Chapter 232 - 188: Sweeping All Platforms, an Explosive Surge in Popularity

In Z Company, inside the CEO’s office.

Zhao Shao pulled a chair over, sat to the side, and watched in utter amazement at the series of operations Lin Xia had orchestrated, and their final results. Right now, he wanted to say just one thing: "What a talent."

Lin Xia trembled as he stared at the various music platforms in front of him.

One by one, the songs performed by Chu Bamboo were skyrocketing in popularity, propelled by the frenzied support of the bot armies Z controlled on all major platforms.

Not even a full day had passed since he had officially launched Z’s bot army attack.

However, under Z’s micromanagement, the number of posts about these songs across all platforms had exceeded thirty thousand...

The total number of related videos across the entire internet had broken a thousand!

Even when distributed across the major platforms, this was by no means a small number. On a certain microblogging site, for example, it had shot straight onto the trending list...

Furthermore, the purchased Douyin, Bilibili, and Kuaishou accounts had all published a wide variety of cover song videos produced by Z—

For example, rearranging one of Chu Bamboo’s songs and pairing it with a nonsensical, Kuso-style video edit.

Or, using a cover of a song paired with a solemn atmosphere—for example, setting military drills to the solemn and dignified instrumental music composed by Chu Bamboo...

And so on...

There were simply too many.

Although the AI idol project couldn’t be implemented because Chu Bamboo hadn’t agreed to it yet, Z could still manually crank out a massive number of short videos.

All Lin Xia did was have Z deep-learn similar types of video-songs from the major platforms, and then just apply the songs to existing templates...

The downside was that these videos lacked innovation, but the upside was that because they all followed a general template, they were basically all watchable.

Most of them couldn’t be described as high-quality; they merely fell into the "watchable" category!

However, a few would occasionally pop up that even Lin Xia found stunning.

For now, none of these required a real person, or an AI-generated person, to appear on camera.

In fact, the backend moderators for several short-video sites were completely dumbfounded, unable to understand why so many similar videos were suddenly appearing...

But, after repeated checks turned up no issues, they could only let it be... Although the songs were a bit homogenous, it was clear these videos weren’t just ripped from other websites and re-uploaded!

You can’t say they’re breaking the law just for using the same song, can you? So, even though they sensed something was off, for now, they could only observe cautiously and not interfere.

However, with thousands of music-related videos appearing on the same day, even if these accounts had almost no followers... a quantitative change was leading to a qualitative one. It was already enough to affect the traffic pool of users who followed music and whose big data algorithms were inclined to recommend such videos to them!

Combined with the impressive, stand-out quality of the songs themselves, it created a virtuous cycle that exceeded all imagination.

"It went up another spot! Another spot," Lin Xia muttered, his voice trembling. "Almost there, almost there... Number one! You have a song that’s number one on Penguin Music’s New Songs Chart... and Fifth on the overall chart!"

"There’s one on Depression Cloud, too... And what’s more, the songs of yours hitting number one are different on different platforms! The number one on Penguin is ’Happy Breakup,’ while on Depression Cloud it’s ’Wildfire’."

As he spoke, Lin Xia clicked into the comment section of one of the platforms.

"What’s going on? Why did five new songs suddenly pop up on the New Songs Chart? Wait, and they’re all by the same singer?"

"? It’s more than that, the lyricist and composer are also the same person... What’s happening?"

"Do you guys know how I felt when I woke up this morning, opened Depression Cloud, and saw such a huge change on the charts? I almost thought I’d time-traveled..."

"I suggest you go check out Penguin Music next door! The feeling of time-traveling will be even stronger..."

"Are they trying to manufacture a god again? Which entertainment company is pulling this crap! What era are we living in..."

"No way, this is insane... I went over to Douyin to browse some videos, and this song just popped up? This is too... HOLY CRAP, it’s too good, isn’t it?"

"? Dude upstairs, can you give a warning before you pull a U-turn like that? I think I sprained my back!"

Initially, the comment section was filled with skepticism. But when Lin Xia refreshed the page, the content of the comments changed drastically.

"DAMN! This is ridiculous... This song is already number two on Depression Cloud’s New Songs Chart... and it’s an instrumental piece? What the hell, I was originally going to go in and criticize it... But it got my blood boiling. I looked at my pig-headed boss who was still criticizing me for yesterday’s work! In a fit of rage, I slapped him... and now I’m processing my resignation."

"Bro, calm down. I suggest you go and see, the number one song is also by the same artist!"

"’The Wind That Loves You’ at number three on the New Songs Chart... It’s so beautiful! That gentle voice... I feel like... it’s giving me a taste of sweet, sweet love!"

"...No, that can’t be right! ’The Wildfire That Never Burns Out’ at Sixth place and ’The Wind That Loves You’—one is a male voice, the other is a female voice, so why are the composer, lyricist, and singer all listed as the same person? And the composer of the instrumentals at number one and two is the same as those two as well... This is nuts!"

"???"

"Is it possible... that these two songs aren’t actually sung by the same person! It’s just a coincidence that they have the same name... okay, I can’t make this up anymore!"

"To the big bro from earlier who felt like he was in love... how come your IP address is from Sichuan Province?"

Lin Xia’s hand trembled. He opened his mouth but stopped himself. ’Ah Zhu won’t get mad at me for these comments, right?’

Switching platforms, Lin Xia found that a certain microblogging site had three more related topics that had parachuted into the top thirty of the trending charts.

This was all from organic traffic... If they wanted to push it any further, not spending some money would be getting half the results with twice the effort.

[Is Chu Bamboo a man or a woman?] (Exploding)

[Clicked on new singer Chu Bamboo’s song list, found all new songs, all bangers] (Exploding)

[Which music company is force-feeding us this manufactured god, Chu Bamboo?] (Exploding)

Lin Xia clicked on one and found the comment section was in total chaos.

Clearly, even though these songs had just been released, they had already gained some fans... But netizens, who had been burned by the internet countless times, were now also becoming suspicious.

"It’s gotta be plagiarism, right? Probably ripped off some singer from Europe and America... There are even three English songs and two Japanese songs? The moment I heard the intonation in the Japanese one, I knew... it must be the theme song from some super popular anime!"

At that moment, the corner of Lin Xia’s eye twitched, because he instantly saw several replies appear below that comment... He was all too familiar with these usernames; they were the bot army controlled by Z.

"Yes, yes, you’re so right! You’re not even willing to climb over the wall to search the foreign internet and see if you can find what you’re imagining..."

"My evaluation: Valorant brain!"

"Brain’s gone numb!"

"Supporting the kill for Justice! By the way, the original poster has evidence, right? Hurry up and show us!"

"Ridiculous! Because this whole thing is so ridiculous, it looks like a big troll job... so I’m not participating in the discussion! I choose to be a bystander."

"As we all know... when something is so bizarre that it looks fake no matter how you look at it, it definitely wasn’t orchestrated by a human... Because a human operation requires a brain! Things that are too ridiculous can only happen in the real world. And this incident... it’s so ridiculous that if it really is a marketing campaign, I’d suspect the marketer is from outer space! No Earthling would dare to run a campaign like this."

"I’m just here for the music! If it really is plagiarized from the foreign web, and they come to call us out, I’ll be the first to surrender! (silly surrender face.jpg)"