Chengdu.
In the office, Chen Nian, Chen Guo and Li Xiang rarely sat together again, each holding a cup of tea and chatting away.
In fact, since Li Xiang officially joined the intelligence department, the three of them have not been together like this for a long time. The division of work authority is on the one hand, and maintaining a very high level of pressure and rhythm is another.
For Chen Guo, there are various planning meetings, budget meetings, and evaluation meetings all day long. For Li Xiang, public opinion changes all the time, and so does his work.
Chen Nian was even more exaggerated. Not to mention the issue of technical output, various learning and research alone took up more than 50% of the time.
Therefore, such leisure is a luxury for them.
After drinking the last sip of tea in the cup, Chen Nian continued the previous topic and said:
"So, now the laser technology has basically been exported. Next, it depends on how the 11th Institute dispatches resources for rapid application."
"However, the technology this time is relatively basic. It will take some time to dismantle the technology of YLS-1000. It is impossible to directly apply it to the Shenguang Project."
"After the equipment comes out, it will most likely be given priority in industrial fields such as laser welding and laser engraving."
"This is not a bad thing for us. Welding technology in civil industry has always been a weakness for us, and we can make up for it this time."
Hearing his words, Chen Guo nodded slightly and replied:
"Yes, that's what the Office of Civil Development said."
"We are not in a hurry about this military application yet."
"As for the Shenguang Plan, it is also a backup plan, and the core is still on EAST."
"EAST is progressing a little faster than expected."
Chen Nian took over and said.
"How's the progress of the Tinder Team?"
Chen Guo asked.
"Very good, we have begun to dismantle the formation principle of the magnetic ripple field. It is estimated that the conclusion will be formed within one to two months."
"After this piece is solved, the construction of the superconducting coil can be started."
"The time was shortened by nearly two months than expected."
Chen Guo's face showed an expression of appreciation.
Sure enough, this young man never lets himself down.
Thinking back to the time when I first met him, he was still an extremely young boy, holding an F-22 aerodynamic design drawing in his hand, trying to attract his attention by "handing in his homework."
In fact, at that time, he probably already anticipated everything that was going to happen, right?
However, I just regarded it as a coincidence.
It wasn't until he started taking out engine drawings that everyone, including himself, gradually started to take him seriously.
Seven years have passed in a flash, and Xinghuo is getting stronger and stronger. The affairs he, Lei Gang, and Lin Yongming are responsible for have all changed. It seems that only Chen Nian still maintains the same appearance as when he first met him.
——
On the contrary, he was already at the top when he appeared, so there really is nothing to change.
Thinking of this, he said with some emotion:
"We have actually done a lot of things. But it seems that the outside world doesn't understand much about these things now?"
Hearing his words, Li Xiang laughed at the side.
"Professor Chen, don't tell me that you still care about those opinions on the Internet."
"These are all premeditated public opinion offensives. In fact, there is no need to watch them."
“I have to admit that they did capture some pain points, but if someone is willing to investigate for themselves, they will find that what they present is a one-sided and carefully screened conclusion.”
"That's the problem."
Chen Guo shook her head and continued:
"We know this is a carefully selected conclusion, but most people don't know that."
"They will only believe the first thing they see and use it as the basis for their judgment."
As soon as these words were spoken, Chen Nian, who was sitting beside him, nodded repeatedly.
In fact, compared to Chen Guo, he could appreciate the huge destructive power brought about by this kind of "preconception".
Otherwise, why is there a saying that goes, "If you start a rumor, you will lose your legs if you refute it"?
The reason lies in a "sequence" issue.
This is not because the people are "unsmart", to be precise, it is because they are "not smart enough".
A very simple example: when an event begins to ferment under deliberate guidance, the views output in this event naturally have the characteristics of being proactive and occupy the "commanding heights" in the public opinion duel.
In the eyes of most people, "going first" means "having a clear conscience" and "impeccable", because they instinctively think that the person who speaks first is actively exposing their own flaws.
The person who speaks next is "quibbling" or "denying" the other party's flaws.
Who would do this if they weren't confident?
But what they don’t know is that for those organizations that specialize in this kind of work, the cost of spreading rumors is so low that they almost don’t need to be considered and calculated.
Anyway, the worst thing is to change the account and reopen it. Under the industrial operation, if you want to create an influential account, it will only take a few weeks at most.
To put it bluntly, most people think they are on the second floor, but in fact they are on the second underground floor.
This situation has not alleviated as the popularity of the Internet has increased and the amount of information has increased. On the contrary, it has intensified due to the increasing degree of information fragmentation.
In Chen Nian's memory, even in the era before his rebirth, this problem had not been truly solved.
He was suddenly curious. In today's world, what kind of response plan would a public opinion worker like Li Xiang come up with?
Li Xiang, who was on the side, immediately understood what he meant after seeing his expectant eyes.
He shook his head dumbfounded and said:
"Why, you are all waiting for me to come up with a solution?"
"What if not? Isn't this your job?"
Chen Nian asked in a matter-of-fact manner.
"Okay. But handling this kind of thing is actually not as difficult as you think."
"Actually, to put it bluntly, the only advantage the opponent has is the so-called 'first mover'."
"In terms of rationality and persuasiveness, they cannot have any advantage over formal investigative reports."
"If you really dig into it, most people can actually understand that the other party is just using a general concept to change the concept."
"So, what we have to do is very simple, that is, to make the opponent's first-mover advantage disappear."
Hearing this, Chen Nian couldn't help but frowned.
There is an obvious logical point in this passage, that is, the establishment of a first-mover advantage is inherently irreversible.
It is based on the most basic concept of "time". You can't reverse time, or erase everyone's memory with a flash of a pen like the man in black, right?
He raised his own questions to Li Xiang, who patiently explained:
“When I say eliminate the first-mover advantage, I don’t mean to eliminate it physically, but to eliminate it logically.”
"The reason why the first-mover advantage can become an advantage is based on the public opinion confrontation between the two sides based on the same agenda."
"So what if we don't discuss their agenda at all?"
Chen Nian was stunned for a moment.
At this moment, he suddenly seemed to understand many things
That’s right, the other party doesn’t actually care about the final outcome of a debate.
What they care about is how many audiences on their side can be refined during the debate.
And once the intensity of the debate on both sides begins to rise, so does the scope of what they can refine.
This is definitely not the result China wants.
But there's a problem.
"So we just ignore it completely?"
"of course not."
Li Xiang shook his head and continued:
"We routinely issue investigative reports in response, but we don't have to worry about the attention the response receives."
“Because, after the new agenda becomes more popular and the old agenda cools down, there will always be someone who will dig out our response.”
"The effect it can achieve at that time is much higher than the effect at high temperatures."
A few days later, according to the strategy of the public opinion department mentioned by Li Xiang, a program that surprised everyone began to air.
The production of this program is not very sophisticated. Like the vlog released by Wilson, it also adopts the first-person perspective shooting method and the same configuration of a duo. Even the voice of the narration is somewhat similar.
I have to say that at this point, the producers still played some tricks.
But this little cleverness is not objectionable, because the content it presents is indeed sincere.
The name of the show is simple.
"A day for Chinese people".
Similar to the "One Day in the Life of a Chinese" in Chen Nian's memory, all the characters appearing in this program are the most ordinary individuals in China.
The difference is that compared to the "ordinary" show in the previous life, this show focuses more on a more vivid and tragic reality.
In a total of 12 episodes of the program, what people saw most was the process of the so-called little people at the bottom of society struggling with life.
Here is a family of urban poor who have fallen into poverty due to illness and can only make a living by selling breakfast to their elderly mother. Their daily meal is three meals of the same alkaline water. Only the dying patient on the hospital bed is qualified to add an egg;
Here is an ordinary employee who lives among skyscrapers and commutes for more than 4 hours every day. If he wants to buy a white shirt for an interview, he has to give up his lunch for a week. The first thing he does when he gets his salary every month is , which is to send money back to parents who are already elderly and unemployed;
Here is a farmer who works on the land of the northwest with his back to the sky and the loess, and can only take two baths in his life. But on the day of his wedding, he saved the water for his livestock. She stroked the mane of the donkey and used The hoarse voice prayed for a sweet shower;
There is a young man who scavenges with his younger brother. He never leaves anything good for himself. He only quietly picks up the milk cartons that his younger brother has finished drinking, opens them, licks the remaining drops of liquid on them, and then crushes them. The box was neatly put into the snakeskin bag that I carried with me.
Compared with the so-called "suffering" shown in Wilson's video, the suffering presented in this series has completely reached the crushing level in terms of level and authenticity.
But people's first reaction after seeing this program was not anger, but horror.
In fact, many people’s understanding of suffering is shallow and one-sided.
Many people can only use cold numbers to measure suffering, and use the so-called "monthly income less than XX" to define it.
However, this program is clearly telling everyone that the suffering definitely does not end there.
It is not a series of numbers, nor is it one or two pictures. It is a thick black cloud that runs through some people's entire lives and always weighs on their heads, making it impossible for them to straighten up no matter how hard they struggle.
What else?
Can the old man who sells breakfast save enough for his son’s medical expenses to get him out of bed again?
Can the hard-working staff save enough savings to establish themselves in that magical city?
Can the farmers in the northwest open a waterway to irrigate her dry pastures like Foolish Old Man moved the mountains?
Or can the young man scavenging turn the gears of fate one day and change his destiny forever?
Most people think this is absolutely impossible.
They can't imagine what's possible in the lives of the people shown on the show.
He couldn't imagine how big an opportunity it would take to pull them out of the quagmire.
——
Until a comment appears.
"Actually, some things are not without a little chance."
"In 2004, I was just like the scavenger boy in the show. Both of my parents died, I dropped out of school and stayed at home. I could only live on the leftovers from neighbors every day."
"At that time, I felt that my life was over. I thought countless times about going to the farm machinery store in the village to buy a bottle of pesticide, drink it, and leave with my parents."
"The irony is, I can't even afford a bottle of pesticide, so I just steal it."
"But after I finished stealing, I felt that it was not possible to do this. I didn't want to be stigmatized after death, so I survived again - which is probably a kind of luck."
"I survived for 6 months. After 6 months, someone took me to school, exempted me from tuition and fees, paid for winter clothing in advance, and gave me a poverty subsidy that was enough to survive for a year. "
"I would get the same amount of money every year for the next three years."
“This money allowed me to successfully complete high school and enter a junior college—unfortunately, not a university.”
"Maybe it's because I'm not born that good at reading."
"But so what? I still make 5,000 yuan a month now."
"Just last week, I went back to my hometown and paid off the money I owed the owner of the agricultural machinery store for the bottle of pesticide six years ago."
"The bottle of pesticide that I stole back is still on the window sill. The bottle is rotten and deformed. The potion inside has long evaporated and gone to who knows where."
After this comment was posted, it even became more popular than the video itself.
Below the comments, countless netizens commented, telling their own experiences.
Of course, there are more people who have carefully checked the current status of the protagonists in the video, and then shared the surprising results.
The old man selling breakfast sent his son to BJ with special subsidies for special diseases.
Wouju's company took over a major project from the government, and he also received a large bonus.
The farmers in the northwest did not move the mountains themselves, but XCMG's XE215DA excavator dug the ditches for them.
And the boy who scavenged, just like the experience of the netizens in the comment area, has returned to the campus that should have belonged to him.
Is life really like an abyss? Once you fall in, you can never get up again?
It wasn't until this moment that people suddenly understood the purpose of this program.
Faced with the surging questioning and torture, it tore open its deepest scars with almost no expression, displaying its bloody flesh in front of the flies flying in the sky.
But just when the flies were about to eat its flesh and blood, the bleeding wounds began to heal at an alarming speed.
——
Yes, it’s not like we didn’t do anything.
We have done a lot, but the effectiveness of some things will take time to prove.
Or to put it another way.
In the past many years, those aircraft carriers, those cannons, and those missiles have guarded the bowl of most people in this country with a decisive attitude.
And now, maybe it's time to add rice to the bowl?
At this time, looking back at those tragic sufferings, an unprecedented realization suddenly appeared in the hearts of most people:
Perhaps, there are indeed many desperate situations in life. This is an indelible and undeniable truth.
But why don't you believe that even in such a desperate situation, someone can help you turn things around?
(End of chapter)
