NOVEL NEXT WORLD 16: Paid Reviews
The first day’s box office figures for “The Last Wish” were finally confirmed.
Only about 500,000 yuan.
Staying up until midnight to see this figure, Shao Yichen was reasonably satisfied.
After all, “The Last Wish” had been released on a weekend, and typically in such cases, the first day’s box office would be the highest. With such low first-day numbers, subsequent box office performance would surely be even worse. The final total would likely be just over a million yuan, which would then be divided among theaters, cinema chains, and distributors, and then split again between her and the distributor, leaving her with even less… losing money was practically guaranteed!
Everything was proceeding exactly as Shao Yichen had planned.
With this pleasant conclusion, she contentedly drifted off to sleep. In her dreams, she successfully lost ten million, a hundred million, a billion yuan, and happily returned to her original world to continue her life as an idle slacker…
However, upon waking and instinctively checking the box office figures, she discovered something seemed amiss.
Although the numbers were still in the hundreds of thousands… hadn’t the screening allocation increased a bit? Yesterday’s allocation was only 1%, but today’s seemed to be over 2%.
Looking more carefully, Shao Yichen realized these hundreds of thousands represented today’s box office. This meant that with just the morning screenings completed, the box office had already reached hundreds of thousands, and after the afternoon and evening screenings, the numbers could be even higher!
Shao Yichen was startled, realizing the problem was serious!
At this rate, the film might actually make money!
But she was completely baffled. With such shaky camerawork, such crude lighting, such perfunctory music, such a stiff female lead… how could people still want to watch this film?
The only redeeming quality might be the male lead’s looks and acting skills. But handsome actors with good skills weren’t exactly rare, so why seek them out in this terrible film?
Could it be that Nan Rongyu and Nan Rongzhou couldn’t bear to see such poor box office figures and had started artificially inflating them?
They certainly had the financial means, but during the day, they had been happily playing mobile games with her—Hacker, Agent, and Patient characters cooperating, advancing in ranks and levels, thoroughly enjoying themselves—Shao Yichen suspected they had completely forgotten about the film’s release!
With even these prime suspects eliminated, Shao Yichen truly couldn’t understand why the film’s box office was increasing.
Could audiences genuinely want to see it? That shouldn’t be possible!
No matter how hard she racked her brain, she couldn’t figure out why this film might actually make money.
Well, sometimes effort doesn’t guarantee success, but without effort, failure is certain. Shao Yichen adjusted her mindset and decided to continue striving toward losing money, giving it her best!
It was time to deploy her trump card!
After calming herself, she logged into her WeChat and entered a number she had already researched into the “add friend” dialog box.
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Qi Shuijun was an internet marketer with over a hundred part-time staff under his command.
In simple terms, he was the leader of a paid review army.
Though not particularly prominent in his field, he was honest about his pricing and had his contact information clearly displayed on a recruitment website, making him easily findable for those who were interested. Therefore, he never lacked business, with people constantly approaching him to boost likes and comments.
Today, another stranger added his WeChat, specifically mentioning in the verification message that they were looking for paid reviewers. Though the profile picture with the character for “loss” seemed rather inauspicious, he couldn’t turn down business that came to him so easily. He quickly approved the request and immediately sent over his price list.
The response came quickly, but its content wasn’t what Qi Shuijun expected.
Lose All 100,000: [Do you offer negative review services?]
Qi Shuijun was momentarily taken aback before quickly understanding. They obviously wanted him to smear a competitor!
He had done this before and was quite familiar with the process. So he readily agreed, saying [No problem], and asked what level of reviewers they wanted and which platforms they needed to target with negative reviews.
The response was straightforward: [Give me 30,000 yuan worth of negative reviews! Choose whatever package you think is appropriate, and you can criticize on any platform, as long as you spend the full 30,000 yuan.]
Then they sent a film description. Qi Shuijun clicked on it and saw it was a newly released horror film called “The Last Wish,” with actors and a director he didn’t recognize—clearly a group of nobodies.
He wondered what powerful figure they had offended to warrant such a purchase of negative reviews. Qi Shuijun mentally lit a candle for these unknowns, then happily replied to the client: [No problem! We’ll start posting negative reviews for this film across various platforms and forums right away!]
The other side quickly replied [Okay], and half a minute later added [By the way, when criticizing, it’s better not to mention the male lead; you can moderately criticize the female lead, cinematography, and director, but don’t be too extreme; as for the music, you can listen to the end credits song and just share your honest feelings.]
Qi Shuijun: ?
That’s quite a list of requirements.
But since the customer is always right and their instructions must be followed, he promptly replied [No problem] and forwarded the requirements to his team of reviewers.
This was a substantial order, and he would do exactly as the client requested—at worst, he’d just set a higher price!
On the other end of the phone, Shao Yichen saw the confirmation from the review army leader and heaved a sigh of relief.
Yes, this was her final trump card—hiring paid reviewers to post negative comments!
Why had the film’s screening allocation increased? Why hadn’t the box office declined? Not because the film wasn’t terrible, but because audiences hadn’t yet recognized its true nature as a flop!
That being the case, she had to make them see the truth and stop being deceived!
Therefore, Shao Yichen decisively found paid reviewers to post negative comments and spread the truth about this terrible film to uninformed audiences.
Her ability to use the system’s 100,000 yuan to buy these reviews was, in a way, exploiting a loophole. The system’s fund usage options did include “promotion,” and Shao Yichen had withdrawn these 30,000 yuan under this pretext—but the system could only determine whether something qualified as “promotion,” not whether the promotion was positive or negative.
At least until now, the system hadn’t stopped her, so she naturally proceeded with her plan using these 30,000 yuan.
Of course, she wasn’t giving random instructions to the paid reviewers.
Li Xingyu’s acting was indeed beyond reproach, so she couldn’t allow baseless criticism—her conscience wouldn’t permit it. But she also couldn’t praise him, or audiences might become interested and want to see how good his acting really was. Therefore, the best approach was not to mention him at all.
Shao Yichen was well aware of her own acting level, the quality of her cinematography, and her script. To criticize the film, starting with herself was easiest. But since it was her name at stake, watching herself get criticized would inevitably be somewhat painful, so she suggested keeping it moderate without resorting to personal attacks.
As for the Nan brothers… firstly, these two had been partners in crime with Shao Yichen since her previous life, so she naturally knew their character—they would never question themselves. Even if audiences tore their work apart, they would simply think their art was too sophisticated for common appreciation, their mental resilience being extraordinary. Secondly, they weren’t short of money, so their reputation had no impact on them. Finally… their music was genuinely terrible.
So Shao Yichen didn’t even bother instructing how to criticize the music; she simply sent the end credits song to the reviewers, trusting that anyone with ears would make the right judgment.
Having made these arrangements, Shao Yichen stretched lazily, feeling a great weight lifted from her heart.
The 100,000 yuan was completely spent, all preparations made—surely the film wouldn’t make money now?
Thinking this, Shao Yichen confidently went off to play games.
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“Cat Mint” was a somewhat well-known film critic.
Of course, her real name wasn’t Cat Mint—it was He Bocao. Her primary job wasn’t running a marketing account but working as a civil servant. Though her work wasn’t particularly leisurely, she finished on time and had weekends off, using her free time to run her film review public account. With objective evaluations and punctual updates, she gradually gained a loyal following.
Unlike typical film review accounts that followed trends by reviewing currently popular films, her account would also evaluate at least one lesser-known niche film each week. These obscure films might be unknown due to their age, have mediocre reception despite being currently screened due to limited allocations, or be difficult to understand due to language barriers. This gradually became a regular weekly column on her account called “Searching the Film Sea,” with a stable readership.
However, the “Searching the Film Sea” column didn’t exclusively feature high-quality films; the ratio of mediocre films to buried gems was roughly one-to-one. After all, poor quality was often one reason why most films weren’t well-known. On these occasions, Cat Mint would transform into a sarcastic critic, making readers chuckle with her incisive comments. In fact, a significant portion of her loyal followers specifically followed her to read her scathing reviews of bad films.
Cat Mint was well aware of this and deliberately maintained a delicate balance between bad films and hidden gems in this column. She avoided consecutive issues of garbage film critiques that might disappoint audiences seeking quality niche films, while also not exclusively recommending meaningful films that would ignore readers who just wanted entertaining criticisms.
Last week, she had recommended two quality works in her “Searching the Film Sea” column, and readers in the comments section eager for sarcastic reviews were clamoring. Naturally, she couldn’t ignore her readers’ voices, so she planned to thoroughly critique a bad film in this week’s first issue, showcasing her superior sarcastic skills.
But selecting the right bad film required technique. How could she choose the most suitable flop? Among recently released blockbusters, there didn’t seem to be any particularly terrible ones… “Path to Immortal Ascension”? She had caught this film over the weekend, and while it could certainly be considered bad, it was unremarkably so, without any distinctive features…
While Cat Mint was struggling with her film selection, she casually opened several well-known film forums and aimlessly browsed the homepage threads.
As she looked, her eyes suddenly lit up as she noticed something.
—Why were all these forums simultaneously posting threads criticizing the same film?
Author’s Note: It’s the long-awaited paid negative review segment (?) Thanks to the little angels who cast Overlord Tickets or watered with nutrient solution during the period from 2020-08-10 10:40:33 to 2020-08-16 10:48:36~
Thanks to the little angel who watered with nutrient solution: Photosynthesis 1 bottle;
Thank you very much for your support, I will continue to work hard!