When Lin Fan and his companions returned to 800, it was already dawn.
Since they had eaten a lot on the way, they weren't really hungry, but rather tired. The exhausted group decided to go back to sleep.
When I woke up from this sleep, it was already afternoon and the sun was about to set.
The five people with empty stomachs teamed up to go to the cafeteria to find food.
As soon as I sat down, I saw Jiang You rushing towards me in a hurry.
"What's going on?" She nervously showed Lin Fan her phone screen. "Why is it trending?"
Lin Fan glanced at it and saw it was indeed the photo of Jin Gang. She pursed her lips, not knowing what to say.
"You saw it too?" Li Chunhua walked over with Lin Fan's breakfast.
"I saw everything, everyone saw it, okay?" Jiang You said in a low voice, "If few people knew your true situation, you would be surrounded by people now."
Li Chunhua looked around and saw that many people in the cafeteria were holding their mobile phones and talking. She could vaguely see that the phone was full of the photo that caused the trouble.
He sighed helplessly, "I really didn't notice when I was photographed."
We were busy putting out the fire, who would have thought that someone was hiding in the dark taking pictures?
"It's okay, don't worry about it." Song Ren walked over, patted Li Chunhua on the shoulder and comforted her.
"Captain Song." Jiang You greeted his beloved with a beautiful smile.
Song Ren nodded and sat down to eat.
"What should we do now?" Jiang You nodded to Ji Yu and Gao Yu behind him and asked again.
"Nothing much, just wait for the results." Gao Fei, seeing Li Chunhua's gloomy expression, answered for him. "Captain Song has already reported it. We'll see how they handle it. There's nothing we can do right now anyway."
"If it's on the trending search, will there be a lot of people watching it?" Lin Fan asked.
"Isn't it?" Jiang You tapped on his phone and handed her the ranking list with the word "hot" on it. "It was reported in the early morning. The sun hasn't even set yet, and it's already been at number one for half a day."
When a few people came over to take a look, they saw that "Mecha Fire Fighting" was listed first.
This was followed by "a war of words caused by a photo", "to what extent technology can develop to create mechas", "the wildfire is extinguished, thumbs up to the firefighters", and "fake photos become a hot search".
The following are news such as "A meteorite is suspected to have fallen in city X", "New fluctuations in housing prices", "Divorce rate hits a new high", etc. These news items look so familiar that you don't want to click on them.
"So many people?" Li Chunhua opened her eyes wide and saw that the number of likes had reached tens of millions, and there were also millions of comments.
"Yeah, there are basically three kinds of opinions." Jiang You clicked on the comments. "Some praised the beauty, some praised the advanced technology, and some said it was a fake picture. I've even posted several comments about fake pictures, with solid evidence, so much so that I almost believed them myself."
Lin Fan looked up at Jiang You. In his impression, this young lady didn't seem like someone who would tell lies.
"I just wanted to... Oh, that's it." Jiang You accepted Lin Fan's gaze and explained a little shyly.
She knew the mecha wasn't fake, of course. But the institute clearly had no intention of releasing it to the public, and attracting so much attention in this way was definitely not a good thing.
She was anxious, but there was nothing she could do.
I could only ask the people in my group and colleagues I knew to post more comments to combat fraud. I analyzed the fraudulent methods in detail and tried to influence the direction of the comments.
I don't know if their efforts paid off. Anyway, the results are that most people praise the beautiful photos and say they're hard work. There's an equal number of people discussing the technological advancements and calling the photos fake.
When talking about advanced science and technology, people are overflowing with confidence in the strength of their nation. Between the lines they say we are awesome, we are great, we are awesome!
Most of those who say the picture is fake say that technology has not developed to this extent. It is difficult to reach this level with existing technology, otherwise Iron Man would not only appear in movies, but would have appeared in the United States long ago.
Then, out of nowhere, the argument started.
Why can't the US exist without us? Is your butt crooked? Are you patriotic? Are you a traitor?
Hundreds of thousands of people were arguing so fiercely in the comment section that they were almost fighting.
You can feel the typist's anger just by reading the words.
Seeing that the verbal battle was in full swing and there was no result, someone called out the person who took the photo to speak out and asked whether the photo was real or fake.
"These people..." Lin Fan watched Jiang You's fingers scroll down little by little, flipping through the comments, and suddenly sighed, "They're really quite idle."
After saying that, he was no longer interested and just ate his meal.
Isn’t a plate full of food more attractive than those meaningless Chinese characters?
The others stopped watching after a while because they thought it was boring.
The only problem was Li Chunhua. After all, it was his own fault. The more he looked at her, the more worried and uncomfortable he became. He inadvertently took Jiang You's phone and started to check it himself.
Jiang You didn't care. She didn't have anything to do anyway, so it was a good excuse to stay with Song Ren for a while longer. Why not?
When Song Ren had almost finished eating, he saw that Li Chunhua had hardly touched her food and was still browsing her phone, so he wanted to remind her.
As soon as he opened his mouth, he saw Li Chunhua's face full of joy, and he put the phone in the middle of the table: "It's clarified, it's clarified!"
Several people gathered around to take a look.
A pop-up window appeared on the top of the phone, clearly stating: "The author of the mecha firefighting image apologizes and admits to fabricating it."
Jiang You clicked on it and was instantly redirected to a short video. Sitting upright in the video was a young man wearing black-framed glasses, looking about twenty years old and quite youthful.
He looked haggard, his hair neatly combed but disheveled, as if he hadn't rested for a while and had given it a quick styling to look good on camera. His eyes were red, and dark circles could be vaguely seen beneath his black-framed glasses.
"Hello everyone, I'm the person who uploaded the 'Mecha Fighting Fire' picture." The man spoke in a crisp and clear voice, but his throat was a little hoarse.
"My original intention in uploading the pictures was to gain traffic, become an internet celebrity, and make a lot of money. So I used improper means to take pictures of the fire scene, and then did additional processing to attract more traffic."
"As expected, it became popular right after it was posted. At first, I was very proud of myself. But in the afternoon, the comment section had gradually turned into a battlefield. Then things got out of control and triggered a war of words online..." He paused here.
"I originally just wanted to post a different picture to attract attention, but I didn't expect it would cause such a negative online impact. My backend was flooded with private messages, and more people were cursing me than asking me to clarify... I feel very uneasy. This is not the result I wanted."
"After much deliberation, I decided to come out and clarify to quell this verbal battle. Actually, if I tell them it's true, the traffic will increase, and I might become famous overnight. But I'll feel guilty..."
"So after careful consideration, I solemnly declare that the 'mecha putting out a fire' image was photoshopped by me. This is all my fault. Please stop arguing and restore peace to the internet. I apologize once again."
The video is not long, but the meaning is clear.
"Huh...that's good now." Li Chunhua finally breathed a sigh of relief.