1RomanceEB Chapter 46 Welcome to WeBank Era
Chapter 46 Welcome to WeBank Era
"What do you mean?"
Everyone looked at each other.
Ren Pingsheng didn't answer directly. He gestured for everyone to gather around and dragged the progress bar to the third minute of the first episode of "Men's Diary 2".
In the scene, Huang Xiaoming, dressed in a well-tailored suit, sits in a tastefully decorated coffee shop and says a teasing line to Ma Yili, who has exquisite makeup.
The soft lighting, exquisite composition, and soothing jazz background music perfectly complemented the sophisticated ambiance.
"How do you feel?" Ren Pingsheng asked.
"No," Bai Ke honestly shook his head.
Ren Pingsheng dragged the progress bar to the seventh minute, where Zhu Yuchen's character was in a gym and was about to die because he didn't know how to use the equipment.
The joke itself was fine, and the punchline was delivered cleanly and effectively.
"What about this one?"
"That's quite interesting," Bai Ke said, scratching his head, unsure of what Ren Pingsheng meant.
Ren Pingsheng turned his chair around to face the crowd.
"Zhao Baogang is a good director, but he made a fatal mistake, a mistake that an elite like him would never realize."
"What did you do wrong?" Xiao Ai leaned closer, her face full of anxiety.
"He portrayed the loser in too respectable a way, and he romanticized youth too much."
The studio was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
"Why was 'Men's Diary' so popular? Because viewers saw themselves in Wang Duoyu. But look at 'Men's Diary 2'," Ren Pingsheng pointed to the paused screen, "Huang Xiaoming is picking up girls in a coffee shop, Zhu Yuchen is working out in a high-end gym, and Bai Baihe is wearing a dress that costs thousands of yuan to play a miserable struggling migrant worker in Beijing who has to squeeze onto the subway."
Bai Ke suddenly realized, slapping his thigh: "It's like someone earning a million a year coming to you complaining about their hardships, would you believe them?"
"You don't believe me, and you'll think he's showing off."
Ren Pingsheng nodded, "Zhao Baogang turned a comedy rooted in the grassroots into a self-deprecating film about the elite class, which has nothing to do with the losers."
"In the end, the audience will only think, 'Why should I waste my time watching a bunch of rich people pretend to be poor?'"
This is the Achilles' heel of the loser 2.
"So we don't need to panic," Ren Pingsheng stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. "For the first two weeks, their data was definitely higher than ours. The empowerment of IP, coupled with the resource allocation from Sohu, is the fundamental difference."
"But then..."
He didn't finish his sentence.
Bai Ke waited a few seconds, then asked, "What happens next?"
"Just wait and see."
Ren Pingsheng had this confidence, but confidence did not mean he would sit idly by and wait.
He likes to take the initiative; he wants his opponents to die faster and more easily.
He opened a webpage and simultaneously uploaded a pre-prepared video to his biography accounts on various platforms.
When Bai Ke and Xiao Ai saw Ren Pingsheng's actions, they assumed he was going to use this account with tens of millions of views to promote and drive traffic to "Report to the Boss".
But they were wrong.
This video has absolutely nothing to do with "Report to the Boss," and it has no connection whatsoever with the two competing web series, "losers," or Sohu.
The video is titled: "[The Era of Micro-Crowds: Are You Still Willing to Be Represented by Elites?]"
The content is about a new product that was only born in China three months ago and has not yet attracted public attention—Weibo.
Ren Pingsheng showed no bias in the video, starting with the birth of Twitter and dissecting the underlying architecture of Weibo.
It provides an extremely objective analysis of the "bottom-up" public opinion forces behind this new thing.
At the end of the video, there is white text on a black background.
Welcome to WeBank Era.
Then, a new Weibo ID appeared in the corner of the screen: @生平事
Once the video was released, it quickly attracted a large number of viewers thanks to the account's existing fan base.
"The master has finally updated!"
"Wait a minute, what's Weibo? I've never heard of it before!"
"It's the one Xinlang made, similar to QQ signatures, but you can follow other people and see what they post."
"What's there to analyze? It's just a place to express your feelings, isn't it?"
"Have you finished watching the video? Watch it before you speak."
"I've finished reading it, and I feel a chill down my spine. The expert's talk about the shift in public opinion power... I feel like he's saying that ordinary people will be able to directly file complaints online in the future?"
"You're overthinking it. The authorities won't let you say whatever you want."
"Not necessarily. Look at the YL incident on Twitter. The government blocked all media, but ordinary people used Twitter to spread the news all over the world."
Countless curious netizens followed the instructions in the video to open the still somewhat rudimentary new Lang Weibo page and entered "life story" in the search box.
The debate intensified, but it also drew the attention of many to the Weibo ID at the end of the video.
Countless curious netizens followed the instructions and opened the still somewhat rudimentary new Lang Weibo page, typing "life story" into the search box.
The homepage is empty, with the number of followers still in the thousands, and the profile picture is a simple black and white block.
But just recently, this account posted its first blog post.
It wasn't a self-introduction or some inspirational quote.
It's just a limerick.
Their mouths are full of poetry and distant places, but their eyes are not worried about rent.
Living in a big house, he complains of being lost; when a benefactor arrives, he goes crazy.
A slicked-back face can only mask a life of hardship; you should go home and ask your mother.
*burp* That's youth!
The first reaction of people who came across this poem was to laugh.
My second reaction was that it looked somewhat familiar.
Is this an insult directed at anyone?
……
The content center office area of Sohu Building was brightly lit.
Alex propped his feet up on the table, grinning from ear to ear at the backend data on the screen.
The first episode of "Men's Diary 2" has garnered nearly two million views within eight hours of its release, with rave reviews in the comments section.
And what's that "Report to the Boss" thing on the other side?
It's a little over 500,000, less than half of his.
"Look, this is what professionalism looks like," Alex said, sending a screenshot of the data to the work group. "A four-fold crushing victory—this isn't something money can buy; it's a difference in quality."
The group chat was filled with flattery.
He leaned back in his chair and sent Deng Ye a brief report, the wording humble but the numbers arrogant. He added at the end: "The current data far exceeds expectations; I suggest increasing publicity and promotion resources accordingly."
Deng Ye replied with two words: Not bad.
Alex stared at those two words for a long time, as if he could see the promotion spot beckoning to him on the year-end performance review form.
He then opened Youku and found the page for "Report to the Boss".
I watched for a few minutes, then scoffed and turned it off.
"A makeshift troupe is a makeshift troupe."
What he didn't notice was that although the number of comments in the "Report to the Boss" section was small, there were almost no negative reviews.
Amidst the flood of positive reviews in the comments section of "Men's Diary 2," some discordant voices have begun to emerge.
"I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong. The actors are acting quite well, but I just can't bring myself to laugh."
"This is so different from the first season! Where did Wang Duoyu go? Who are these people?"
"Don't you guys think these jokes are sophisticated but not funny? It's like watching a Spring Festival Gala skit."
These voices are still very faint, drowned out by a flood of positive reviews and marketing posts.
But Ren Pingsheng was all too aware of the patterns of online public opinion.
At first, everyone was just curious.
Then the comparisons are made, and then longtime fans of the first season will jump out to nitpick.
Once reputation takes a turn for the worse, it's an avalanche.
His limerick was a marker that had been buried in advance on the snow-capped mountain.
It doesn't need to trigger an avalanche; it just needs enough people to see it and remember it.
When the audience begins to feel something is amiss, the poem will act like a key, instantly unlocking the door in everyone's heart that says, "So I've been feeling uncomfortable all along."