Zhao Moqing was furious when she saw all the abuse. They were nothing but keyboard warriors, typing away without knowing the truth. On Mouyin, apparently whoever had a phone was automatically in the right.
And yet so many keyboard warriors supported this twisted version of events.
The worst part was that even her sister-in-law had been affected and couldn't help speaking up for what she thought was justice. Zhao Moqing knew her sister-in-law wasn't a keyboard warrior, but she tended to follow the crowd. With so many keyboard warriors all saying the same thing, their voices could turn lies into truth, and people who followed the crowd would believe them too.
That was exactly how things went online sometimes: whoever had a phone and was filming got to decide what was right. Plenty of people had been pushed to the brink by this kind of "justice."
With the internet so murky, sensible people often held off on commenting.
They let the dust settle and waited for things to become clear, so they wouldn't embarrass themselves if the story took a turn.
Zhao Moqing immediately took out her phone and called Qin Lin. She had to tell him about this.
Meanwhile.
Qin Lin returned home and enjoyed a nice, long shower. After playing with Wangcai for a bit, he went into his room to make some plans.
The villa had gotten off to a great start today, bringing in over 100,000 yuan in a single day. That filled him with confidence, and at last, the knowledge he'd gained from his university major in tourism management was coming in handy.
Aside from the game in his mind, his greatest asset was naturally the thirty mu of land covered by the Bougainvillea Sea. He was confident that, putting scale aside, there were no more than one or two places in all of China that could compare with his sea of flowers. With good promotion, he could attract even more visitors.
What did it matter that he'd only received 238 visitors today? Some of the country's top summer resorts could receive as many as 20,000 visitors a day.
Of course, his little villa couldn't handle that many people, but he could still double or triple the number of visitors it received.
And when that happened, the villa couldn't offer just a sea of flowers. The only activities couldn't be a small jungle adventure and grass skiing, either.
With so little entertainment on offer, there was no way to get visitors to spend enough. People who could afford a holiday didn't care about spending a bit more.
Especially young people bringing a girl out for fun. If all he could get them to spend was less than 300 yuan, they'd feel awkward—and his villa should feel even more awkward.
So he needed to develop new attractions. They had to appeal to the visitors drawn in by the sea of flowers, give them a great time, and get them to open their wallets.
He'd looked over the terrain around the villa, and there was a great natural attraction waiting to be developed. The villa was surrounded by lakes and dams because the area had plenty of rivers.
A river ran past the villa and all the way to the top of a mountain. They could easily develop a ten-kilometer mountain rafting route, with a two-hour trip and tickets priced at 150 yuan per person.
Rafting was also a popular activity for modern tourists.
At many resorts and scenic areas, it was a must-have attraction. Some places without suitable rivers had even created dry-channel rafting and glass-slide rafting...
But developing a rafting attraction would take a substantial investment. Building the rafting route would be the biggest expense. Even with a suitable river, a ten-kilometer course would probably cost at least a million yuan. They'd also need to build a visitor service center, a warehouse, restrooms, shower rooms, a ticket office, a rafting shop, a long waiting dock, a starting dock, an ending dock, and more.
Then there were the rafts, life jackets, helmets, inflation equipment, raft transport vehicles, visitor shuttles, water storage tanks, and a basic mountain road.
The investment would probably exceed five million yuan.
But adding a rafting attraction would raise the villa's profile by a lot.
Besides, with the villa currently earning 100,000 yuan a day, its monthly revenue would be at least three million. It could easily afford the project.
If the promotion went well and the number of visitors surged, they could earn back the investment in rafting in less than a month.
So the key was promotion. He'd been thinking about the Mouyin platform. All the resorts and guesthouses that had recently gone viral had become popular tourist spots through Mouyin.
With good promotion, even an unremarkable place could draw crowds of visitors.
Qin Lin was making plans when Zhao Moqing called.
He answered at once. "Missing me already? How about I book a hotel room and come pick you up?"
Zhao Moqing said anxiously, "You've still got time to joke around? Hurry and check the local videos on Douyin. That unreasonable woman from today is slandering the villa."
Qin Lin frowned. He hung up and logged into Douyin, then tapped the local feed. The first video he saw showed a woman acting arrogantly. "Everyone, take a look. Qinglin Villa is forcing people to buy things..."
"Damn it..." Qin Lin was speechless. How could some people be so awful?
If there weren't so many people like this, the world would be a much more harmonious place.
The worst part was that the account was clearly run by a media influencer, with 250,000 followers.
Had the owner of the account not even investigated? Did they have no common sense, just rushing to proclaim justice?
The video had already gotten plenty of likes and climbed to the top of the local trending list.
He checked the comments. They were all cursing the villa. If this kept up, the villa's business would inevitably suffer.
After all, people were highly subjective. Once they decided something was bad, the idea could take hold in their subconscious.
Still, he wasn't too worried. The woman seemed to have forgotten that the villa had surveillance footage.
And to prevent exactly this kind of thing, the villa's cameras were equipped with microphones. They could clearly pick up the conversations on-site.
He hadn't expected they'd really come in handy.
Did the other party not know that spreading false accusations and damaging someone's reputation could carry legal consequences?
"It looks like these likes still aren't enough to meet the threshold for criminal charges." Qin Lin frowned. He opened the video and chose Dou+, then boosted it to the highest price.
Thinking one account wouldn't be enough, Qin Lin registered two more accounts. He boosted the video on both, again setting the price to the maximum.
Then he switched between all three accounts and boosted the trending video a second time, again setting each one to the maximum.
After several rounds, he'd spent a total of 10,000 yuan.
Of course, this would push the video into the top trending spots and let even more people see the video smearing his villa.
After tonight, countless people online might be cursing him. If the video broke through the platform's traffic pool, the whole internet might turn against him.
After all, this kind of incident was exactly what netizens cared about most—and exactly the kind of video keyboard warriors loved, with their overflowing sense of justice and nowhere to direct it.
Still, this was the best chance he'd ever had to promote the villa. Maybe he could even make it go viral as a tourist destination.
It was all because of people's contrarian streak.
The many reversals online had proven that the more wronged someone seemed at first, the more they stood to gain when the truth came out.
The keyboard warriors would immediately delete their earlier abuse, then act as though they'd known all along and switch sides to cheer for him.
"Now all I have to do is wait for the video to spread, then call the police," Qin Lin muttered.
They'd come to smash his rice bowl. He wasn't going to let them off.
At that moment.
Meanwhile, a woman was excitedly watching the video on her phone.
"Honey, look. This villa's going to be in trouble." Lin Chunlan wore a smug expression as she spoke to her husband. Then she turned to the young man beside her. "Cousin, thanks so much for helping me get my revenge this time."
Beside her, Lin Chunlan's husband shook his head helplessly. They were already back; why not just let the matter go? His wife had insisted on getting even.
Guo Huai smiled as he looked at the likes coming in. Still, he asked to make sure, "Cousin, Cousin-in-law, you're certain everything you said was true, right? I'm planning to make this go big."
He'd been running this account for nearly three years and had only reached 250,000 followers, some of whom he'd paid for. He'd never managed to create a trending story.
This incident with his cousin and cousin-in-law being forced to buy things at Qinglin Villa was definitely a major social story.
Focusing on it would surely help him gain a lot of followers.
So he decided to spend 2,000 yuan on Dou+ to give it an initial boost and see how it performed.
Lin Chunlan didn't care. "Cousin, didn't I show you the video? How could it be fake?"
Guo Huai nodded and promptly took out his phone to pay for DOU+ promotion.
After all, they were family. He hadn't doubted them; his cousin had always treated him well since they were kids.
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