely believed that he wouldn't be where he is today without his fans. His fans flattered him to the point of making him into an embryo.

As a result, a staff member revealed that the trainee was very touched after accepting the gifts from fans and told them that he would take good care of them, but then he threw them directly into the company's trash can [Attached Trash Can Picture 1][Attached Trash Can Picture 2].

"He already had a lot of fans before joining the show"? The onlookers suddenly realized that it wasn't Xia Linxing anymore... Xia Linxing was a complete amateur before joining the show, and it was good enough that her number of fans was not at the bottom.

But... the onlookers became excited.

It turns out to be another negative news about another new trainee!

What's going on?! What's going on these days?!

Is Star Journey: Departure a scam being orchestrated by the capitalists lately?! How come it's almost the finals, and already negative rumors about the remaining trainees are popping up one after another?!

For the first time, the melon-eating crowd felt that too much melon was not good—

They can hardly eat anymore!

I haven’t even finished eating the previous one yet, and the next one pops up!

They are so busy!

Besides the onlookers, fans of the trainees whose stories were exposed were also busy. One moment, they were mingling with the crowds of passersby and mocking Xia Linxing, and the next moment, the ire spread to their own brothers. They had to put aside their gloating over Xia Linxing's misfortune and start working to debunk the rumors about their brothers.

The same thing happened to the management companies behind these trainees. They were originally trying to intensify their efforts, trying to drag Xia Linxing down from the debut candidate position in one fell swoop, but before they could succeed, their own backyard caught fire first. They could only put out the fire in their own backyard first, and then start investigating who was attacking them.

As negative news broke out one after another, such as "Two trainees in the training classroom quarreled and escalated to violence, and were urgently stopped by the production team", "During the second performance of a certain group, a trainee who had now entered the finals, led the other trainees in the group to deliberately isolate the trainee who was competing with him for the C position, causing the trainee to lose his balance and make mistakes in the performance and was unfortunately eliminated", and "A trainee who always acted helpful in front of the camera and often helped other trainees to catch the movements, ignored people behind the camera"... and so on.

The onlookers were so stunned by the food that they kept eating.

No...why don't you guys from "Star Road" go to the temple and pray? Why does it feel like all the problematic trainees in the world are on your show?

There were even some people who were curious and actually matched the negative information that was revealed piece by piece with the remaining trainees.

result--

completely annihilated!

Wow! The bystanders looked at the prepared black material table and exclaimed "Wow!"

This is simply... a mess!

Surprisingly, all the trainees who entered the finals were exposed for their negative content!

Ah, this...

The onlookers began to feel speechless.

If they had previously viewed these revelations with a mindset of whether they were true or false, then after this "black material" table came out, they instead felt that... these black materials were all false.

Since all the negative information is fake, then the negative information about Xia Linxing, who was the first to expose the negative information, is also fake, right?

…

"It has to be you! Thank you, boss!"

Fang Xuyang sighed on the other end of the phone, "This is really beautiful!"

Ever since Xia Linxing's negative information was exposed, Fang Xuyang had been somewhat confused when he learned that Xie Tinglan had neither attempted to refute the rumors nor immediately retaliate. He even began to wonder if Xie Tinglan had returned to his old ways and was beginning to dislike Xia Linxing again when Xie Tinglan handed him a stack of information.

The information contained all the “black material” about the remaining trainees who made it to the finals.

The reason I put it in quotation marks is because the things described in these materials are both true and false. If someone really wants to use these materials to discredit other trainees, they can quickly debunk the rumors.

So Fang Xuyang was a little confused as to why Xie Tinglan wanted him to release this information.

Fang Xuyang asked directly, but Xie Tinglan denied his idea, "The information in these materials is not released to discredit those trainees..."

He said, "I just want the water to become muddy."

These news, whether true or false, are released not only to divert attention, but also to allow false revelations to mix in.

As long as true and false news are mixed together and the water in the pond is muddied, they won't even have to spend extra time refuting the rumors. Passersby will naturally begin to doubt whether the previous "black material" about Xia Linxing is true.

Moreover, Xie Tinglan did not just release information about one or two trainees, he released the "black material" of all the trainees who entered the finals, including the artist under his studio - Chen Sibai.

There are many benefits to doing this:

One is that these materials are a mixture of true and false, so there is no need to worry that releasing them rashly will have a bad impact on the trainees.

In particular, Xie Tinglan is very "balancing" - if Xia Linxing has a few "black materials" on him, then there will be a few on other trainees as well, and he will definitely not "favor one over the other"!

Another thing is that if the agencies behind the trainees initially investigated who had done something to them, they would stop after seeing all the trainees' "black material" exposed and would not waste resources on this matter.

However, at this time, they had already been tricked by Xie Tinglan and their attention was diverted away from Xia Linxing.

Even if these brokerage companies realized at this time that they were being led by the nose, they would not be able to turn around and continue to discredit Xia Linxing.

Because it was too deliberate, passers-by are not fools; if passers-by realize that they are being used as a gun, the backlash will be much more serious than Xia Linxing's negative news.

"Your move is really amazing!"

Fang Xuyang was still sighing. He'd initially thought that contacting the marketing account to release the negative information and then hiring people to hype it up would cost a fortune, and Fang Xuyang had already prepared his studio for a significant outlay. But when the matter was finally settled, they realized they'd only paid for the marketing account and a small amount of hype.

The vast majority of the popularity is bought by other brokerage companies with their own money.

Yes, it was other brokerage companies that took the initiative [emphasis added] and paid for the purchase themselves.

Of course, these agencies are not foolish enough to buy hype for negative news about their own trainees. What they buy is... negative news about other trainees.

——As long as other negative news becomes popular, no one will pay attention to ours.

There is absolutely no problem with the logic. After all, Xie Tinglan's plan is almost based on this central idea.

It just happened to be a coincidence... all the PR teams of the agencies thought the same.

Everyone is hyping up negative news about trainees from other companies, which means no one is popular. Especially since Xie Tinglan's studio is secretly manipulating this behind the scenes. If a trainee's popularity drops, the studio staff will secretly help boost it up a bit, striving to keep everyone at the same level of popularity. He has the same popularity, and you have to have it too!

A bowl of water is held very flatly!

Moreover, I don’t know if it’s because Xie Tinglan has muddied the water too much, even the program team has gone astray——

They didn't think about the fight between the management companies behind the trainees. They actually thought that other program teams were jealous of the popularity of their program and were deliberately blackening their trainees who were about to debut!

The intention is so sinister!

As a result, the production crew has been secretly investigating these past two days to find out which shameless production crew is tampering with their program!

And the "culprit" who caused all this, Xia Linxing, is at a loss at the moment.

Because his mission was suddenly completed again and again.