Chapter 318: No Offense
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
In the morning, the alarm on the cell phone rang on time.
Song Bai turned over, stretched his arm to fumble with his cell phone, and turned off the alarm. Lying on his bed like a dead fish, he knew the alarm would ring again ten minutes later. Since he became a vlogger, he had turned himself into a geek who was crazy about digital products. Just like other geeks, Song Bai was a night owl who liked staying up late at night but struggled to wake up in the morning.
Before the alarm rang for the second time, his fingers hanging down on the edge of the bed had touched a furry thing.
Startled, he opened his eyes suddenly, his heart skipping a beat. The scenes in the horror movies he had watched were playing in his head, and he was afraid he was going to be as helpless as the protagonists of these horror movies.
He looked carefully at the furry thing. As it turned out, his fingers happened to be touching the back of Black Flower.
Black Flower was still sleeping, its body all cuddled up. It opened its eyes for a moment and then closed them—it was just a sleepyhead like Song Bai.
A cat could afford to stay in bed all day long, but Song Bai couldn’t. He had to go to work to support himself and pay the rent, so that he could use his limited savings to purchase new digital devices.
He shut off his alarm in advance, which was rare, and pressed the power button of the computer. He put on clothes, went to the kitchen, and drank a cup of cold water to refresh himself. When he came back to the bedroom, Black Flower was still sleeping in its cat bed.
Black Flower was much more well-behaved than Song Bai had imagined. It liked skateboarding, had no interest in the digital products all over his room, and loved staying in its cat bed.
Song Bai yawned and scratched his head, from where a lot of dandruff fell, but he ignored this.
The computer had finished starting up and had entered the desktop.
He still had some time before he had to go to work. Song Bai found a "ladder" to cross over the Great Firewall, logged into YouTube, and assessed the background analysis tool to observe the number of subscribers to his vlog channel.
"2,726 subscribers, well..." he recalled, "Increased by 74 compared with yesterday... not bad."
In fact, it was the largest increase range in one day since he began vlogging. However, the number of subscribers seemed to have some relation with the name of the videos. He found that if the names of the videos were related to recent hot topics, the increase range of that day would be larger, so this indicator alone couldn’t represent his channel’s overall popularity.
He opened his latest vlog, Over the Great Wall, which had attracted 375 views, 77 likes and 28 dislikes as of now. Proportionally, more viewers had clicked on the likes and dislikes icons than usual.
Generally, after watching one video, the audience would immediately be attracted by another video. Unless they really liked or hated that video, they wouldn’t bother to click the like or dislike icons. On average, the number of likes and dislikes among the total views was less than 1/10, while the ratio of his latest video’s had approximately reached 1/3, which was abnormally high.
Song Bai looked at the time stamp in the lower right corner of the computer screen It had only been 12 hours since his upload had finished, and the previous vlogs he issued usually attracted 200 to 300 views in 24 hours.
Controlling his excitement, he scrolled down the webpage and read the comments left by the audience.
The top comment was, "Wow! Dope! Is this real? I think it's real?! Can someone tell me if it's real or not?"
There were five replies beneath that comment.
1."Wake up!"
2."Obviously it's fake!"
3."Brains are a good thing, I hope you have one."
4. "I think it's real. The part where the kittens were dancing seemed coherent, and I don’t see any edit points in the process."
Regarding to the fourth reply, someone replied in a joking manner, "Right, when I watch sexual videos, I also thought the actors’ movements were coherent, and I couldn’t find any edit points either. I only felt upset for not being as long-lasting as those guys."
As a man, Song Bai understood what this reply meant immediately and smiled.
He scrolled down to read another comment.
The second comment was, "No offense, but the creator of this video comes from China, and the video was also filmed in China, which makes me doubt the truthfulness of this video."
There were two replies under that comment.
1. "Dude, that's what I've been talking about."
2. "No offense, but you know what expression I hate the most? It’s 'no offense'!"
Song Bai became extremely upset.
He inhaled deeply and looked out the window, trying to calm down.
To be honest, he was not surprised that the truthfulness of the video was questioned. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he wouldn't believe that a group of kittens could dance together to the drum beats either.
He could handle normal questioning and doubts! In fact, almost every popular video on YouTube had been questioned about its truthfulness. People were doubtful of things they didn't see in person. That’s fine. It happens.
However, he was furious that whoever wrote that comment doubted his video just because he came from China.
It was not the first time he had run into such a situation, and he thought he had become immune to such hostility. But his upset and frustration right now clearly suggested that he still couldn’t remain calm when being treated like this.
Obviously, those 28 dislikes were all from people doubting the authenticity of his video.
This rude and unreasonable comment had also provoked others. The second respondent couldn’t stand such a presumptuous tone and used the "no offense" format to reply sarcastically.
Song Bai had also heard that a lot of high school students in the US really hated the sentence of "No offense, but...". Because whatever came after "but" was clearly something offensive. Some people thought they were being polite by adding "no offense", but on the contrary, it was just really rude and impolite.
Black Flower opened its eyes and crouched to yawn widely. It jumped off its bed, trotted to leave the bedroom, and went directly to the cat litter box in the bathroom. Song Bai had been worried about how he was going to teach Black Flower to use the cat litter box. It turned out that he didn't need to worry at all, Black Flower had been accustomed to a cat litter box and cat litter similar to that used in the pet shop, thus saving him a lot of time and energy to train it.
Moments later, through diverting his attention, Song Bai’s feelings had been adjusted, and he focused on the comments.
The third comment was, "Who was also attracted by the kitten on the cover?"
1. "I was. That black kitten is so adorable. Touching the camera lens is so cute."
2. "Me too! It's so cute that my heart melted! By the way, have you guys noticed that this black kitten also appeared in the video? It was the third kitten in the second row. I've watched the whole video several times. I was attracted by it the first time I watched the video, and my eyes were still fixated on this black kitten when I watched the second and third time."
After using the cat litter box, Black Flower ran up to him, rubbed the trouser leg of his pants, and uttered "meow meow" sounds. It raised its head to look at him, as if it was asking for breakfast.
Song Bai bent down and touched its face with his finger, "Black Flower, you've already got fans abroad."
Black Flower didn't understand what he said. It tilted its head and stared at him discontentedly, as if saying, "What is ‘fans’? Is it something I can eat?"
"Okay, okay, I will prepare breakfast for you right away," he smiled.
Song Bai looked at the time again. Usually he could prepare breakfast for himself later, but today he needed to prepare food for Black Flower for the whole day, so he had to turn off the computer earlier than usual. Today was the first day he was officially raising a cat. The first step was always the hardest, and he didn’t want to be pressed for time.
He made a quick breakfast by making fried rice from leftovers, adding an egg and sausage. When he was having breakfast, Black Flower was rubbing his trouser leg asking for food. He looked at the instructions of the automatic feeder, put cat food into it, poured fresh, cold water into the water basin, and said goodbye to Black Flower, asking it to take care of the apartment and stay out of trouble. He changed into nicer clothes and left the apartment.
He was still feeling down when he arrived at the company.