E-Ladies: Navigating the Wired World
Chapter 184: Episode 184: Becoming a Victim of Cyberbullying, Are You Okay With That?

Chapter 184: Episode 184: Becoming a Victim of Cyberbullying, Are You Okay With That?

Chen Yitian had completed his three-month internship at 51buy and was about to leave the company.

After three months of trials and tribulations, he had graduated from the title of "IT killer."

"Thank you to all my senior sisters for your help. I’m returning to my old man’s company tomorrow. I want to express my gratitude again to everyone, especially Sister K, for teaching me so much!" Chen Yitian was grateful to the point of tears.

"What I taught you is nothing, not worth mentioning," Kang Siyin said modestly, her face flushed as she waved her hand dismissively.

Before leaving, Chen Yitian gave everyone a carefully chosen gift according to their likes.

Everyone praised him for being a true gentleman from a large corporation, always so polite.

After Chen Yitian left, Kang Siyin initially found herself somewhat unaccustomed to his absence, still often calling out, ’Xiaotian, go check on this or that function.’

But each time after she called out, she would remember that Chen Yitian was no longer in the office.

To say she wasn’t disappointed would be a lie, but she wasn’t unbearably sad either. After all, her long-admired Senior Yang had returned to China and was now working near Zaojun Temple.

Speaking of the tough nut to crack that was D&G, the luxury brand definitely proved challenging.

Other luxury brands they negotiated with at the same time, such as Branda and Gu Che, were easily secured, and the advertisement schedules were already produced.

But with D&G, every planning proposal they sent out was met with dissatisfaction. Yet they never specified what the issue was, just repeatedly dragging their feet, which was nearly exhausting Zhou Xueyin’s patience.

"Yinyin, I think I know what they’re unhappy about!" one day during a meeting, Wang Simo suddenly had an epiphany while looking at the promotional image.

"You don’t mean to tell me they disagree with us using our own models, do you?" Zhou Xueyin had actually realized this issue long ago.

But their models all fitted the stereotypical image unique to Chinese people — small eyes, high cheekbones, thick lips, flat-chested — and even though the focus should be on the product and not the model, the model’s appearance was an excessive caricature of Chinese people that Zhou Xueyin just couldn’t accept based on her own aesthetic standards.

"It seems so. Look at their promotions on other sites — they use the same images they provided, all exactly the same as on their official website..." Wang Simo said helplessly.

"Ugh... no way, that’s too ugly. It would completely downgrade 51buy’s aesthetic standards..." Zhou Xueyin shook her head.

However, securing this deal would mean reaching the sales target for the first half of the year. Failing to do so would require them to quickly find a replacement company, which would be quite a headache.

"How about we schedule another meeting with their marketing department?" Wang Simo wasn’t keen on using the set of images either; they were just too unsightly.

"It’s useless. We’ve had over a dozen rounds of talks, and they haven’t even glanced at our image gallery. It seems unless we use their images, all discussions are off the table..." Zhou Xueyin said anxiously, "I’m truly, truly at my wit’s end."

"Let’s just use it then. It’s the only option we have left. So what if the model is a bit ugly, the composition is off, the colors are skewed, and the focus isn’t quite right... We’ll make do, and if it doesn’t give results, they can’t blame us, can they?" Wang Simo had resigned himself to the situation. Since the client so undervalued their work, if they were not embarrassed, then it didn’t matter on their end.

"That’s the problem! They still want to see the advertising impact, the click-through rate. If the traffic doesn’t correlate, they’ll have a reason to withhold the final payment..." Zhou Xueyin was nearly at her breaking point. "Ugh, I’ve never seen such a difficult client!"

"If we have no choice... we’ll have to fake it..." Wang Simo suggested in a low voice.

"Yeah, if it comes to that, we might have to resort to doing just that..."

After weighing the options, the cost of faking it compared to the final payment was nothing more than a drop in the ocean...

"Aren’t they interested in seeing the results? Then let’s show them!"

In order to land this deal, Zhou Xueyin really did a number of things against her conscience, starting with using the ugly crying images provided by the other party, then spending money to inflate the ad views to show them the effect.

But what she never anticipated was that just after the ad had been posted, there was a scandal involving Daub & Guta executives in America making rh related and zd supportive statements.

All the websites displaying their ads became targets of an online backlash without exception.

Even though they immediately took down the ad and issued a disclaimer, they were still blasted on forums by Little Pink, and some even posted photos of the website administrators.

As if these people were accomplices of Daub & Guta, cursing without distinction.

Of course, Zhou Xueyin didn’t escape the sweeping barrage of online attacks...

The 51buy forum was flooded with patriotic posts, making it impossible to browse or use properly.

Zhou Xueyin’s previous photo of rescuing Da Boyi was dug up, claiming she was the capitalists’ lackey. Who knew if she was rescuing someone or pushing them to a dead end?

"Damn it, do these people have any humanity? Since the start of my company, I’ve never withheld a single penny from my employees! I’ve always been thinking of welfare for you all, I’ve even sacrificed my own bonuses to buy gifts for everyone! Are the things these people saying online even human speech?" Zhou Xueyin was moved to tears by the comments online for the first time.

Especially seeing those on her own forum joining in the cursing, it hurt even more.

"We’ve already clarified things for you online, these people just need a vent... it’ll pass," Li Jin’niang comforted Zhou Xueyin.

"Hope this storm passes quickly, it’s really terrifying; indiscriminate firing, they don’t care what you did before, as long as you advertised for Daub, you deserve to die, that’s how extreme netizens are these days," Kang Siyin said helplessly, "Just ignore it... stop looking."

[Xiaozhou, come up to the ninth floor...] Coincidentally, Liu Ruidong wanted to have a talk with Zhou Xueyin again.

It surely wasn’t anything good, it definitely was about the online backlash.

Zhou Xueyin braced herself mentally and went up to the ninth floor.

"Although I know this incident wasn’t caused by us, we still need to pay attention to the comments on the forum. Remove any inflammatory comments that damage the company’s image! And don’t let their comments affect you too much... as a website operator, you need to have psychological resilience!"

Liu Ruidong, looking at Zhou Xueyin’s red eyes, originally intended to criticize her for not thinking through the client’s background thoroughly, but his heart softened and turned into words of comfort instead.

"Yeah! I understand, I’ll adjust my mindset! The ad has already been pulled, and the client has apologized. The apology has been sent out... we’re just waiting for netizens to cool down," Zhou Xueyin said while tears streamed down her face.

"Make sure to adjust your mindset!" Liu Ruidong encouraged her.

Adjusting your mindset is easier said than done.

Just opening the forum, you could see those curses aimed at yourself. You delete one wave, and another comes in; you ban some, and more keep coming like relentless zombies, It’s hard not to look.

"It’s the weekend tomorrow! Let’s go out and have a change of scenery, relax! Don’t let these vexing matters get to you anymore!" Li Jin’niang, seeing Zhou Xueyin with furrowed brows and red-rimmed eyes, staring at her laptop, decisively closed the laptop in front of her and suggested.

"Hoo..." Zhou Xueyin took a deep breath, "Okay! Let’s go out for a bit, clear my mind!"