Chapter 8: Public Opinion Offensive

However, when he saw this streamer openly challenging him, wanting to compare his own wonton noodles to those from their Yun-Ji shop, the frown he had been wearing instantly smoothed out.

He admitted that, to save on costs, he had indeed let the quality of the Jook-sing noodles slip compared to when his father ran the shop.

But when it came to overall quality, he was still very confident.

A wonton noodle shop that had been in business for over 20 years and stayed popular couldn’t possibly serve bad food.

A tiny streamer with just over 2,000 followers dared to claim his creation was better than their shop’s wonton noodles???

He immediately realized his previous worries had been completely unnecessary.

This was clearly just some small-time streamer trying to use their shop to generate hype and drive traffic to his own channel.

He’d seen plenty of trashy streamers like this. They’d say anything for traffic.

Even if he lost in the end, there would be no consequences for him.

Yun Hongquan stroked his stubbly chin, and a plan quickly formed.

This was the internet age, after all. As a businessman, he had naturally considered hiring influencers to help with promotion.

As it happened, he had recently contacted two local, small-time influencers, each with 100,000 followers, to help with a promotion.

Since the guy wanted to stir up trouble, he would just ride this wave of publicity to promote his own shop.

’So, you say my shop’s noodles are no good?’

’Fine, I’ll just find a bigger influencer to promote us online and say this is the signature taste of Yun-Ji!’

’On one side, you have a nobody who just started out, with only 2,000 followers.’

’On the other, you have an established streamer who’s posted hundreds of videos and has 100,000 followers.’

’When their opinions clash, the latter will obviously be more persuasive and have a greater impact.’

He was immediately reminded of that recent, massive influencer controversy.

After just a moment’s thought, he came up with the slogans.

’The taste of the Jook-sing noodles is wrong? What’s wrong with it?’

’Our noodles have tasted this way for over 20 years!’

’Certain streamers should stop telling bald-faced lies!’

’If you’ve never had authentic Jook-sing noodles, how about you stop running your mouth?’

Thinking about how his shop could ride the coattails of all this buzz and become an internet-famous spot itself, Yun Hongquan couldn’t hold it in any longer and laughed out loud.

Time was tight, so he didn’t dare delay. He immediately explained the whole situation to the two small-time influencers he had already contacted.

After hearing him out, the two influencers didn’t refuse.

However, they took the opportunity to ask for more money, using the excuse that even though their target’s follower count was small, he was still a fellow creator, and attacking him warranted extra compensation.

Since they didn’t ask for much, Yun Hongquan readily agreed, adding an extra 500 yuan for each of them.

The two local influencers were professional enough; they got to work as soon as they received the money.

That very afternoon, the two arrived at the shop with their equipment and began filming and gathering footage.

It had to be said, the two influencers were quite dedicated. To satisfy the owner’s narrative requirements, they even brought in a few local aunties and uncles to act as extras during the shoot.

Since Yun Hongquan was in a hurry, the two influencers went straight home to edit and upload the video as soon as they finished filming.

Li Xiao was unaware that a storm targeting him was already brewing on the internet.

「The next day.」

He went to a nearby market early in the morning and gathered all the ingredients he would need for the day.

Perhaps because he had arrived so early, the ingredients he bought were even fresher than the day before.

After buying all the ingredients and returning home, he immediately opened TikTok.

It was time for the giveaway’s drawing.

When he opened the system’s back-end and saw the number of people who had entered the giveaway, Li Xiao was stunned.

Over 1,000 people had entered the giveaway.

And this was with the system limiting entries to viewers located in Yangcheng.

Otherwise, the number of entries would have been much higher!

The number of entries far exceeded his expectations.

After all, his account only had a little over 2,000 followers in total.

This meant that one out of every two of his followers had entered the giveaway.

He was a bit surprised. ’Could my followers’ engagement rate really be this high???’

But when he saw his follower count, he sucked in a sharp breath.

At some point, his follower count had jumped from just over 2,000 to 4,000.

This sudden increase of over 1,000 followers was most likely related to the giveaway.

He couldn’t help but wonder, ’Are the economic conditions really this dire right now?’

’In a first-tier city in Xia Country, are there really this many people willing to jump through hoops for a giveaway of two bowls of wonton noodles that only cost a little over ten yuan?’

He checked his video’s stats.

His latest video had already surpassed 400,000 views, with 4,000 likes and over 800 comments.

Just 12 hours ago, the video only had 20,000 views, a little over 300 likes, and around 90 comments.

Now, the overall stats had increased tenfold.

He had only paid 100 yuan to boost the video, which, logically, should have maxed out at around 20,000 views.

Since this wasn’t the result of the 100-yuan boost, something must have happened in the last dozen or so hours to make the video start going viral.

Puzzled, he opened the comment section.

"Came here from Brother Pang’s channel. Let’s see who’s so shameless that they’d slander a 20-year-old shop just for clout!"

"Another clout-chasing scheme. It’s disgusting. Can’t you just make good videos?"

"I came over from Sister Yueyue’s channel. An old lady has been eating there for 20 years and thinks it’s authentic, but some little punk who hasn’t even hit puberty dares to review it?"

"This streamer probably wasn’t even born when they opened their shop. Where does he get the nerve to criticize them?"

"A ’rich second-generation kid who isn’t short on cash’? If you’re so rich, why don’t you Venmo me 50 bucks and prove it?"

...

Seeing the almost universally negative comments, Li Xiao’s brow furrowed deeply.

Getting bad comments was perfectly normal.

This was an online community, after all. Everyone’s identity was hidden, so people were naturally sharper and more unrestrained with their words than in real life, making it an easy outlet for their negative emotions.

But a flood of overwhelmingly negative comments like this was far from normal.

He noticed that many of the comments were tagging two other streamers.

He followed the tags to their channels.

One was "Brother Pang Loves Food," with 523 videos, 120,000 followers, and 62,000 likes.

The other was "Sister Yue Takes You to Eat Cantonese Cuisine," with 431 videos, 110,000 followers, and 669,000 likes.

Seeing their stats, Li Xiao immediately shook his head.

’He didn’t even have to look closely to know these numbers were inflated, and by a lot.’