Chapter 25: Bonus Chapter for 50 Faves

【50-Faves Bonus Chapter】

……

At the time, my manager Brother Zhang consoled me — the outcome wasn't something I alone could decide. As an actor, I was ashamed.

But I couldn't come out and speak, because I had begun to doubt myself. My self-validation as an actor had been shaken.

So, keenly aware of my shortcomings, I found professional teachers and went into seclusion to study, leaving me no time to follow the public discourse.

Later, out of a protective instinct, my fans sent President Sang some excessive private messages. By the time I learned of it, it was too late.

Not wanting to spark a second round of conflict, I chose silence. Looking back now, that choice was wrong.

I apologize to you on their behalf.

President Sang's feelings, and the starting point of "letting the public compare" — I understand them all, and I agree with what it means.

Both Favoritism and The Diary are good works into which entire crews poured their strength.

So let's compete fairly, and let the public be the fairest judges.

This time, no fan wars — I'll answer with my work, you answer me with yours. Win or lose, we leave it to the audience.

So when people ask me whether I'll take up the challenge — I will.

Not because I'm chasing hype, and not because I'm acting out of spite.

It's because I believe in one thing: audiences can be moved.

Whether a drama is good or not depends on whether the people in front of the screen are moved — on whether, when the ending song plays, they can't bear to turn it off.

The Diary premieres on the fifth of next month.

I hope viewers will click in and watch one episode. My crew and I accept all commentary, and we accept the most honest comparisons.

Finally, my response to President Sang: you bet your work on this, and I've bet mine too.

No matter who wins or loses in the end, the thing itself — I think it's pretty cool.

See you in the work.

——】

It was a well-written piece.

New comments flooded in every minute, but there were no copy-pasted control comments. The comment section's atmosphere was completely different from usual.

The top-liked comments were all from old fans.

[Wenwen by the Clouds]: [Read it word by word, tears streaming down my face, crying as I read. So he knew all along…]

[Huang Yunwen's Cheeks]: [Huang Yunwen apologized on our behalf because he feels for his fans. I'm against the other side — individual behavior shouldn't be elevated to the whole fandom and the idol himself. Moral coercion, stepping on Huang Yunwen for nearly half a year — I can't believe he withstood a storm of such malice.]

[Thunderclap Mao Hongfeng]: [Passerby here, finished reading. A sincere piece. Can the people who earlier wrote him off as playing dead apologize now?]

[Eastern Beauty Sister Yunwen]: [Where's Sui Cheng? This little essay backfired and made even this casual fan feel for him — converting to diehard now.]

[Brother Wen's Little Milky Voice]: [Seven years. I thought I understood him. But today's Weibo post made me feel like I've never truly known him. He's stronger than I imagined. For the next seven years, I'll definitely still be here.]

[Yi Wenbo]: [Pure drama fan here. No wonder Huang Yunwen acts well — this writing is simple and plain, yet it made me tear up.]

Even a drama critic known for writing long reviews on Douban, famous for a venomous tongue and a caustic tone that fan circles hated to death, left a comment.

[Huang Yunwen really is one of the few young actors with a proper attitude. This little essay is well written.]

The president of Huang Yunwen's fan support club: [This time we've really been put through the wringer. Come on, Clouds — max out all the data we're supposed to do. Competing with the work is the best kind of competition. Who's better and who's worse isn't decided by which side trends more.]

The fundraising link was reopened.

— on the merch-selling side.

The support club promised that all funds raised would be used for cloud booking of theater slots, ensuring The Diary's premiere popularity would crush the opponent's.

Battle power grew out of the fans' heartbreak.

The melon-eaters ate to their hearts' content; even the sourness faded a bit.

The sourness came from President Sang's comment section the day before — over a hundred people had claimed the six-piece gift sets, and 39 SUVs had been given away.

Not even counting the six-piece sets, just the cars alone broke ten million in value. Add the sets and it might double.

An unreasonable number…

Netizens who'd missed out beat their chests, eyes red, rolling around at home three times to express their regret.

Some people performed enthusiastic "whenever I see President Sang I think of family" routines in the comments, hoping to bait another wave of gifts.

Huang Yunwen's little essay — they only went to read it after a while.

But everyone had one question: wasn't it pretty well written?

So what had been deleted earlier?

The marketing accounts that made their living off celebrity gossip, with god-tier posting speed, played the role of "battlefield intensifier" and posted screenshots.

The posts were actually the same.

But comparing the newly posted one with the old one, three characters had been deleted.

No — to be precise, two characters plus a punctuation mark (marketing accounts must be rigorous with wording too) — that is:

"Copy:"

Netizens: …?

Oh-ho.

Oh-ho, oh-ho!

Did things just get more interesting?!

Don't tell me he hired a ghostwriter and then just copied it over?!

Fans had a different take: who says whoever wrote it with "Copy" in it must be a ghostwriter?!

For a long piece like that, of course you draft it before publishing — can't he have written it in a document and then copied it over?

This accident was like a chicken leg tossed into a pot of oil that had just begun to calm — ripples spread outward ring by ring.

Not everyone thought the two characters "Copy" were a problem, but those who did were numerous and loud.

[Copy: — so it was copy-pasted? Who wrote it? The studio? The PR team? Really a ghostwriter?]

[Can you not be so sensitive? "Copy" was probably a label in the draft that he forgot to delete. You can even smear that?]

[The whole piece kept harping on "sincerity," "honesty," "self-doubt" — if someone else wrote it for him, that's just vile.]

[…Enough. Huang Yunwen stepped up and apologized for his fans, and you start picking at word choices. Does he owe you something?]

The marketing accounts' screenshots spread across every major platform.

The narrative also shifted from "Huang Yunwen's late-night long essay moves fans to tears" to "Huang Yunwen's 'Copy' scandal, suspected ghostwriting."

The heat spread from Weibo in every direction — forums, short videos.

The long essay had been fermenting toward "sincerity," "courage," "responsibility" — and now it was abruptly wrenched in another direction.

Completely off course.

Not long after, Huang Yunwen's side urgently issued an explanation: staff error.

Because Huang Yunwen's Weibo account wasn't in his own hands, posts had to go through review first. It was the mistake of the staff member behind the account.

Huang Yunwen had written the post and sent it to his manager, who then passed it to the staff member managing the Weibo.

To make the body of the article more obvious, the manager had added "Copy:" as a reminder of the key content.

The staff member carelessly copied the whole thing straight in.

Some people bought the explanation; some didn't.

But what everyone shared was —

They all wanted to talk about it!

·

In this unconventional drama promotion, that was only the prelude.

Eleven o'clock the next day.

Yes, eleven again — Sang Yu had slept in so often she'd developed a biological clock for it.

The moment she opened her eyes, she saw a notification bar stuffed full of Weibo messages.

The comments were all about Huang Yunwen's little essay — asking what she thought after reading it, asking her to give a sharp take.

[y_03]: [That excuse is too proper. It'd be better to say he did it on purpose to steal my headline.]

Netizens: "……"

A finishing blow.

[y_03]: [Actually, I can write little essays too. Improvising one right now —

(Almost forgot to add "Copy:")

"A Few Thoughts on Fan Circles"

I don't participate in fan circles, so I'm quite curious about one phenomenon:

When some fans bring negative influence to a celebrity, they get cut off — "nothing to do with him," "don't elevate it," "individual behavior."

But when fans bring positive feedback, everything is entirely different —

Running multiple devices to boost view counts, buying endorsements, supporting everything — all of it becomes the celebrity's higher, more stable commercial value.

It concretizes the celebrity's traffic.

So why does no one say "don't elevate it" or "nothing to do with him" then?

Of course, an outsider like me could find a fairly reasonable explanation for this phenomenon:

Fan groups are too large; a celebrity can't control every individual's behavior.

So the bad can't be managed, and the good… doesn't need managing either.

But I don't much like that explanation.

It's too clever.

So clever it amounts to a blanket amnesty.

Ordinary netizens can't "represent me" in doing anything or saying anything, but celebrities are different — celebrities are public figures.

The spotlight shines on the celebrity, and thousands of eyes below the stage watch them; every move is magnified, interpreted, imitated.

Their personal views, in turn, influence the views of a whole crowd.

As a public "role model," since there's an obligation to speak and act carefully, guiding fans is also an obligation — not charity.

Never stepping forward when things happen is, in my view, a cowardly, lazy, deliberately indulgent refusal to take responsibility.

Favoritism's screenwriter Shu Mucheng and its female lead Yu Zhitao are both victims of this kind of "rule."

In places I don't know about, there will be even more such victims.

When harm is done, the "scar" can't vanish out of thin air.

A belated apology is like rice grown white with mold — white on the surface, but riddled with deadly mycelium, its insides changed beyond recognition.

Eating it will make you sick, you know.

Oh, almost forgot the main business — I'm taking my headline back.

@Favoritism_Remastered (official), premiering the third of next month.

——]

Top comments:

[Shu Mucheng, Yu Zhitao — two living examples. Neither of them provoked anyone… yet per some people, once the mob rhythm starts and you get cyberbullied, you get criticized for not being mentally strong enough…]

[High or low mental resilience is no excuse to make cyberbullying reasonable. Words really can hurt people.]

[So well written… finally someone raised this issue. President Sang, my one and only mouthpiece in the entertainment industry!]

[President Sang, I'm upgrading from a fan of your money to a dual-stan of your character AND your money…]

[I hereby declare you the good dragon among the celestial dragons. Brother Long, can you splash some more gold coins—]

[Well said, but I can't protect you anymore, President Sang. It's the weekend today, and this one little essay basically strafed the entire entertainment industry, ahhhhh!]