PPS Chapter 78

Chapter 78: Traffic? Hype?

The farce was interrupted by the bell signaling the start of class.

Xie Haoran returned to his seat, his face dark.

Zhang Haoyu didn’t care about any of this, and Chu Zhaoyi was even less concerned.

The two could be considered to have completely broken the pretense, and Xie Haoran no longer wanted to maintain this superficial, false relationship.

As the competition progressed, the online buzz grew higher and higher, and even many people outside the art circle came to watch. The official website released the top 100 paintings.

Surprisingly, Xie Haoran’s painting was in first place, while Chu Zhaoyi’s was far behind, outside the top ten.

Zhang Haoyu was anxious looking at the voting results, but Chu Zhaoyi didn’t seem to care much. Gu Yusen also didn’t seem to get involved, and Professor Qin remained calm.

The voting clearly had some shady dealings.

No matter how talented Xie Haoran was, the work he submitted was visibly amateurish. Leaving aside the emotions it expressed, there were problems with his technique, it was too unrefined.

However, the internet users didn’t really understand professional knowledge, and voted casually.

As a result, Xie Haoran’s votes kept increasing.

Until Friday of that week, Xie Haoran overwhelmingly took first place with a huge number of votes.

Initially, many people praised Xie Haoran as young and promising, but gradually, dissenting voices emerged.

After all, the praise didn’t match the reality.

And because of the relationship between Xie Haoran and Chu Zhaoyi, Chu Zhaoyi’s painting was also heavily discussed.

As more and more doubts arose, Xie Haoran posted his recent paintings on his Weibo account, with the caption: “I’ve been so busy these past few days that I haven’t had time to paint. The works for the preliminary round were all from several years ago. Everyone, come and see if I’ve improved ~”

There was a noticeable improvement in the latest paintings he posted. Online professionals also spoke out, and the matter was smoothed over for Xie Haoran.

But some people still questioned why such an amateurish painting received the most votes from netizens.

Because Xie Haoran was revealed to be a member of the Xie family, and some even dug up his appearance and some of his past achievements, which attracted a large number of fans.

Now they began to blindly defend Xie Haoran.

[This wasn’t a professional vote to begin with, everyone just voted for what they liked, why so serious?]

[Isn’t Haoran’s improvement so obvious, can’t you see it?]

[So what if everyone likes Haoran’s paintings?]

Gradually, these doubts were suppressed.

Xie Haoran’s popularity continued to rise, and even the name alone trended several times. And each time, it would be accompanied by the comparison group, Chu Zhaoyi.

Chu Zhaoyi’s information was not dug up. Everyone only knew that he was also from A University, and some even came out to say that they were classmates, claiming he was aloof and difficult to approach.

For a time, the two people had drastically different reputations.

Gu Yusen was unhappily scrolling through the mindless comments online. Chu Zhaoyi had said that he didn’t need him to interfere. Gu Yusen only needed to protect Chu Zhaoyi’s personal information, and not let his photos and some personal experiences be posted online.

Chu Zhaoyi said he didn’t like his private affairs being displayed online.

Gu Yusen would definitely do as he was told, and protect Chu Zhaoyi’s personal information properly.

Moreover, it wasn’t like he was doing nothing. The results of his investigation showed that Xie Haoran himself had spread his own personal experiences, including the photos online, which he had deliberately posted after finding good-looking ones.

As for being in first place in the voting, he had also spent money to hire online trolls to boost his numbers.

This series of actions completely pushed him to the top of the trending topics.

Perhaps this was Xie Haoran’s goal. Simply being a famous student at A University could no longer satisfy him. What he wanted was to build himself into a talented young painter on the entire internet.

A person’s greed is never satisfied, like a snake trying to swallow an elephant.

Traffic, this thing,

is not something ordinary people can understand.