Chapter 74: Chapter 71 Fermentation!
As an online writer who often procrastinates, Fu Ming, although his daily updates are relatively limited in word count, has undeniably written some pretty enjoyable books.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had two consecutive works become big hits, with the second book’s initial subscriptions nearing ten thousand—haven’t you seen how many authors have been in the business for five or six years, yet their best achievements are just one or two thousand subscriptions?
The reason for Fu Ming’s drop in subscriptions isn’t due to the storyline falling apart but because he updates infrequently, so most readers prefer to "fatten up" the book first.
As a result, the number of members in Fu Ming’s reader fan group has always maintained around a thousand people, and it’s quite lively.
Apart from sharing spicy pictures, the group’s daily staple activity naturally involves nagging the writer to update.
[Release That Mother Monkey]: "@Unlucky Author, any updates on the second Chapter today, tweet-tweet?"
[Barbie’s Escape Golden Fish Grass]: "It’s almost midnight, no updates for sure. Pigeons are just like that [shrug emoji]."
[Little Angel Lingbo]: "@Unlucky Author, you should learn from Neighbor Old Yin and Little Chicken, look at their typing speed, and that one who writes about Marvel, Mie Yijuan, can write thirty thousand words as a part-time job in one day!"
Just as the group was routinely roasting the "pigeon," an admin suddenly chimed in.
[Little Princess of the Bayun Family]: "Check out the latest Chapter, oh my god, it’s terrifying!"
Although it was already close to midnight, there were still plenty of night owls in the group who practiced "immortal cultivation," and they instantly perked up upon hearing this—not knowing why this group seems to survive without needing to work, chatting all night.
[Xian Weiren]: "Lady Bayun, what happened?"
[Daoist Ancestor Wu Fan]: "I took a look, there’s no update...."
[Little Princess of the Bayun Family]: "@Daoist Ancestor Wu Fan, check the easter egg Chapter."
With this callout from admin Lady Bayun, the entire QQ group suddenly went silent.
After all, regardless of how much they enjoy saying cheeky things, the precondition for joining the group is being a legitimate reader, having liked and subscribed to Fu Ming’s books to join the group.
Therefore, aside from the lurkers, upon hearing Lady Bayun’s statement, the vast majority instinctively opened the novel app.
However, this silence lasted less than half a minute before the whole reader group erupted with excitement.
One question mark after another filled the screen, interspersed with numerous @Fu Ming messages.
[Daoist Ancestor Wu Fan]: "wdnmd, is this a Photoshop or a real video?"
[Xie Wenyuan]: "I was freaked out, what the heck is this? A cockroach?"
After a while, Fu Ming quietly popped up:
"It’s real, location USTC, coordinates Building 14, let me allow you to hear the wailing of the whole building...[video]."
Compared to the easter egg Chapter—namely the video shot by Fu Ming’s friend Chen Xingyu—the second video’s footage wasn’t as explosive.
But while the footage was smooth, the timing and content were much richer than the first clip:
You can first see a few seconds of the dormitory’s environment, then Fu Ming zooms in, getting closer to the door, and at this point, you can clearly hear the bizarre screams of several students on the same floor.
Then he walks to the balcony and films the dozen or so cockroaches still stacking like a tower, the edges of the frame showing the light from many phones or flashlights below—that’s the schoolmates from nearby dorm buildings who came to watch the drama, and the excited shouts from outside.
At the video’s end, Fu Ming heads back to his seat, capturing the author’s backend to show that it wasn’t a stolen video.
Then he continued typing:
"Actually, I initially wanted to film on the balcony, but my roommate persistently stopped me. I thought if I insisted any longer, I’d either get knifed or gagged, so I gave up.
So just bear with what you see, I really didn’t intend to procrastinate today.....T.T."
As Fu Ming released this content, the group instantly got lively.
As everyone knows nowadays in group chats, forwarding messages is practically a routine operation, and many have even developed the habit of forwarding messages.
In the water chat, someone frequently sends [chat records], and clicking on them either shows spicy pictures or news worth gossiping about.
Some of it’s true, some false, leading to many messages going viral and even blowing up online.
But in fact, behind these sorts of messages, there are usually orchestrators.
They’ll release the message in many groups or accounts simultaneously to spread a piece of news.
For example, with many forwarded messages, you can see at the bottom an invite to join a gossip group. Upon entering, the group is muted, and after two pieces of gossip are forwarded, you’ll get four or five ads, a classic case of eating from both ends.
Therefore, in general, from the initial message to going viral, it’s usually a process involving survivor bias.
However, apart from this, if some messages are particularly interesting and have relatively more sources, they too might go viral.
One example is the recent case of an author having their account hacked and the text altered, which became a hot topic.
It shot straight to the trending list at that time—while there might have been some manipulators during the trending period, initially, it went viral thanks to netizens sharing it.
And coincidentally.....
Fu Ming’s easter egg Chapter happened to have these characteristics.
In fact, from the source perspective, his group, with thousands of active members and hundreds online, was far more substantial than that author’s base back then.
Take Yuan Yin for example.
Yuan Yin, female, a student in a certain major at Jinmen University, one of Fu Ming’s few female fans.
Besides reading novels, she’s also a small Bilibili creator, occasionally producing videos critiquing and commenting on anime.
Unlike those trending creators, Yuan Yin has been at it for more than two years, but her fan count remains at just over three thousand, with video views hovering around five to six hundred or a thousand.
The number three thousand might seem large, but in a video platform, the heft of three thousand isn’t even worth three hundred elsewhere.
Based on Bilibili’s creative incentives, Yuan Yin can earn about.....
Forty bucks a month.
Yet this hasn’t quenched her enthusiasm for creation, and she still eagerly updates her videos, gradually accumulating a fan group of over sixty people.
Upon seeing those two videos in Fu Ming’s group, Yuan Yin was both frightened and thrilled, casually forwarding them to her group:
"Just saw two heartfelt short videos, super tearjerking!"
Within moments, the group was flooded with ellipses.
[Huai Xun1]: "Yin——Yin——!!!"
[Qi Zhenshang]: "Truly brings tears, those who haven’t seen it, hurry up..."
While the group members ganged up to chastise Yuan Yin, a few also forwarded the videos to other groups.
Simultaneously, among Fu Ming’s group, many book friends adopted Yuan Yin’s forwarding approach, sharing massively.
They couldn’t help it; the video was just too mind-blowing.
Among them, some had certain standings in society or online, while others were quite average. Under such ripple-effect forwarding, Fu Ming’s chat record quickly spread.
During that time, there were indeed objections about the synthetic nature of the video—in reality, many harbored such thoughts, possibly as high as five or six out of ten.
But the level of ’synthesis’ far exceeded the realm of obviously fake, so even those who didn’t believe it was real still casually hit forward.
And so it went.
A little past three in the morning.
A topic suddenly surfaced on the trending list, with its popularity rising steadily:
#USTC#Cockroach#.
.....
Note:
Today’s an all-nighter coding session, asking for monthly votes!!!