Did the Troll Farm Boss Blow His Cover Today?

This is the 2.0 version of Reverse Fan Support. Gu Ding is still the protagonist, and the story is just as exciting!

Ding Yi, known in the industry by the codename “Commander-in-Chief of the Internet Troll Army,” commands a vast army of paid posters (marketing accounts) and firmly believes that traffic can be measured, but emotions can't be controlled.

Gu Yangshan is a famously obscure celebrity in showbiz. Of his 800,000 Weibo followers, 700,000 are fake accounts. His daily philosophy is: “There's joy in being obscure.”

Then Gu Yangshan's drama flops without a trace. His agent grits his teeth and hires Ding Yi, the most expensive troll army leader in the business, to take charge personally. Overnight, 100,000 “active fans” flood the comments, their posts so uniform they look copied and pasted.

Gu Yangshan smiles. “Sure, I'm obscure, but I studied computer science.”

With a few lines of code, he hacks the marketing account network run by the troll army leader.

And so begins a cyber battle:

He boosts the stats, Gu Yangshan tears them down.

He creates trending topics, Gu Yangshan debunks them.

Ding Yi grits his teeth. “Why do today's celebrities come with an anti-troll system built in?!”

Gu Yangshan stays cool. “The art of being an obscure celebrity.”

Who could have guessed that the two would run into each other at an in-person fan meeting?

Ding Yi leads his “hype squad” in chanting slogans, and Gu Yangshan catches him in the act. “Hey, troll army leader, do you get paid by the day?”

To keep his shady dealings from being exposed, Ding Yi is forced to sign a “contract of servitude” and become the obscure celebrity's temporary publicity assistant.

From then on, a remarkable duo appears in showbiz:

Numbers-obsessed Ding Yi: “Post at eight tonight. That's when engagement is highest.”

Superstitious Gu Yangshan: “I had my fortune told. Eight isn't a good time to promote yourself.”

At exactly eight, Weibo crashes. Ding Yi's troll army and Gu Yangshan's real programmer fans bring the servers down together.