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Chapter 15 – Fame Scam!
Aside from those disreputable websites, Xia Ping also chose to post on Gu Zhiwei, Bao Pitang, and some other erotic web novel masters’ blogs as well.
Both Gu Zhiwei and Bao Pitang were the leading authorities on erotic web novels and had written countless classics with many fans. Just their blogs alone had more than thirty million followers.
It was almost certain for him to attract a lot of readers if he could make his posts popular on their blogs.
Therefore, Xia Ping once again immediately registered several troll accounts. One of them created a post stating: [The Reason Why Nobody is Reading Master Gu Zhiwei’s Books Anymore.] The post seemed very fair and factual, but it would demean Master Gu Zhiwei’s works from time to time to the point where they seemed as if complete trash.
“I approve. Although I recognize Gu Zhiwei as an erotic web novel master of his times, but his works are too old-fashioned now. In today’s age, pretty nobody reads his stuff anymore. I just can’t understand what he is trying to write. It’s as if he is just writing all for himself,” another troll account commented, insulting Gu Zhiwei with all his might.
“I know right? Even if Gu Zhiwei personally started to write web novels again, aside from those hardcore fans of his, everybody else will just curse him to high heavens. Looking back on all his works now, I feel as if they’re all worse than that new erotic web novel, Teacher Bai Rong. At least worse by several centuries,” a third troll account subtly advertised.
“According to the rumours, Gu Zhiwei hasn’t completely stopped writing. Before, he also secretly wrote and uploaded another web novel under another pen name, but it failed. Almost nobody wanted to read it.” A fourth troll account began maliciously spreading false rumours, “At that time, he read a web novel call Teacher Bai Rong or something, and in the end he sighed about how the new waves pushed the old waves and how the old waves eventually die out on the shore. After crying an entire night over his own inferiority, he decided to fully stop writing. How sad, how tragic. A master of an age has fallen.”
“I’ll cry to your sister! You say it as if it’s really real!” Upon seeing this post, one fan immediately exploded from anger and quickly counterattacked, “Stop going around spreading fake rumours here! There isn’t any rumours of Gu Zhiwei using another pen name to write at all. He’s already someone in his late sixties to seventies, how could he have so much time to waste?”
“Shameless poster! Gu Zhiwei is the master of his times! Who knows how many people he has influence with his web novels? Even now, all of the erotic web novels follow his standard line of thought and can’t use anything new! They’re basically eating his scraps and leftovers. As for you a mere new writer, what do you understand? Make the master cry over his inferiority? How do you even have the face to say that?”
“Agreed! Master Gu Zhiwei is a peak-levelled web novel author with incredible influence! Even some of his web novels have been made into films with a box office income of more than several billion! Yet you still dare to slander and blacken his name?! Say you can’t understand?! Are you fucking blind?!”
“I apologize to the person above me. The poster crawled out from the mental asylum without first taking his medicine, so I’ll bring him back right now.”
“I’m sorry everybody, but the poster is my son. I hadn’t finished teaching him properly before he got out, so I really do have to apologize for giving birth to that barbecued pork face. If I knew ahead of time, I would have shot my load onto the wall instead.”
A group of Master Gu Zhiwei’s fans exploded. Not only did this poster maliciously slander Gu Zhiwei, the poster even said that after Gu Zhiwei saw a new person’s web novel, he cried over his inferiority! Fuck his granny! How could somebody be so shameless? Even if you’re going to make stuff, you still shouldn’t go so far!
After they saw the poster’s words, all of the fans were furious and immediately posted their rebuttal to curse him. They wanted to curse him to the point where he couldn’t even lift up his head for the rest of his life! That he would be spat on by everybody when he went out!
In the end? After just half an hour, the amount of clicks that the post got exceeded one million while the amount of replies reached fifty eight thousand, directly bringing the post up to the number one spot on the blog.
Of course, most of the replies consisted of cursing the poster. At this point, they had already cursed all eighteen generations of the poster’s family.
Xia Ping’s troll account continued on to make a new post at this point. “Everybody, there’s no need for disbelief. The web novel Teacher Bai Rong is better than all of Gu Zhiwei’s works by a hundred times over. Complete overkill!” This post gave everything it got at praising Teacher Bai Rong while subtly blackening Gu Zhiwei’s works. As if they weren’t worth anything and was complete garbage.
“Go die! Just that web novel alone wants to overkill Master Gu Zhiwei?”
“Even dreams shouldn’t be done like this. Go take a look at Gu Zhiwei’s sales records before saying such words.”
“I haven’t even heard of this web novel before. Who the hell knows what kind of nook or cranny it came from. You want to overkill Master Gu Zhiwei with that?”
“This guy is absolutely a fan of the author of that web novel and came here to be cursed at!”
“If he wants to be cursed at so badly, then we’ll help him! Didn’t he say that this web novel was better than all of Gu Zhiwei’s web novels? Then I want to see just how much better it is!”
”Everybody! Let’s all go over there and massacre that author’s review area! We’ll curse him until he doubts even his own life!”
“Right! Curse that damn bastard to death! He actually dares to come here and slander Master Gu Zhiwei? He’s looking for death!”
“Everybody, I’m a brick layer. As long as I even catch sight of that author, I’ll give him a brick to the head and wake him up from his daydream.”
All of the fans were infuriated, their replies filled with smoke and flames!
Seeing these replies, Xia Ping disapproved on the outside, but inside he was extremely smug. This type of publicizing technique was really popular back on his life on Earth. It even had a professional name, and that was “fame scam”!
In simple terms, it was basically those not-widely known yet popular web celebrities deliberately say stuff that negatively affected those famous celebrities. In that fashion, they used that famous celebrity’s popularity to attract a lot of attention and increase their own fan count.
If that famous celebrity responded, they would increase the degree of exposure. At that, the more it was discussed the better it was. As for not responding? That also didn’t matter. In any case those fans of theirs wouldn’t be able to take it and start cursing. That way also increased the amount of activity and exposure.
In general, towards those small celebrities or people who didn’t have any fame at all, the fame scam was completely beneficial to them. At the very least, they can take advantage of that opportunity to make themselves known to the public and not just be ignored.
Although this was extremely shameless, but from a publicizing perspective, there was no doubt that it was the best and most efficient way of advertisement.
And so, Xia Ping kept on going at it. He visited the blog of every erotic web novel author with even a little bit of fame and wrote some sort of provocative post on it, riling up those fans. Just like that and his web novel Teacher Bai Rong would gain a lot of attention.
Such crazy publicizing also had extremely obvious results.
The originally empty reviews section of his web novel was instantly filled. A whole group of newly registered accounts gave it their all as one in blasting Xia Ping, so unified that they were almost like an army. Basically a sea of curses.
In just an hour, his web novel’s review section had more than fifty thousand reviews. The result of this was that his web novel got more than three million clicks and had more than thirty thousand people who added his web novel to their libraries.
“Success!”
Xia Ping clenched his fists. He knew that even if there were a lot of people who cursed him, there would also definitely be a portion who were just curious and chose to read his web novel instead.
Although the ratio of such people might not be high, but it was still a spark nonetheless. And this spark had the potential to turn into a blazing wildfire. He was confident that his web novel would quickly become popular with these seeds.
Translator Note: I don’t know if it’s actually called the fame scam, but I couldn’t think of a better phrase nor could I find anything better on Google.
Seems legit.