Chapter 53 Online Style
Although the final rules for the third round and the grand finale have not been officially announced after the second round of performances, rumors have already leaked out.
The biggest news is that the final will be held at the Provincial Olympic Sports Center, and the judges' scoring system, which accounts for half of the final score, will be abolished. Instead, a "public online voting channel" will be fully opened, with one person, one ID, to determine the final winner.
The news sent shockwaves through the fan community.
The judges' scores in the early stages acted as a safety valve, designed to avoid potential aesthetic surprises: such as farces where people who claimed to represent public opinion were actually deliberately pushed to high positions by those who did not conform to mainstream aesthetics.
The existence of judges is to uphold basic professionalism and decorum.
Now, the ten remaining teams have all had their business capabilities tested by the market. This move by the authorities is intended to completely return the power of choice to the public and create a truly popular idol nurtured by public opinion.
Although the initial intention was good, it instantly ignited the most sensitive nerve in the fan community.
Initially, it was just fans from different groups cheering for their idols and campaigning for votes in a healthy way, but soon, driven by the fervor to clear the way for their idols, the battle escalated.
It's unclear which fandom couldn't resist trying to demystify their competitor by digging up old archives.
Gradually, all sorts of "dirt" and "dark history" that were difficult to distinguish between true and false surfaced on various social media platforms and fan forums.
Then, the conflict escalated, with screenshots, out-of-context video clips, and essays filled with malicious manipulation and interpretation flooding the internet.
Li Jinyue and the core team of her Zoothys official fan club initially managed to remain calm, repeatedly emphasizing in the fan group: "Focus on our own fandom, don't start fights, don't give them any attention, let the data speak for itself!"
However, once the chaos begins, reason becomes the first price to be paid.
When individual fans are systematically attacked on forums and Weibo, and their families are even affected, their suppressed anger becomes difficult to contain.
Someone somehow unearthed some program videos of Zoothys members during their trainee days.
These images were analyzed frame by frame and maliciously misinterpreted:
Ye Zhen's serious correction of her teammates was interpreted as "bullying teammates and having a mean personality"; Lu Xiaoxiao's minor stage mistakes due to nervousness in the early stages were magnified into "being the worst in terms of ability and relying entirely on the script to promote her"; even Sha Jing, who is naturally quiet, was labeled as "arrogant and looking down on others".
The most concentrated firepower naturally came from Ling Wei, the team leader.
Her occasional expressions of fatigue from intense training were deliberately captured in screenshots and labeled as "throwing tantrums at the production team and acting like a diva"...
The battle raged on, with fans from all sides casting suspicious glances at each other.
As the saying goes, "the taller the tree, the more the wind blows," and Zoothys's consistently high ranking made her a target of criticism and subjected to concentrated attacks.
Not only Zoothys, but also "Star Resonance," which has been firmly in first place in Group B with its unique anime-style virtual idols, has been dragged into the mess.
The attackers mocked them, saying, "Anime and manga fans dare to steal the jobs of real-life idols?" and "A bunch of ugly freaks hiding behind virtual avatars!"
This has really stirred up a hornet's nest.
The massive anime and manga fandom was instantly enraged, and many casual viewers who didn't usually follow talent shows joined in, vowing to vindicate the anime and manga community.
The outcry of "Who says anime fans can't be idols?" was deafening, and the "Star Resonance" phenomenon, which had been a misfortune, unexpectedly brought a surge in casual viewership and sympathy votes, propelling the trend forward.
Originally, based on popularity votes and performance in the second round of performances, Ling Wei's team had the greatest potential to win the championship. However, this battle stirred up trouble, and the situation instantly became unpredictable.
Li Jinyue was in a state of utter chaos. On one hand, she had to stabilize the emotions of her huge fan base to prevent them from retaliating irrationally and giving others ammunition against them; on the other hand, she had to organize people to combat negative publicity, report malicious posts, and clean up online content.
However, the opposing side came on strong, with a mix of online trolls and haters, making traditional anti-trolling methods ineffective.
The fan club's restrained strategy actually dampened the morale of some fans who felt frustrated.
Amidst this chaotic and disorderly atmosphere, an ID named "M" suddenly appeared.
He successively exposed several core accounts that spearheaded the spread of rumors. Their login IPs were highly overlapping, and they were even directly linked to staff members of a competitor's fan club, as well as a professional online troll company.
The caption was just one sentence: "The source is here, are you still going to put on an act?"
For those trolls who are still stubbornly resisting and relentlessly hurling insults, "M" demonstrated astonishing speed and overwhelming logic.
He seemed to need no thought, able to respond to others with incredibly sharp language in dozens of different comment sections simultaneously in a very short time.
Haters made personal attacks: "Ling Wei looks like she has a scheming personality."
M retorted: "They see everyone as scheming, but actually they've suffered enough from being brainless in their own lives."
Haters are spreading rumors: "Isn't anyone doing anything about Ye Zhen bullying her fellow trainees?"
M: "Aren't you going to let the cyber police do anything about this baseless rumor? @Local Cyber Police, someone here is suspected of online defamation."
Haters hurl insults: "What's with Lu Xiaoxiao pretending to be an innocent little deer? It all looks fake!"
M directly posted a screenshot showing that the other person had praised another female celebrity as "sister is so cool" just three minutes earlier: "Does your sister know that your mouth is both spewing filth and licking someone's face at the same time?"
Unless his haters block him, you can always see his sharp and incisive replies, and he often engages in verbal battles with a group of haters at the same time, with each one unique and original.
Qu Chen is currently sitting in the village's only electronic reading room.
The room was filled with a faint smell of dust and old paper. An old desktop computer hummed, and the one in front of him had a fan that made a dull roar like a broken bellows, as if it was about to break down at any moment.
He stared intently at the screen, which displayed the running interfaces of several data crawler programs in a split-screen format. In the black command window, code scrolled rapidly like a waterfall, with several analysis software programs listed alongside.
Just then, Grandpa Li's booming voice rang out from the reading room door: "Chen'er!"
Grandpa Li walked in and said, "Stop staring at this thing. Do you want to ruin your eyes?"
"Come on, let's go for a walk with Grandpa, stretch our muscles and give our eyes a break."
Qu Chen glanced at the screen. The script was running stably and did not require his manual intervention for the time being. Although this old computer was broken, it seemed to be able to handle the current workload.
He nodded silently and obediently stood up.
He told himself that he did this purely for Grandma Yu's sake. If Grandma Yu knew that her granddaughter was being bullied like this online, the old lady would definitely be heartbroken.
He just didn't want to upset Grandma Yu.
Yes, that's it.
He reaffirmed this logic in his mind and felt much more at ease.
After walking around the field with Grandpa Li and breathing in the fresh air filled with the scent of soil and plants for a while, Qu Chen estimated that it was about time and made an excuse to return to the reading room.
However, when he sat back down at his computer and habitually refreshed the trending topics list to check public opinion, a single entry caught his eye and made him freeze instantly.
#InternetStyleM#
#Zoothys fans are crazy#
Qu Chen: "......"
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