Renren.com's homepage had a huge event page.
Clicking in, several large characters came into view:
"Renren.com's 1st Campus Image Spokesperson Selection Competition."
"In just half a year, Renren.com has become the most beloved SNS social networking site for students in Dongjiang universities. Here, we've met new friends, reconnected with old friends, and found joy and emotion.
We hope to select a spokesperson who embodies Renren.com's youthful, vibrant, and positive image, and thus, we are holding the 1st Campus Image Spokesperson Selection Competition. The ultimate champion will sign a contract with Renren.com, with a contract bonus of no less than 100,000 yuan.
Preliminaries: Any university student currently enrolled in a Dongjiang university can submit their resume (including photos) to Renren.com's email via self-nomination or recommendation. Qualified candidates will enter the preliminaries. The preliminaries will use a voting system, with the top sixteen on the overall leaderboard advancing to the quarter-finals.
Quarter-finals: Sixteen contestants will be paired up for one-on-one PK.
How to get Renren votes:
1. Get 5 votes for daily check-in.
2. Get 2 votes for successfully inviting a friend to register. (Can be accumulated repeatedly.)
3. Get 5 votes for posting and replying in relevant topic groups daily.
4. Purchase cheer packages in the Renren Mall to get votes. See the mall for details."
The "Campus Image Ambassador" event, long anticipated by many Renren.com internal employees, has finally launched.
Internally at Renren.com, this event was also called the "Campus Belle Competition."
Gathering the campus belles from all fifty universities in Dongjiang for such an event, weren't the vast number of male students the happiest?
It was practically a live giveaway of benefits.
Chen Pingjiang did not organize separate preliminary selections within each university, mainly because there were too many universities and insufficient manpower.
Otherwise, if all were lined up, the finals would be postponed until the second half of the year.
Therefore, the internal preliminary selection was changed to a self-nomination plus recommendation format.
If the most attractive person in a school didn't participate, they deserved to lose.
Of course, the official line was that as university students in the new era, they are required to develop comprehensively in moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor aspects, and besides image and temperament, inner qualities are also very important.
But students would vote with their feet, only choosing what they liked.
"Who is this woman? Why isn't our media goddess Pei Wenping here? This woman can't represent our School of Media. Pei Wenping is much prettier than her."
"Didn't you read the event explanation? It requires self-nomination or recommendation. Your school's Pei Wenping probably didn't sign up, right? But I'm curious what the goddess of the School of Media looks like? Bro, got any photos? Send them over, I'll help you appreciate them."
"Is this event discriminatory against men? Why are there no men on the selection page?"
"It's not limited by gender. If you're Daniel Wu, just nominate yourself."
"I've long heard that Ligongda has no beauties, and today I see it's true."
"Hey upstairs, if you have the guts to come to our school and say that, I'll salute you as a real man."
"Thanks to Renren.com, thanks to CEO Chen, thanks to all sorts of TV, I've got material for tonight."
"Can I watch these without paying?"
"..."
Hot before it even started!
And it showed signs of intensifying.
Beautiful women and handsome men are always great selling points, especially when mixed with a sense of honor.
No one wants to see their school's goddess inferior to the neighboring school's.
The number of contestants participating in the preliminaries climbed at a visible rate.
University students are representatives of strong individuality; many want to show themselves off, or are directly aiming for the 100,000 yuan grand prize, while others are purely driven by an overwhelming sense of collective honor, wanting to uphold their school's reputation.
Renren.com temporarily formed a preliminary selection committee specifically to review contestants.
"This girl is good. I can't believe Sanjiang College has a beauty of this caliber."
"Damn it, next. Someone like this dares to enter the competition? All I can say is, commendable courage."
"Oh, not bad. This one's my type."
Wan Yuqian watched the few people in front of her making all sorts of comments about the contestants' photos, shaking her head helplessly:
"Please, you're just reviewing them for entry, not acting as beauty pageant judges."
Chen Pingjiang smiled and wagged his finger:
"Xuejie, that's not quite right. If they can't even impress us, how can they impress other Renren.com users?"
"Exactly. I'm treating every preliminary resume with the utmost professionalism, rigorous attitude, and objective spirit, striving to select high-quality contestants to bring exciting activities to the vast number of Renren.com users. Besides, if we're not strict with our selection, people might think Renren.com has no standards."
In addition to launching a special event page on Renren.com's homepage, campus webmasters also organized personnel to work with the ground promotion team to place advertisements on various university campuses.
In just half a day, the entire Dongjiang university campus had heard about the Campus Image Spokesperson Selection Competition.
No enterprise, school, or individual had ever held a similar event, so even though the event had just launched, it attracted sufficient attention.
It even alarmed many school teachers, who visited Renren.com to check it out.
"What if someone rigs the votes, inviting people nonstop and ultimately getting more votes than more excellent contestants?"
Wan Yuqian asked after thinking.
Chen Pingjiang scoffed:
"Then it depends on whether he can rally more people, or if I can move my finger faster."
Chen Pingjiang allowed everyone to compete within the rules, but if someone tried to exploit loopholes or disrupt the competition order, Chen Pingjiang had many ways to intervene and severely punish them, because he held the final right of interpretation for the competition.
Which organizer of a competition doesn't have a bit of behind-the-scenes manipulation?
If you want the competition to be popular, you must send the most talked-about and highest-quality contestants into the quarter-finals and even the finals; otherwise, who the hell would watch?
——————
When more and more contestants successfully passed the review and their photos were posted on the event page, the Campus Image Spokesperson event suddenly exploded.
Chen Pingjiang wondered where these 'animals' got such immense enthusiasm.
Many school officials began to pay attention to the competition, some even personally participating.
Regardless, it was an excellent opportunity to promote their schools.
Holding similar competitions in Dongjiang had a significant advantage because there were simply too many universities.
The entire Dongjiang City had 50 higher education institutions, including 34 undergraduate universities and 16 vocational colleges, among which were many 985/211 institutions, and even military academies.
The total number of enrolled students exceeded 700,000, and this didn't even include graduate students.
Previously, due to limited computer penetration and other factors, Renren.com only had 250,000 registered users.
But as soon as the Campus Image Spokesperson event launched and became a hot topic, Renren.com's registered user count began to climb steadily, breaking 300,000 in just one day.
The next day, as soon as Chen Pingjiang arrived at the office, he grabbed someone from the content department and asked,
"How many votes now?"
Zhuo Ling looked at the page and replied,
"The total votes have exceeded 150,000. After yesterday's promotion, more and more registered users know about the competition, and it's highly likely to surpass 500,000 votes today."
Chen Pingjiang nodded:
"Arrange for some people to create burner accounts and post some inflammatory comments to further boost the hype."
Zhuo Ling blinked in confusion:
"Uh, specifically what kind of inflammatory comments?"
"For example, comment under a Dongjiang University contestant's entry: 'With this quality, you dare to participate in the image ambassador competition? My eighty-year-old grandmother has higher quality than you.'"
"Or comment under a Normal University entry: 'Such a beautiful woman has so few votes? Are all the men in your school dead?'"
"Or expose some dirt on a campus belle or stud from a certain school, for instance: 'Heard that guy from your school is gay?' 'XXX is shameless, stealing someone else's boyfriend, and now has the nerve to participate in the competition?'"
Chen Pingjiang chuckled mischievously, stirring up trouble back and forth, finding it amusing just thinking about it.
Zhuo Ling's eyes widened.
"Boss, you're really a dog."
"In short, create conflicts and contradictions, so that students from each school unite against a common enemy, and even different contestants from the same school can canvass for votes against each other and engage in infighting."
If everyone just voted quietly, it would be too dull.
Without enough buzz, it wouldn't generate hype.
Some talent shows in later generations had already overused these tactics.
"'XX's song involves plagiarism.'"
"'XX's dark history.'"
"'XXX acts like a diva, disrespecting the director.'"
"..."
There were simply too many examples like these.
With discussion and topics, the audience naturally felt a sense of participation and immersion.
On the other end of the internet, whether they were top students or poor students, freshmen or graduate students, or even teachers, in Renren.com's Image Spokesperson Competition, they all became "judges" who could decide the fate of the contestants.
This transformed them from spectators into participants and companions, using their own power to send their favorite contestants to their desired positions, accompanying them through challenges.
Everyone in the content department learned quite quickly, especially Li Jiantao, whose hands clattered non-stop on the keyboard, switching between various small accounts to leave comments below each contestant.
"I think you shouldn't be participating in the image spokesperson competition, but rather the 'ugliest person' contest. You almost scared the hell out of me."
"Normal University truly has beauties everywhere. Beautiful lady, do you have QQ? I'm a handsome guy from Ligongda and I'd like to befriend you."
"Beautiful lady, your photo is too conservative; it's hard for me to feel motivated to vote for you."
"You idiot from Gongda, someone like this wouldn't even be considered a class beauty at our school."
"..."
Chen Pingjiang's "guidance" inadvertently unlocked Li Jiantao's talent for sharp-tongued remarks, and in less than half a day, several of his burner accounts were reported multiple times.
"Damn you, although there are fewer men at our Shida, there are still some. Do you pathetic guys from Ligongda even deserve to pursue girls from our Shida?"
"Kid, you talk a lot, don't you? Which school are you from? Tell me your name, and I'll come find you for some fun."
"..."
Li Jiantao was so engrossed in typing that he completely failed to notice a resentful gaze fixed on him.
After a while, he felt a chill on his neck, turned around, and saw his department colleague Tao Yuanyong staring at him with an unfriendly expression.
"What's wrong?"
Li Jiantao asked, puzzled.
Tao Yuanyong pointed to the words on the screen and grumbled,
"It seems you forgot I'm from Gongda. Those words cursed me too."
"Uh."
Li Jiantao was momentarily speechless, thinking to himself how he could have forgotten that the content department had students not only from Dongcai but also from other schools.
(End of chapter)
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