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Regarding recent events and my views on the so-called "May 5th Disconnection Festival," as promised, here's a recap. **************

——On the "Movement" That Happened Around Us

2020 is truly a magical year.

Against the backdrop of the trade war, from the spread of COVID-19 within China to its global pandemic and now the chaos in the United States, both domestic and global situations seem to be changing dramatically on a weekly basis.

Faced with such events, I once told my family that I was fortunate to have chosen the online literature industry. We bury ourselves at home writing books, which is similar to being in isolation, so the epidemic and the changes in the external situation seemed to benefit us. Who knew that no one escapes fate? On April 27th, Yuewen Group changed leadership, and a sudden contract dispute erupted.

Throughout May, this turmoil affected every writer at Yuewen, and many readers were also filled with righteous indignation and participated. Throughout this process, there were things I agreed with and things I disagreed with. I promised to provide a recap once the situation had reached a certain stage. Today, June 3rd, the new contract from Qidian is out, so this recap can begin.

Of course, I must state in advance that this entire article is still based on my personal perspective. I am merely sincerely stating what I have encountered, my thoughts, and my ideas for my readers' reference. You can draw your own conclusions.

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Let's start from the beginning. On April 27th, Qidian changed leadership, with Cheng Wu taking over, and rumors of Qidian possibly implementing a free model exploded. This affected the rights and interests of all authors, and various concerns quickly swelled in author groups, followed by news that Qidian was changing its contract to pave the way for a free model, causing widespread anxiety.

At the time, our primary concern was whether free measures would be implemented abruptly. Therefore, I kept asking in groups whether changing the contract was Cheng Wu's first move. As I said in my Weibo post on May 2nd, if it were his first move, we basically wouldn't need to say anything; we could only vote with our feet.

However, after several days of inquiries, it was said that although Cheng Wu had been nominally involved with Yuewen in the past, he hadn't actually been in charge. This change in Yuewen's personnel was very sudden. Later, I also heard that Cheng Wu was still in quarantine in Beijing when he took over Yuewen. The reason the May 6th symposium was held in Beijing was because he hadn't actually stepped into Yuewen in Shanghai after becoming the CEO—so, perhaps there was a chance that he wouldn't abruptly push through the contract.

During this process, external public opinion rapidly expanded, shifting its focus from the issue of free access to the contract itself. The contract was terrible; everyone who saw it would be enraged. Of course, we hadn't initially had access to the contract. Authors were primarily concerned with the issue of free access. After learning that an abrupt implementation of free access was unlikely, I breathed a sigh of relief.

However, the details of the contract became intertwined with the resentment over the free access issue, and the situation escalated. We also began to learn about some of the contract's details. We have a group of about thirty Platinum authors. On May 2nd, we discussed, "Are there really such harsh conditions in it?" I said, "If these are the details of the conditions, we have to express our opposition." The others agreed. Yao Ye came out and said, "You write an article, and I'll post it through the Hunan Internet Association." I said I couldn't write official documents; I could only write my own attitude. At the time, Wu Zei reminded me, "Don't rush to write it. Let's find the real contract first and read it before we say anything."

Then we found the contract.

(Many people deliberately stirred up conflict, saying that Platinum authors have different contracts than ordinary people. But in fact, at the time, two Platinum authors in the group had already signed the new contract and regretted it like grandsons.)

We read the contract, picked out the most problematic points, and then I wrote my Weibo post on May 2nd.

Personally, I was being rather cunning. On the one hand, I wanted to oppose the contract. On the other hand, the situation within Yuewen was also very tense. After learning that the contract wasn't Cheng Wu's intention, I hoped to give them a way out, hoping that Yuewen would seize the opportunity and let the new CEO Cheng Wu act as a "Bao Zheng" to revise the contract, and everyone would be happy. Moreover, I believed that this form of expression would encourage the Platinum and Great God authors still under contract with Yuewen to express their positions: We oppose the contract and want it to be revised.

Of course, Wu Zei was more frank. At the time, he directly pointed out the problems in the contract and cursed them. Among Qidian Platinum authors, probably no one else could curse so frankly while still under contract.

That was our consideration at the time. Later, an editor from Qidian came over and said they had been anxious for several days and didn't know how to respond to public opinion. Next, Hama contacted Cheng Wu and forwarded our Weibo posts to him. He had actually given a lot of advice to Cheng Wu in secret. Many people didn't know about these things. He later jokingly called himself the "South Sea Sacred Clam," which originated from this.

On the evening of May 2nd, Yuewen made a decision and took this step, promising to hold a symposium and make revisions, while also clarifying that the contract wasn't their fault. We were somewhat relieved. However, the public outcry over the May 5th Disconnection Festival quickly escalated, and resistance to the symposium intensified.

On May 3rd, Hu Shuo contacted me and invited me to the symposium in Beijing. I immediately refused because my ability to express myself in person is actually very weak. I can write tens of thousands of words after organizing my thoughts, but if I have to express myself on the spot, I usually break out in a sweat because my brain is working too hard. After refusing, on May 4th, the criticism of the symposium outside was out of control, calling people traitors and saying they would be nailed to the pillar of shame. I went to Hu Shuo again and said I would go to Shanghai like Wu Zei. He would be the one to express our views, and I would just make up the numbers. Of course, the Shanghai symposium has not been held to this day. There are some things in between that we will talk about later in the article.

Our disagreement with many people lies in the events of May 5th. Many people don't understand why we resisted the so-called May 5th Disconnection Festival. First, let's talk about some minor considerations. Many people believe this was a just and spontaneous "mass movement," but in fact, the speed at which this public opinion swelled was unusual. An experienced editor in the industry said that the speed of this public opinion swell was the fastest he had seen since the Baidu Wei Zexi incident. The people behind it were very skilled. And since a symposium was promised on May 2nd to be held on May 6th, the public opinion and details of the May 5th Disconnection were quickly finalized. Here, I basically tend to believe that other companies had already entered the game, even if they hadn't initially, they should have arrived in May.

Of course, whether or not other companies were involved, let's put that aside. As I said, this is a minor consideration. Let's put these aside and talk about what kind of event the May 5th Disconnection Festival actually was.

As everyone knows, the country has been paying a lot of attention to online literature in recent years. Although the theoretical development has been relatively slow, resulting in the country not knowing how to properly use its power, the level of importance the higher-ups place on online literature is increasing every year in the literary circle. This situation once confused traditional literature. They believe that they are literature, so why is the government allocating so much money to online literature but not providing much support to traditional literature?

To put it bluntly, the country's support is based on the influence of online literature. Why invest money in literature that has no influence and cannot reach readers? Let's set aside literature and treat it as media and communication studies. The whole logic becomes clear at a glance.

Online literature can basically be regarded as a kind of media because we are constantly reaching a huge readership. Of course, we don't casually output our views. We are a service industry, but we have the potential of media. If one day we really want to express a position, it will quickly sink into our readership.

Especially a crude and simple position like "Resist Yuewen."

On May 5th, many Platinum authors, Great Gods, and even authors who don't usually update came out and updated. Some people cursed them as traitors, thinking they were useless. Then, think about it for a moment, what would have happened if everyone had really disconnected that day?

If all the authors had directly come out and expressed their "resistance to Yuewen" on that day, what do you think May 6th would have looked like? Do you really think this was a demonstration?

No, starting on May 6th, "Resist Yuewen" would have become an unstoppable huge trend in the reader circle. "To support the author, I won't read books on Qidian anymore." "Author, please jump ship quickly. Wherever you jump, I'll go."

Where does Qidian's true vitality lie? It lies in its huge group of paying, legitimate readers. And the May 5th Disconnection Festival was a step to try to directly sink the author's anger towards Qidian into all the readers. Some people say it was very positive and had a great effect. That's right, its power and effect were far greater than everyone imagined. Even at this scale, Qidian's reader base and activity have probably decreased by 20%. If all the top authors led the way, this wouldn't be a sit-in; it would be a nuclear bomb.

This is what I have always said: there is a factory that is very domineering, the workers are rioting, and the factory decides to talk to the workers, and a group of righteous people rush in and say, "Capitalists can't be trusted." "You have to be more resolute and destroy more things" in the story of smashing the factory building. Among these factory smashers, there will also be members of the neighboring security department.

On May 2nd, they already promised to talk, and the time to talk was May 6th, but the Disconnection Festival was scheduled for May 5th just because they directly assumed that "capital will not compromise," so they rushed in to let all the authors die. Who are these people? Very few people rely on Qidian for a living. Those who are righteously indignant to this extent are either authors from other sites, or failures who can't make a living on Qidian anyway, or enthusiastic people standing outside.

On May 4th, I told this reasoning in several groups with hundreds of authors. I won't disconnect on May 5th. I will definitely update. If you are counting on not being on Qidian anymore, then you disconnect. If the top authors disconnect in this wave, it won't be a Disconnection Festival; it will be a Jump Ship Festival.

On May 5th, the administrator in the group originally wanted to respond, but I told them these things in the alliance leader group with more administrators. I will definitely update, but I will not use this reasoning to publicly resist the Disconnection Festival because I also don't trust Cheng Wu. Although scheduling the disconnection on May 5th has a hundred harms and one benefit, since a hundred harms cannot be prevented, I won't try to eliminate that one benefit.

On that day, even some of my readers couldn't understand why I was updating. Some may have stopped reading my book. If I had told them these things at the time, many of them would have understood. But then I thought, people will encounter tigers in the world. Since we have encountered such a storm, we will inevitably lose some things. Let's just treat it as battle damage.

After May 5th, I only made some allusions. Although I opposed May 5th, I have never talked about or deconstructed the problems in it head-on. The reason is to maintain the pressure on Cheng Wu. If some people want to make trouble, even make blind trouble, then let them make trouble. As long as they keep making trouble, other companies will continue to have the possibility of instigating. By maintaining this possibility, Cheng Wu will not take it lightly.

Looking back, if the disconnection was scheduled for May 15th, that would have been a good thing. I would have directly come out and supported it with both hands.

But scheduling it on May 5th is the story of a bunch of dog-motherfucking promoters instigating a group of enthusiastic people. It smashed 20% of the factory building in the context of the factory already agreeing to talk. Of course, this group of factory smashers will also say that Cheng Wu's concessions today are all due to their efforts. In the midst of this, it is really difficult to say whose fault it is.

May 5th is the biggest doubt in many people's minds. They don't understand why the authors updated on that day. For onlookers, the generous and selfless struggle will make them excited, but what about the authors on Qidian's side? What is the background?

There are tens of thousands of authors who rely on it for food. They are not all great authors with monthly incomes of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. Some of them eat full attendance, and some rely on subscriptions to support their families. Although it may seem that they have no promise, these salaries from Yuewen are indeed their indispensable living expenses every month. Yuewen is very domineering today, and Yuewen was also very domineering in the past, but overall, Yuewen is the one with the best score among all the websites.

Although this best score may only be 60 points.

Emotions erupted, and the author hopes to strive for 65 points on the basis of this 60 points. Maybe they also have thoughts in private, if they can't strive for it, continuing at 60 is also good, anyway, it's better than other websites, right? And the capitalists want to make the 60-point Qidian into a 55-point one so that they can get more benefits. The two sides are playing this game. At this time, a group of enthusiastic people came. At first, they also wanted to strive for 65 points for the authors, but then their desire for generous and selfless action overwhelmed their rationality. They greatly quoted past revolutionary declarations. They recognized the judgment that "capitalists will never compromise" before the game even began. They decentralized, and they set no stop-loss points. In the midst of this, there may have been instigation from other companies. They quickly reduced the psychological expectations of the struggle to zero points: if Yuewen doesn't retreat, let's all die together!

If we coldly view all of this—analyzing it as a simple mass movement—before May 5th, the interests and demands of all the resisters were consistent. But by May 5th, the radicals who were instigated and mostly had no vested interests began to expand the situation without any psychological burden, which led to the division of the two protesting groups.

The radicals took the slogans from past revolutionary periods and shouted them loudly today, using the judgments of life and death from the revolutionary period as today's judgments. They recognized that capitalists would never compromise, and recognized that they had to use the momentum of lifting the roof to fight for the right to open a window. They defined the exploiters as "masters" and the authors as "slaves"... But looking back, has it really reached this point today? If it really reaches this point, what we need is a revolution.

And an essence of the primary stage of socialism is that we will have long-term games with capital and will also coexist with it for a long time.

During these days, when we asked those who blindly memorized Lu Xun's quotations, "What kind of work do you do? Do you think you have been exploited?" None of them gave a positive answer. Why? Our country is using the benefits of capital, and we have also suffered many of its harms. We hope to be able to restrain some of its harms in the long-term game. This situation is absolutely different from the methodology adopted during the revolutionary period.

What kind of work do you do?

Have you been exploited?

In fact, everyone more or less endures it.

But today our country is a country of seventy years, and the development of capital has only been for thirty years. We have not yet reached the point where it is difficult to turn back, where neither side can compromise. We endure a certain degree of exploitation, and we are also living our own lives. Our lives are even thriving. Okay, today a problem in your company is picked out, and you will also participate in the resistance. At this time, I take revolutionary quotations to help you, tell you that your company will never compromise, and set a fire for you. What do you think? You dare not set a fire. I say you are a slave. What do you think?

Even during the revolutionary period, people lowered their psychological expectations to zero only after negotiating with capital or the government several times and failing.

Resisting for five or ten days, directly reducing psychological expectations to zero, and those who have no vested interests and don't mind watching the excitement, are what are historically known as the "lumpen proletariat."

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The Beijing symposium was held on May 6th. The process of the symposium actually had problems. Zhou Zi and Hama both cursed me.

In the subsequent May, Qidian's technology and operations also had two problems. Because the situation was tense, everyone's nerves were very strained. So, throughout the process, many authors cursed at the editors. I even said to the editor that if I didn't disconnect on May 5th, I could disconnect in June. I even deliberately incited the authors' emotions. Hu Shuo asked me to chat, and I said that if Qidian doesn't do well this time, the authors will be furious, there will be a collapse. This situation is better the more tense it is, lest Cheng Wu not take it seriously.

In the midst of this, the people who actually contributed the most were the original old editors of Yuewen: Hu Shuo, 314, An Yi, Xue Ye, Ding Dong... They were stuck in the middle, on the one hand, they had to come out to calm the situation when the authors were cursing, and on the other hand, they had to convey the demands to Cheng Wu.

Hama was also a person stuck in the middle. Of course, he didn't care about these things. At the beginning of May, he called and jokingly called himself the "South Sea Sacred Clam." If he was referring to playing both sides, he only needed to instigate more in the direction of populism to be liked by many people. But in fact, he hates idiots, so later when he saw those degenerated guys, he cursed them.

Today is June 3rd, and the new contract is out. Some of the very bad traps in it have been removed. Of course, there will still be dissatisfaction. For example, what if I don't give you the copyright, what if you don't give me a recommendation? In the midst of this, what we need to look forward to is other companies. If there are other companies that are powerful enough to give a slightly better contract, then Qidian will of course have to follow up. And currently, in the entire online literature circle, Zongheng's contract is good, but due to some of its early operations, their reader pool is not deep enough, which is its weakness. You see, I am even willing to advertise it here. Competition is beneficial to all authors.

Although Qidian's contract has been somewhat restrained today, in the days to come, in the general trend, they will of course slowly tighten it again. This kind of game will always exist. Not only in the online literature circle, but even in our lives, in our readers' careers, it will run through everything. If one day you want to resist, how should you play it?

Just as I have said time and time again, there is Yuewen on one side, other companies on one side, authors on one side, and the instigated enthusiastic people on the other side. In this complex game, how is it possible for the author to get a little benefit? This question will run through our lives.

One thing is certain.

No extreme attitude can be correct from beginning to end.

From April 27th to May 5th, the people who stood up to call for and oppose were correct. There may have also been a push from other companies behind this. Without such a game, everything that followed would have been impossible. But by May 5th, many people became enthusiastic people who were instigated by those with ulterior motives, and then gradually developed. They linked their initial position to face. Later, it simply became a battle for face. They would be righteously indignant because so-and-so author did not stand on their side. After being righteously indignant, they wanted to smash everyone's interests. The atmosphere on the Longkong forum these days is like this. In fact, this is the inevitable evolution of all so-called "decentralized" movements. In the end, only the most extreme people will remain in the center of this movement.

If you can't understand these, let's discuss it in terms of purpose. At first, everyone was talking about getting back the benefits for the authors. In a mere month, the generous and passionate ones completely no longer cared about the authors' interests. Their public opinion trend turned into let's all die together, even wishing Yuewen dead and the authors dead. This is because the things behind it are linked to their faces.

Did what they did change? No, they have been using the same method to "resist" from beginning to end.

This is the problem of the "butt theory."

They very much hope that they will always be righteous, but if you do not have the ability to distinguish between the various stages of things, then everything you do to resist will have the best result of only "everyone dying together." Do you want such people to fight for your interests?

This is the whole process of the Yuewen incident that I have seen. Throughout the whole process, you will say that my position is wavering. I do not trust capitalists, and I also do not trust the blind masses. Sometimes I oppose Yuewen, and sometimes I cool down the Yuewen incident. I know that the editor's position is basically the same as the author's position, but I also incite the authors in the author group to put pressure on the editors... If there is a reason for all this behavior, I hope that in this complex game, the possibility of the author getting benefits can eventually be slightly greater. I am not a key person in this matter, but I can only exert so much effort.

Thanks to all the friends who rationally resisted for the benefit of the authors before May 5th and after May 5th, thanks to the old editors who were originally at Qidian, thanks to Hama, Zhou Zi, Wu Zei... and also thanks to Cheng Wu. He finally gave in and gave everyone a way out.

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ps: Capitalists are not good people. At the May 6th symposium, although Hama and Zhou Zi made many specific requests, some problems actually arose, which caused the symposium to be mostly symbolic. Since there is a good result now, I will not talk about the specific details anymore. Of course, there are some problems.

ps2: Throughout the month of May, in order to deal with the impact after the Disconnection Festival, Qidian's technology and operations had two problems, which felt a bit like grasping at straws. This reminds me of the times when I ate with Bao Jianfeng and Yi Zhe. Even when they were traveling and socializing outside, they would take their phones and read Qidian's online novels in the gaps between anything. Even after having billions of dollars, they still did this. This is the biggest advantage of the original five at Qidian in the online literature circle.

ps3: I hope everyone can truly gain some useful insights from it. I wrote a book, in which there is "the scholar's ruler, the warrior's knife." The ruler always makes people entangled, while the knife makes people feel happy, but in our lives, we only need to use that knife in the most extreme cases, and in 99% of the scope, we need to use the ruler. This ruler is closely related to dialectical materialism.

That's all I have to say.

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