Chapter 118: This was a Performance Art!

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

At 8 PM that night, a brand-new series and a brand-new video had successfully passed the auditing process. The first episode of the ‘Products of the Gods’ series: Game Designer and a Large-Scale Performance Art!

Teacher Qiao’s fans were stunned. What was happening? Wasn’t he pretending to be dead? After playing dead for three days, was he back to commit the offense despite the eyes that were on him?

Moreover, was it a paid video for the same game? He was trying to cause a commotion!

Recently, ‘Qiao-logy’ had surprisingly become popular on many video websites. Although other content creators posted similar videos, Teacher Qiao was the first to do that. Therefore, he became the main person held responsible for those videos.

Given the current situation—as expected, the comments section was bombarded by people who were posting about that meme.

Was he… going all out since he had nothing to lose?

Since there was no way he could salvage his reputation, maybe he was trying to maintain his popularity by building a notorious reputation? Maybe he wanted to ride the wave of the popularity of ‘Qiao-logy’ and profit from that?

Considering Teacher Qiao’s current circumstances, it was hard for his fans to not have such thoughts. The netizens were prepared to roast him as they opened the video with anxious or worried feelings. Some onlookers just wanted to join in the chaos.

However, Teacher Qiao’s first sentence in the video shut them up.

“Hey, y’all. I am still your Teacher Qiao. I know what everyone wants to say. Before you guys start roasting me, I want to announce something really regrettable.

“Three days ago, on the first of April, on April Fool’s Day; we conducted a large-scale performance art and achieved incredible success. However, the results of this art experiment were really upsetting.

“That’s right. The theme of this performance art was: in the digital age, what content will become popular more easily—an intentionally silly short video or a high-quality game that cost millions and was rich with content?

“After our experiment, I am here to announce a really regrettable result.

“The former won.”

Many people wanted to start roasting him, but the opening speech stuffed their words back into their mouths. Only confusion was left.

What? Performance art? What show are you acting?

They continued watching on with confused feelings.

Teacher Qiao continued introducing the act in the video. He explained the concept and definition of performance art and the motive for the performance art that he participated in. According to him, this performance art was started by Teacher Qiao. Its purpose was to explore a really deep theme.

In the digital age, people were bombarded by information. This was an age when an explosion of information and a lack of information existed concurrently.

Information explosion referred to the huge volumes of information that everyone saw online every day. An insignificant incident at the corner of a small city could be popularized within one night for an unknown reason. The very next day, everyone in the country would know about the incident.

The lack of information referred to the scenario when information that possessed true value and meaning was buried by the huge volume of fast-paced, entertaining, and sensationalized information trash.

Therefore, this performance art did a comparison.

Teacher Qiao and many other content creators would upload their respective videos. The content of the videos was simple and utilized exaggerated tones and words to lick their boots. Everyone’s video was largely similar and used the exact same script.

In order to capture audiences’ attention, the video did all that it could. For example, it did things that instigated their distaste such as by mixing Chinese and English together in their speech and used huge amounts of discourse fillers.

The video itself was pointless and meaningless. However, since many video UP Masters uploaded them concurrently—coupled with the video’s sensationalized and attention-drawing content, netizens would ride the wave naturally. That instantly produced a unique trend on the internet!

The rise of ‘Qiao-logy’ proved that point.

An intentionally silly short video became popular and turned into a popular meme because it was stupid enough and that many people followed the trend. That proved that in this age, many events that one thought had unexpectedly become popular were actually planned by someone in the dark!

1On the other hand, Tengda’s new Game Designer was an unpopular work. It had really deep, concealed intentions and required players to be patient enough to dig it out. It exposed the state of the industry currently and satirized the chaos within the industry. Its voice-overs, graphics style, and game modes were all filled with creativity and sincerity.

However, what is the state of this content-rich game now?

It had mixed reviews. The players did not recognize the game! Most players did not even explore the game further and quitted after five minutes into the game.

The comparison between the short videos and this game was the crux of this performance art. This was already ironic enough in itself.

Many viewers were dumbfounded as they watched up to that part. So that was what happened? To think of it, it seemed pretty reasonable.

Which games companies would be that stupid to make the content creator promote the game so deliberately and disgustingly? Wouldn’t that affect the company’s image and the image of its products, too?

Although Teacher Qiao wasn’t very ethical, one could tell that he devoted his entire heart into his videos from the videos that he had previously released. Why would he utilize such a cheap method for his sponsored partnerships?

It wasn’t that the act didn’t befit his morals. It was mainly inconsistent with his wits.

Moreover, Teacher Qiao was not a special occurrence. There were so many content creators, and they had all used the same publicity script. How could one explain this then? Could it be that those content creators approached him and copied Teacher Qiao’s script on their own accord?

No way!

The only plausible explanation was that Tengda had given them the same script! Why would the big client want all the content creators that it had paid to use the same script? Moreover, the script was so badly written.

Wouldn’t it be better for them to create their own content? They would be able to achieve better publicity results with the same amount of money. Why wouldn’t they do that?

Yet, Tengda chose a really stupid publicity method. It requested all the content creators to read off the script and achieve an almost completely opposite publicity effect!

This was indeed pretty unreasonable.

Now that they thought of it, Teacher Qiao’s reasoning seemed to be the only possible explanation.

This was indeed a large-scale performance art! The events that followed had indeed validated this point. ‘Qiao-logy’ became popular, and yet Game Designer did not.

Didn’t that prove that view? In the digital age, cultural works that encompassed true meaning were often buried while information trash filled up netizens’ time!

The more they heard, the more reasonable it sounded. They continued watching the video. The topic of the video naturally went to Game Designer. That was Teacher Qiao’s forte. The series name was called ‘Products of the Gods’. It utilized a completely different commentary style from Trash Games Diss and New Recommended Games of the Month.

Teacher Qiao analyzed the reasons why Game Designer could be called a masterpiece.

“Many players think that the main ways to tell if a game could be considered a masterpiece were to analyze its graphics, game modes, story plot, game controls, ease of playing, and more.

“However, those merely differentiated ‘great works’ from ‘ordinary works’. They had nothing to do with a ‘masterpiece’.

“A ‘masterpiece’ must be able to have a huge impact within the industry. It must be rich with meaning. It must be able to withstand the test of continuous discussion and polishing. It must be able to resonate with our soul!

“Works that could not do that could only be considered to be great. They could not be called masterpieces.

“Game Designer is a classic masterpiece that fits the descriptions!”