When Season 7, Episode 1 of This Is Slam Dunk aired and Wang Yi appeared on screen, tens of thousands of comments flooded in all at once.
The show that had kept viewers waiting for months had finally aired.
The fans seemed to have entered a full-blown celebration.
But less than two minutes into the festivities,
the video suddenly froze, the image stuck in place.
At first, viewers thought the video was just lagging and waited. But after a full five minutes, it still showed no sign of returning to normal. Even exiting and reopening it didn't help.
When they went back in, all they saw was a message: "The video is temporarily unavailable."
Everyone was stunned.
Some people immediately figured out what had happened.
"Holy crap, too many people are watching. The servers can't handle it!"
"Too many viewers—the servers are down!"
"Are you freaking kidding me? I waited three months just to get this?"
Meanwhile, the production team had been sitting in front of their computers, waiting for the latest statistics. But less than two minutes after the show began, the servers had crashed.
Everyone on the team felt their scalps prickle with alarm.
Why did this have to happen now? Did they really have to put everyone through this?
At the same time, the weight on their hearts finally lifted.
If they'd managed to take down Youku's servers, then the number of viewers had to be enormous.
They had it in the bag!
They hurried to contact Youku.
Youku's response was that they were working urgently to resolve the issue.
At that point, Youku's app wouldn't even open.
This left Youku's executives both delighted and worried.
They were delighted because a scene like this meant there had to be a huge audience.
Ten million?
Twenty million?
Thirty