Chapter 26: The Black Tide Begins

On the first day, Old Fang read Fang Xinghe's essay aloud in class…

Ah, ptooey, that was a nightmare, forget it and start over.

On the first day, Sprout sold 100,000 copies.

On the second day, thanks to word of mouth spreading, middle schoolers rushed to buy it, and it exploded to 200,000 copies sold.

By the third day it was nearly sold out.

On the fourth day, the first reprint of 100,000 copies was gone in seconds too, and newsstands across the country were all demanding more stock.

At this point, Fang Xinghe's fan count had skyrocketed to 2 million, his Starlight Value to 18.2 million, and it was clear the first batch of core fans had already been born, with die-hard fans even starting to appear.

Just two photos, one essay, and a few writers' praises — ah, times really are wondrous.

The Z Generation new humans felt very pleased, and were starting to fall a little in love with the year 1999.

But what followed wasn't all good news.

After several days of explosive sales, and because of the fervent response among middle schoolers, the opinion sphere finally caught on, and voices of both praise and criticism began to surge forth.

Uh, more criticism than praise.

The previous issue's Han Han didn't get much criticism, and the reason was simple — he wasn't controversial enough.

At this point Young Master Han hadn't yet shown any obvious misdeeds; judging purely by the text, his rebellion was of the "could be molded" variety, not worth singling out for attack.

Even if there was a little controversy, it only hovered around the level of "is it reasonable to retake the exam" and "the competition format is a bit chaotic" — barely mentioned, and most of it was still praising his talent.

Anyone who's ever pocketed 5 mao knows that when there's no controversy, one-sided praise is terribly dull and can't stir up any buzz.

That's why in his past life Han Han only triggered a nationwide discussion after flunking all 7 subjects.

But right now, he has to piggyback on Brother Fang's screen time.

Fang Xinghe already has strong controversy potential.

In his essay he bragged about being a school bully, getting into fights often, inciting revenge, and bluntly declaring he wanted to become famous and make big money…

Every single item was more than worth writing about.

Moreover, the article itself struck a nerve with plenty of parents and teachers. Li Qigang had only reported the good news and not the bad — in reality, parents really did call Sprout Magazine in furious indignation: "How could you publish an article like this?!"

On the fifth day, Yangtze Newspaper fired the first shot, publishing a critical piece: "Playing to the Gallery? How Can an Essay Be Written Like This!"

The gist was still the same old conservative line — middle school essays should celebrate truth, goodness, and beauty, shouldn't encourage students to oppose their parents and teachers, and certainly shouldn't glorify thuggish fake-toughness; keeping the campus pure is everyone's responsibility.

Fang Xinghe found it hilarious, but the spirit of the times was just like this — the old guard's authoritarian thinking outweighed everything, nothing to be done.

On the sixth day, Shangqing Newspaper published a rebuttal: "If It's Called New Concept, Why Can't Essays Be Written Freely?"

On the seventh day, the six major sects ganged up to besiege Shangqing.

A reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily somehow got wind of the fact that many parents had been calling Sprout, and specifically sought out some students and parents for interviews, publishing an in-depth report.

Nobody knows whether his interview subjects were really that one-sided, but everything that came out was criticism.

"Recently, a New Concept essay has set middle school campuses ablaze, causing an extremely strong response. I went in with high hopes, thinking I'd see the youthful spirit under the concept of 'new thinking, new feelings, new style,' but what I saw was another Young and Dangerous-style revelry…"

Under his pen, the interviewees were full of profanity, crudely shouting "Fang Xinghe is so badass" and "F***ing awesome," worshipping Fang Xinghe the way they worshipped the Young and Dangerous gangsters — stupid, out of their minds, blindly frenzied.

After "careful investigation," he discovered that the boys who worshipped Fang Xinghe mostly had poor grades, didn't study, and loved to cause trouble.

While the girls who liked Fang Xinghe were blindly going by his looks and showed signs of puppy love.

Additionally, some of the "good kids" had been affected by fairly strong negative influence.

The parents who were interviewed all had splitting headaches.

Parent A complained: "Ever since my kid read that lousy article, he's been getting more and more disobedient these past few days, always talking back to me, yelling at me the moment things don't go his way — look at what kind of atmosphere this is!"

Parent B was emotionally agitated: "What kind of person is that author? Born of a mother but raised by no mother?"

The reporter said: I hurriedly reminded the other party to be more tactful, feeling that I couldn't directly attack the author, because Comrade Fang Xinghe really is an orphan.

That mother hurriedly apologized: "Oh oh, sorry, I didn't mean it… but teenagers are rebellious to begin with, and he went and wrote that stuff pouring oil on the fire. In his essay he actually treats being good at fighting as something glorious? I don't think he's any kind of good student or good role model."

Parent C was unhappy but rational and objective.

"In places where the economy develops slowly, the social atmosphere is bound to be rough, and boys fighting may indeed be quite common. I don't think we need to make this into some big ideological issue — we should look at it objectively. The article itself actually offers an alternative perspective, asking us to reflect on whether there really is this kind of gap in education. Of course we all know the developed southern regions are definitely much more civilized, but we should still take it as a warning…"

In short, the entire report basically stopped short of pointing at Fang Xinghe's nose and cursing him — but the reporter himself didn't curse, the reporter was fair, it was all the parents doing the cursing.

As for whether parents really did say those things… guilt by association.

Fang Xinghe curled his lip in disdain, sneering at the colleagues of this era.

That's all you've got?

But because Southern Metropolis had a huge circulation, this report really did cause him serious negative impact.

One direct manifestation was that the sales pace of Sprout's May issue suddenly slowed down.

Not that the students had any complaints about him, but the price of 4 yuan 8 mao wasn't cheap, and ordinary students couldn't afford it — to get it they had to beg their families to buy it for them.

However, as the media piled on, New Concept, Fang Xinghe, and Sprout all became famous, and many parents were unwilling to fork out that money.

Li Qigang was so angry he paged him 8 times a day, but Fang Xinghe couldn't be bothered to call back even once.

Fang Xinghe didn't care about this kind of thing at all — if you want to stand out, you have to be prepared to take some heat, right?

Besides, he'd seen plenty of black-and-white-flipping water armies in his time; this current stuff was nothing.

In reality, no media outlet's objective criticism, subjective smearing, or even baseless slander had truly hit Fang Xinghe's weak spot.

Yes, his reputation among newspaper readers really had turned terrible, and middle-aged parents generally disliked him.

But the problem was… what good is the goodwill of middle-aged people?

Boss Fang had long since stopped wanting that stuff.

In the fandom circles of later generations there's a brutally objective and realistic rule of conduct: the least worth trying to please is middle-aged people — never waste your time on them.

Middle-aged people have fixed worldviews, are extremely hard to change, and they're always busy with this and that — they can't generate data, they can't be moved to buy endorsements. Only a very few rich older women have any value, but they don't need to be courted either — if they like you, they'll naturally like you.

So just stay beautifully on your own, and keep things respectful — that's all.

As for Fang Xinghe, he didn't even want to give them that respect.

The middle-aged people of today are from the post-50s and post-60s generations; their thinking is rigid and conservative, making them even less valuable than the internet-era new middle-aged people of the future.

Fang Xinghe is currently in his developmental stage; striving wholeheartedly for teenagers is the key. The starlight value produced by a hundred middle-aged people is not worth that of a single little girl, so why bother with them?

Let them curse a couple of times if they have nothing better to do; just treat it as虐粉 (abusing fans to strengthen loyalty). How good is that?

As for the so-called public favor and national popularity... isn't that just a slight goodwill that hasn't reached the level of fandom?

Professionals all know whether national popularity is useful depends on what path one intends to take.

Anyway, the current Fang Xinghe does not need it, and by the time he does need it, his fans will have grown up and become the backbone of society, so national popularity will naturally rise.

Liu Yifei's extremely high national popularity came about exactly this way.

In the intervening ten-plus years, she didn't shoot a single drama, released one flop movie per year, yet upon her return, even after gaining weight, she remained a top-tier star, because her on-screen image from her youth was simply too classic; no amount of hired water army troops could smear it away.

By the time that batch of young audiences from the early years seized the power of discourse, her image as a white moonlight naturally became fixed, requiring absolutely no deliberate effort.

Therefore, some things must be pursued tirelessly, while others need not be forced.

Fang Xinghe smiled and buried his head in the sea of problems again, but the development of events turned increasingly fantastical.