Chapter 196 Apple Entertainment? Boss?
“Meng Tai, is it really okay to do this…”

“We don’t have any evidence at all. If Mr. Liu directly sends us a lawyer’s letter, we really won’t be able to fight back at all.”

As the sun sets, in an office in the Southern Sichuan TV building, Liang Chaojie looks a little worried.

He and Meng Yunda both changed their seats and sat next to the reception sofa. There were several boxed dishes on the coffee table.

Meng Yunda didn’t seem to be wasting his time. He was eating a box of rice with relish, and he was also greeting people as he ate:
“Eating is the most important thing in the world. Eat first. It’s only been posted for a few minutes. Do you have any feedback or questions?”

Liang Chaojie sighed and held the chopsticks in his hand, but looking at the table full of clean and fragrant food sent from the Sichuan Southern Taiwan Canteen, he had no appetite at all.

I have something on my mind and I have no appetite. I can’t eat.

He reluctantly picked up a piece of stir-fried vegetable with chopsticks and put it into his mouth. He ate two mouthfuls of rice which tasted like chewing wax, but he still couldn’t help being anxious and his legs were shaking.

“No… Well, you’re not in my position, and I don’t know how to explain it.”

Meng Yunda ate in no time, but even though he ate so quickly, he still found time to talk, and he only spoke after swallowing the food in his mouth. His eating manners were elegant and cultured. Apart from eating a lot and fast, he didn’t look like a starving man at all.

He comforted:

“What don’t you know about this?”

“Aren’t you just afraid that he’ll find out about the public opinion about him online and that he’ll find out about you? After all, you were the one who told me this news. He’s so close to Lu Siyuan, so it’s very likely that he heard Lu Siyuan talk about the things you were curious about at the time.”

“Besides, you just contacted the Internet trolls and marketing accounts this afternoon to expose those who manipulated the votes in the talent show. It’s only a matter of time before their management company finds out that you are the mastermind behind the scenes. You’ve already offended so many people, and now you’ve turned against them and stabbed Liu Shuangcheng in the back. If you’re not careful, the consequences will be unimaginable.”

“Is that all? Is there anything else I haven’t mentioned?”

Liang Chaojie was speechless for a moment.

That’s true…it’s pretty much what you said.

Even if these people did not resort to those shady means, they should use legal weapons openly. If they were to receive a lawyer’s letter for what they did, they would either have to pay for everything they had saved for half a lifetime, or they could be sent to jail for two years.

Let’s not talk about anything else. If you expose a celebrity’s negative material and the other party chooses to fight to the end, there will be no problem in suing you for defamation regardless of whether the material is true or not.

The right to reputation is a very delicate issue when it comes to celebrities. As long as even half a sentence in the content you expose is false, or there is no evidence or verification, and it is defamatory, that is, the celebrity is troubled by public opinion, which is equivalent to being scolded and slandered in layman’s terms, then the other party can sue you.

If it was just a few people, no matter how much the other party asked you to pay, you could basically just pay some money and the matter would be settled. But this time, dozens of artists were involved, and behind them were a group of management companies that liked to develop legal departments the most…

To take a step back, even if those brokerage companies didn’t trace him back, he still had to worry about Liu Shuangcheng.

If this person really explodes, Liang Chaojie won’t just have to worry about the lawsuit.

The revelation that Liu Shuangcheng had blood on his hands was not made up by Zhuo Ge himself, but Liang Chaojie mentioned it by chance during the chat. This kind of gossip is not uncommon among the bigwigs in the circle. The heroes like Liu Shuangcheng who rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s have more or less had blood on their hands. Even though it was just Lu Siyuan’s casual mention without any evidence, Liang Chaojie had no doubt about its authenticity.

Just the mountain-like oppressive aura and fierce eyes he had when he met Liu Shuangcheng were very telling.

Seeing Liang Chaojie remained silent, Meng Yunda put down his chopsticks, wiped his mouth with tissue paper, and spoke.

“It seems that he was right.”

“Your worry is justified. After all, what happened today does carry a lot of risk, but we have made a comprehensive plan, right?”

“When you contacted those marketing accounts, you directly used the name of Wushuang Films. After all, it was Liu Shuangcheng who told you to use the name of Wushuang Films without any hesitation. You just didn’t know what was going on and just did what he said. You never mentioned your own name from beginning to end. Even if those companies traced your phone number through the marketing company and found out that it was you who called, what would they do?”

“Besides, you used that PHS to contact them, so the card in the phone might not be yours.”

“How can they find you if you’re hiding like this?”

At this point, Meng Yunda smiled, and there was a sense of calmness in that smile:
“Let’s talk about Liu Shuangcheng.”

“The only thing he can blame you for is that you took advantage of him, but he can’t just use this as an excuse, because as you just said, this was originally his way of comforting you, and he took the initiative to bring it up. So what if you did it?”

“As for revealing those dirty things on the high seas… do you think you’re the only one who knows about this? It sounds like even Lu Siyuan is used to it. He has submerged so many people before, could Lu Siyuan be the first person to know about it? Who would believe this if I told them?”

“There is no impenetrable wall in the world. If more than two people know about something, there is a risk of it being leaked.”

“He can’t find you. On the contrary, he is most likely to blame me or Chuan Nantai for everything. As long as you don’t play both sides, Liu Shuangcheng will never know that it was you who did it. He won’t even be able to guess it.”

“Now, can you continue eating without worry?”

Liang Chaojie had nothing to say.

He nodded, sighed, said nothing, picked up the lunch box, and ate in silence.

…………

The other end.

Hotel. Liu Shuangcheng sent the female technician away with a stack of cash, and his opinion of the hotel improved a little.

Under normal circumstances, he would definitely not just pick one at random, but the situation today was special. He came to Changshan where he was unfamiliar with the place, and he was too lazy to open his address book to see who were the locals. Those who could fly across the country were too troublesome, so he just made do with it.

I thought I was just going to make do with it, but the experience turned out to be quite good, which was quite unexpected.

He called the hotel to have dinner delivered, and then took a comfortable bath. When he came out of the bath, the food had just arrived. So Liu Shuangcheng, wearing a bathrobe, ate in the living room of the suite while taking out his mobile phone and starting to browse.

Even though he is a bit old, the entertainment industry is different from other industries. If an industry giant is out of touch with the times and loses his market sense, then as long as this person continues to be the decision maker of the company, there is a possibility of collapse.

If the boss is not capable, it will be useless no matter how many young people join the job, after all, the boss still makes the final decision.

It is precisely because of his proud market sense that Liu Shuangcheng has experienced the changes of the Internet in the past 20 years, from the early rise of the Internet to the current era of self-media information explosion, including forums, post bars, Weibo, short video platforms, etc., and has always been involved in them and has never fallen behind. Or it can be said that it is because he has been keeping up with the pace of the times that he has acquired such a market and business sense.

Nowadays, as long as it is not a business dinner or a formal cocktail party, Liu Shuangcheng always keeps his mobile phone next to him while watching short videos. When he is not using it, he specifically asks young people in the company to log into his account and watch videos, replacing the big data content with what young people like, so as to better capture hot spots.

The film industry also needs to look at market trends.

For example, if a popular and mainstream movie was released twenty years ago, around the turn of the millennium, would young people like to watch it?
Maybe some people like to watch it, but the general market direction is definitely not there.

Young people at that time were in the midst of a wave of drastic changes. The whole society was full of vitality and everything was full of infinite possibilities. Young people were curious about new things. The Internet was not well developed and popular at that time. Families that could afford a computer were considered middle class or above. More people would learn about the outside world through movies and TV dramas.

Therefore, from the reform and opening up to the early 2000s, movies and TV series from Hong Kong and Taiwan dominated the market. At that time, Wushuang Films was not called what it is now. At the end of the 20th century, Liu Shuangcheng also did a period of video disc business, which brought him huge profits.

Then he stopped, because computers gradually became popular, DVDs and discs showed signs of being abandoned, and people were more willing to find resources on the Internet.

A little later, there was the Korean Wave. As soon as all kinds of handsome and beautiful singing and dancing idols and various dream-making TV dramas were hit, Liu Shuangcheng flew to the neighboring country of Korea and decisively invested in a small local company. He also asked his young screenwriters to go there to exchange and study, learn the essence, write scripts, and then directly started shooting a large number of so-called small fresh love movies with low costs in Hong Kong.

The conversion from exports to domestic sales is still a huge success.

Liu Shuangcheng has reaped too many benefits from standing at the forefront of the times, so he is particularly aware of the value of information asymmetry and will not allow himself to lag behind the times and make wrong decisions.

In recent years, Weibo has not been popular. Only some old people who can’t keep up with the times still care about the views, hot searches and fan data there. Those who really know the industry have changed their criteria. Now, Hongshu, Douyin and Bilibili are the data benchmarks and hot spots. If you really pay attention to the entertainment industry, then Douban is more reliable than Weibo, where a large number of people gather in various groups to share information.

Normally, Wushuang Film and Television has a large number of manpower devoted to a certain Ban, more than any other software, because if there is any gossip, no matter where it finally becomes popular, it is most likely to have been spread from a certain Ban in the first place.

Liu Shuangcheng would take a look when he had nothing to do. He could tell at a glance which gossips were true and which were false, but he never said anything.

It’s quite interesting to watch others worrying about the protagonist and authenticity of a certain gossip, and fans arguing with passers-by.

It’s not that middle-aged and elderly people don’t like to read gossip, they just like to read gossip in different directions. Everyone likes to read gossip about people they are familiar with, but middle-aged and elderly people are not familiar with entertainment stars, so they are too lazy to pay attention to stars. They are only very enthusiastic about talking about old classmates, old colleagues and old comrades-in-arms when chatting with old friends.

As a middle-aged and elderly person who knows the entertainment industry well, Liu Shuangcheng watches the gossip on the Internet and feels no different from the uncles and aunts eating melon seeds and chatting at the entrance of the village.

He was looking through a very popular group on a certain forum. To join this group and speak, there were certain requirements. Either you could prove yourself as an industry insider with some things or gossip, or you were a big fan of a certain star, or you had been in this group for a long time. In short, ordinary people could only read posts but not speak. Liu Shuangcheng also revealed the private life of a third-tier star under Wushuang before he could successfully join this group.

The posts in the front row, of course, are all discussing the dozens of artists who are currently using talent shows to cheat in ticket sales.

As a group full of melon farmers and idiots, the fan circle here is very pungent. Many of them are fans. Even if there are idiots who come here purely to eat melons, there are more or less artists they like. The base of this exposure is too large, and many people were accidentally hurt. There are doubts and scoldings about those who broke the news everywhere.

Of course, there are more people who didn’t do anything. The rival companies that survived the disaster were happy to see their troubles and urgently deployed water armies and company personnel to lead the group. Since there is a threshold to join the group, everyone who has been verified as an industry insider has a small “professional” badge behind his ID. Some people have accurately predicted changes in the industry before. The pace set by these people is much better than that of ordinary spectators.

During the twenty minutes of meal, Liu Shuangcheng laughed as he watched them quarrel.

If these people knew that this uproar was caused by him, what would be their reaction?
He had just finished his meal and was about to stretch and close the software to check his work messages, but his hand slipped and he pressed the refresh button.

Then, Liu Shuangcheng suddenly saw a new post that was just published two minutes ago, and the number of replies had reached an astonishing 99+ floors!
The title is…

[Li Tao丨Have any friends seen the revelations from Apple Entertainment? Who is that big shot?]

Li Tao is the jargon in this group, meaning that this is a rational discussion post, not gossip, but basically any post with this title will end up in a quarrel.

Apple Entertainment? Big Boss?
Liu Shuangcheng suddenly had a bad feeling in his heart.

He sat up straight, frowned, and clicked on the main post of that thread.

[I just saw the revelations posted by Apple Entertainment on the next-door platform, and it made my scalp numb. I know that the entertainment industry is chaotic, and I also know that the business capabilities and overall environment of the domestic entertainment industry are rotten, but I thought it was better than Europe and the United States, and not as evil as the Koreans. Who knew there would be such people! ]

[Do you have any doubts about the direction? Does anyone know which big shot Apple Entertainment is talking about? ]

[To be honest, since I read the revelations by Shu Yi and that Zhao, my trust in Apple Entertainment has reached its peak. They probably won’t make up lies for traffic, and it’s not easy for them to get hush money. But why are they unwilling to speak directly this time? I’m so anxious! ]

The most popular reply that was pushed to the front row is the first one, with a “professional” badge after the ID:
[I roughly guessed who it is. It’s no secret that this big guy is good at playing tricks. Recently, a certain artist who was at the center of controversy was almost hidden by him. Since then, this artist has been bullied by the company, and later he was directly banned and exposed all kinds of false black material. Tsk tsk tsk, I suggest you don’t talk nonsense, this group is full of his people, who knows, he might be reading this post right now. ]

The host replied:

[I sent you a private message, sister, please reply to me, please, I really beg you!!!]

(End of this chapter)