Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 594 Those who engage in unhealthy practices must be eliminated.

After exchanging a few pleasantries with Cao Zhe, Cheng Yi returned to Momo Group with Lin Qingyin, who was still somewhat frightened.

Back at the company headquarters, Cheng Yi immediately said to Li Weiwei, "Weiwei, have you noticed that there are more and more 'emo' (non-mainstream) fashionistas on the streets?"

"What is 'Shamate'?" Li Weiwei asked, puzzled.

"It's like the Super Saiyan hairstyle." Cheng Yi gestured to his hair.

Li Weiwei couldn't help but laugh and said, "These past two months have indeed been a bit too much; it looks rather strange."

Cheng Yi said, "You tell Cao Zhengze to mobilize all his online troll teams to smear this evil trend to the extreme. Make some mocking videos, write some humiliating jokes, start group mockery, do whatever makes them feel ashamed."

"I have only one request: to make the term 'Shamate' a synonym for stupidity and tacky on the internet, so that they will be pointed at and gossiped about as soon as they step out on the street, completely lose their social standing, and ultimately lose their right to choose a partner."

"Okay." Li Weiwei couldn't help but smile.

This boss is often different from normal entrepreneurs; he likes to do things that are not typical of entrepreneurs.

Li Weiwei quickly called Cao Zhengze and relayed Cheng Yi's message.

Although Cao Zhengze on the other end of the phone was a little puzzled as to why they had to contend with this subculture, he readily accepted the order and said, "Understood. Tell President Cheng that we guarantee to complete the mission. We just recently tested a batch of new dissemination nodes, so let's use these as practice. We'll definitely rip them out of their wits."

Cao Zheng received the order from Li Weiwei. Although he found his boss's sudden aesthetic obsession a bit strange, he carried it out without hesitation.

He quickly mobilized his strongest online army, which had been tempered by countless battles of public opinion, and a targeted and precise strike against the "Shamate" culture quietly unfolded in the internet world.

Under Cao Zhengze's arrangement, each team first infiltrated various newly emerging "Shamate" (a subculture characterized by flamboyant and often outlandish fashion) gathering places such as online forums, QQ spaces, and niche forums.

They posed as like-minded people, enthusiastically collecting photos, remarks, and melancholic literature written in Martian language that those "Shamate" youths thought were cool and profound.

Subsequently, these materials were stripped of their original sources, carefully selected and edited, and given extremely sarcastic titles and background music, creating a series of original meme videos and classic image collections.

Subsequently, they began a saturation bombardment and mockery of these videos and images, which were then distributed to the most popular video platforms, major forums and online communities, and emerging blog platforms.

The title was also extremely insulting and meant to spread:
Shocking! The ultimate aesthetic of the non-mainstream "Shamate" style will dazzle your eyes!

Even poems written with feet are better than yours! A comprehensive collection of melancholic, "Massive Martian Language" quotes from the internet—you'll laugh your head off!

Please, go wash your hair already! A thousand ways to die with a "Shamate" hairstyle [brainwashing loop]

Online trolls swarmed in, unleashing their utmost mockery in the comments section:

"Did your hair get struck by lightning?"

"May I ask which planet your communications personnel are from?"

"Why become a ghost when you could be a perfectly good person?"

"I need the original image. My grandma says it's really effective at warding off evil spirits!"

"I'm looking for a link to the same hairspray. I want to give my mop the same style."

Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about fashion?

After this series of actions, many young people who were initially attracted by the "Shamate" style have begun to back down.

Those who stubbornly resisted were quickly subjected to a full-scale encirclement and suppression and social death.

Any young person who dares to share their "emo" style online will immediately be relentlessly attacked by a large number of online trolls.

Their QQ spaces were flooded with mockery, their photos were turned into memes and spread everywhere, and their Martian-language poems were used as proof of illiteracy.

A girl with a flamboyant, "emo" style recently posted a photo on Tieba of herself looking up at the sky at a 45-degree angle, her hair a mix of pink and purple, exuding a deep sadness. The caption read: "I'm just a wounded child, I don't understand love, I don't understand feelings, I just want my heart to have a peaceful place."

Within minutes, the number of replies downstairs had already reached hundreds:

"Little sister, go study your Chinese well before you come out and be sad, okay?"

"Was this hair splashed by a painter?"

"Please, just cut your hair! I'll crowdfund 50 cents!"

"Hey guys, come check out these artifacts unearthed on Mars!"

This kind of organized and intense online public opinion is absolutely devastating for these teenagers, most of whom are in their adolescence and simply hope to seek recognition and attention through their unique appearance.

Their pitiful sense of pride and illusion of being different were shattered.

Gradually, this mocking atmosphere became a trend and a hot topic, and many bloggers on BlogChina also started to go all out for traffic.

Many ordinary netizens also started to join in the mockery.

In the end, Cao Zhengze and his group hardly needed to do anything, because the atmosphere of mockery had already been ignited.

The "Shamate" style quickly became synonymous with being brainless, uncultured, and vulgar.

The emerging and still developing "Shamate" culture was subjected to the most brutal "dimensional reduction" attack by Cao Zhengze, the leader of internet trolls, before it could even grow strong.

Before it could truly spread, it was thoroughly stigmatized. This intense scrutiny and ridicule from the mainstream internet caused the nascent "Shamate" culture to shrink rapidly.

Many young people secretly changed back to normal hairstyles and deleted those embarrassing photos from their QQ spaces; only a very few are still enjoying themselves in their own little circles.

This battle was over in just five days.

Cao Zhengze's actions have almost cruelly and forcibly distorted the natural growth trajectory of a subculture.

On the streets of Jingzhou, those colorful and extravagantly styled figures are rapidly disappearing at a visible rate.

Occasionally, one or two individuals with "Shamate" hairstyles will slip through the net and attract strange looks and whispers from passersby, as if to say: "Look, there are a few wild Shamates over there."

On July 12th, the number of concurrent players for Audition Online finally fell below one million. The game had become a lifeless shell, lying quietly on the servers, waiting for the moment it would finally shut down.

However, its gameplay and modes, especially its strong social attributes and cool visual presentation, have also attracted the attention of many game companies.

Tencent, NetEase, and other game companies have discussed the factors that led to its success in internal meetings, and some have even considered learning from it or directly acquiring the game.

However, none of them dared to actually make a move.

"President Cheng made it clear that Audition Online must die." At a private gathering in the gaming industry, Ma Huateng sipped his wine and sighed softly to the person next to him, his tone tinged with regret: "No matter how good its model is, whoever takes it over now is essentially standing directly against Momo Group. Is it worth risking that for a declining project?"

“Yes,” another game company boss chimed in. “I don’t know why President Cheng hates this game so much. Is it because it helped Samsung fight against us? Or is it just because he doesn’t like the game? This Momo Group president’s likes and dislikes are too hard to fathom. It’s best to stay away from him.”

Amidst this atmosphere of lamenting the fate of Audition Online and reverence for Cheng Yi, another, larger and more unsettling shadow is approaching the entire gaming industry in a countdown fashion.

World of Warcraft's global open beta is entering its final countdown.

This epic MMORPG, meticulously crafted by Blizzard Entertainment over several years and already achieving unprecedented success in the Western world, is like a prehistoric behemoth about to be released into a sheepfold; every step it takes makes the sheep inside feel uneasy.

Microsoft, IBM and other giants are panicking because the agency and operation rights of "World of Warcraft" are firmly in the hands of Enze Capital, a European consortium, which is also a major shareholder of Momo Group.

This indicates that World of Warcraft will become another powerful asset to the Moc-os system ecosystem, and may even further squeeze the survival space of the Windows system.

Its strong appeal may indeed accelerate the migration of users to the Momo platform.

The reasons that made domestic gaming moguls like Ma Huateng and Ding Lei feel uneasy were more direct and pragmatic.

They worry that World of Warcraft will dominate the Chinese market just like it did in Europe.

How many players will it steal away? How much impact will it have on existing top-tier online games like "Honghuang Chronicles," "Legend," "Fantasy Westward Journey," and "Bubble Fighter"?
No one can predict it.

This fear of the unknown behemoth tormented the nerves of every big shot.

Furthermore, MMORPGs are known for their strong sense of immersion, with World of Warcraft being a prime example.

In the European test server, once a player ventures into the legendary continent of Azeroth, it becomes commonplace to spend several hours or even tens of hours every day.

This will inevitably severely reduce the time players can spend on other games.

Will their product line be devastated?
Most importantly, will the arrival of World of Warcraft raise domestic players' expectations for the quality of online games? Will the industry's entry barriers be raised? These are all unknown variables.

"Warcraft is coming..."

This sentence, like a spell, echoed in the offices of many game company executives, bringing anxiety, unease, all-night discussions, and emergency strategic adjustment meetings.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for July 18th to arrive, waiting for the behemoth to officially step into this already turbulent battlefield.

Will it truly reshape the gaming landscape, or will it be all talk and no action?
No one knows any of this.

The only certainty is that a new era for the gaming industry is about to begin.

Jingzhou, Momo Games, the "Honghuang Zhanji" project team.

Contrary to the outside world's expectations of a jubilant atmosphere surrounding World of Warcraft, the company, especially the Honghuang Chronicles project team, is currently experiencing a pervasive sense of pessimistic anxiety and immense pressure.

As Momo Games' flagship product developed independently, "Honghuang Chronicles" has achieved a peak concurrent user count of over 500 million both domestically and internationally, making it Momo Games' undisputed revenue leader.

Project leader Kong Feng and his team have always been proud of this and have devoted all their efforts to it.

However, with the official launch of World of Warcraft in China drawing ever closer, a heavy, suffocating cloud hangs over the hearts of every member of the Honghuang Chronicles team.

"How are we supposed to compete with this?" A core planner slumped in his chair, staring at the grand world, detailed models, and rich questlines in the World of Warcraft trailer on the screen, then comparing it to his own game, Honghuang Chronicles, which, while not bad, clearly showed a significant gap. His voice was filled with despair: "These are not even in the same league. Once players go to Azeroth, will they ever come back?"

"I heard the operations team estimates we'll lose at least 30% of our core players..." another operations staff member added quietly.

This statement made the atmosphere in the meeting room even more tense.

"Why should we?!" Kong Feng slammed his fist on the table, his face filled with resentment and grievance. He roared, "We've worked so hard to bring 'The Legend of the Primordial Era' to where it is today, and you're just going to give up on it like this? If we're just going to make way for 'World of Warcraft'? What are we then? Stepping stones? Used and then thrown away?"

This feeling of being abandoned spread quickly throughout the team.

Especially when the group announced that it had established a brand new, independent subsidiary specifically for operating World of Warcraft, equipped with the best resources.

In contrast, the "Primordial Era" project team seemed to have instantly fallen out of favor and become an unwanted stepchild.

"When we had to fight against Shengda and NetEase, we were the sweethearts," a programmer complained sourly. "Now that sexy foreign girls have arrived, we're old hags? We're forced to compete with this eighteen-year-old virgin? Bah! Those scumbags at headquarters!"

When these emotions reached their peak, Kong Feng finally couldn't hold back any longer. He brought several key members of the project team and blocked Cheng Yi's office door, demanding an explanation.

Cheng Yi looked at the group of subordinates in front of him who were emotional and their faces were full of accusations. He did not get angry, but just listened quietly to them finish pouring out their grievances.

After they finished speaking, Cheng Yi slowly stood up, walked to the window, looked at the endless stream of cars below, and said something seemingly unrelated: "Only by running horses can one survive."

"Huh?" Kong Feng and the others were stunned, not understanding what the boss meant.

Cheng Yi turned around, his gaze sweeping over them: "On the grasslands, sheep only run frantically when wolves appear, thus developing their strongest physiques. The same principle applies to the gaming industry. 'Honghuang Chronicles' did indeed do well in the past, but do you yourselves know in your hearts that you're starting to become complacent? Do you think you've already secured your position and can slowly iterate?"

Kong Feng and the others immediately looked somewhat embarrassed.

Indeed, ever since Momo Group unified the internet cafe industry, they have had everything they could want without any pressure, and have always considered themselves the leader in the gaming industry.

This fostered a sense of superiority within them, with even interns in their small departments acting arrogantly and bossy towards executives at game companies.

The current Momo Games company is already showing signs of becoming like the later stages of Alibaba Group in its previous life.

We have to kill them.

(End of this chapter)