That afternoon, just as internet portals like Sina, NetEase, Sohu, and Tencent began running surprised reports on the Handwriting Robot, a heavy punch came crashing down.
Professor He, who had spent many years working in Beijing's education sector, was known for his upright character and for having trained countless talents. Revered as a "model teacher," he posted a lengthy article on Weibo publicly criticizing Lin Feng and his invention, the Handwriting Robot.
"Students use it to copy homework, fool their teachers, and fool their own futures.
"Clerks within the system use it to copy meeting minutes, files, and documents, fooling themselves and fooling their superiors!
"Teachers use it to copy handwritten lesson plans, fooling their students and fooling their superiors!
"How is Lin Feng's invention of this Handwriting Robot any different from inventing a gambling machine? I propose that products of this kind be barred from the market!"
Those were Professor He's cautionary words, and they successfully drove Weibo readers into deep thought.
As they reflected, they realized that the Handwriting Robot truly held little meaning for humanity.
In some respects, the invention of such a thing was harmful to people, to work, to learning, and to society.
After all, people bought Handwriting Robots precisely so they could copy homework, write handwritten lesson plans, draft meeting minutes, prepare materials, and create archives...
Yet these were tasks people should have done themselves. This was really just fooling themselves and fooling their superiors!
In a certain sense, Professor He was indeed right. The significance of inventing the Handwriting Robot was no different from inventing a gambling machine—it was harmful to humanity!
As a result, the article exploded in popularity and was reposted by countless Weibo users. In just one day, its views exceeded six million, and it entered Weibo's top ten that very day. One could imagine just how sharp the article was.
But things did not stop getting worse for Lin Feng. Before long, major online news sites and newspapers began reposting the article one after another.
The incident thus officially spread from online spaces into the real world, and its influence expanded even further.
Faced with this situation, those UP creators who had already disliked Lin Feng, especially those centered around Bilibili, naturally made their move.
They edited the article with their own interpretations added in, then published the results on sites and apps such as Youku, Tudou, AcFun, Bilibili, and Kuaishou, further expanding its audience.
Thus, even more people online and offline began attacking Lin Feng and the Handwriting Robot.
As the saying went, a multitude of voices could melt gold. When only one person criticized or slandered someone, listeners might not fully believe it, or might simply laugh it off and ignore it.
But when many people criticized or slandered someone together, those negative voices would be amplified, and people would believe the malicious claims that had been fabricated or exaggerated.
More importantly, after Professor He stepped forward, it was as if a row of dominoes had fallen. Several renowned professors across the country publicly published articles in newspapers or on Weibo condemning the Handwriting Robot and criticizing Lin Feng!
They pointed out how evil the birth of the Handwriting Robot was, how severely it would disrupt social order, and gave examples to prove how harmful it was to adults, especially students.
What they hated most was its impact on students. They believed that doing homework properly was not only an excellent way to consolidate knowledge, but also a fine demonstration of a serious attitude.
Therefore, the Handwriting Robot simply should not exist. Great Xia should completely ban the circulation of such products to prevent them from harming even more students!
Amid so many condemnations, many people who did not know Lin Feng formed an extremely poor first impression of him. Even many who knew him could only shake their heads. Lin Feng's public image began to collapse spectacularly.
The image of a research genius that Lin Feng had painstakingly built through documentaries and the I Love Invention production team was ruined by article after article and comment after comment!
Cutting off someone's livelihood was like murdering their parents. Although sales of the Handwriting Robot actually surged under this wave of negative public opinion, with peak sales rising from sixty thousand units to one hundred thousand units and earning nearly ten million more, that was not what Lin Feng cared about.
What he cared about was his image as a super genius in the eyes of the public—or, more accurately, the Human Gene Enhancement Fluid and the Arc Reactor.
They were all connected to Lin Feng's ultimate dream: his ambition to break free of Earth and roam the vast starry universe!
The conservative faction led by Professor He had used article after article to directly steer people into changing their impression of him. That was practically the same as cutting off his livelihood!
Granted, Lin Feng believed that Professor He and the other professors might truly have spoken out of public spirit, sincerely condemning him for the good of the country and its people.
But the fact remained that they had severely damaged Lin Feng's Fake-to-Real Plan, so he could not stay silent.
Two days later, Lin Feng posted a lengthy illustrated article on the same Weibo platform where Professor He had first published his piece, using it to refute Professor He's article from that day.
He then simultaneously released a video that Chen Hang had painstakingly edited through overtime. Its content was actually the same as the article's, a thirteen-minute video produced around the article's central theme.
The video had three themes. The first was to examine why the Handwriting Robot had become so popular and what had caused its explosive rise.
The answer was formalism!
The first form of formalism was teachers' formalism toward students: the compulsory assignment of huge amounts of repetitive and punitive homework.
That homework was somewhat useful for students' learning, but its actual effect was limited.
Thus, in his previous life, in 2021, the Ministry of Education had issued a series of policies such as Double Reduction to curb this phenomenon, repeatedly emphasizing the need to avoid mechanical and ineffective training and strictly prohibit repetitive and punitive homework.
The second form of formalism was schools' formalism toward teachers. They required teachers to handwrite lesson plans!
A lesson plan was a class-period plan and curriculum plan. Put simply, it detailed what would be taught in each lesson. In theory, it could improve teaching efficiency and make inspections easier for higher-ups.
It might not seem like much, but writing one took several hours and could make one's fingers ache.
This was also a form of formalism. It was already 2013—who did not know how to use a computer? Who did not know how to type? Why could they not type instead?
But there was no helping it. Since the school required it, teachers had to obediently handwrite their lesson plans. They could not simply refuse to write them.
Thus, they had to spend one-third of every day handwriting lesson plans.
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