Chapter 2689: Hollywood Rhapsody (12)

About two months later one morning, after attending the documentary premiere the night before, Schiller was sound asleep in bed. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, an internet storm was brewing on a well-known social media platform during the nighttime.

"I know you've all seen the latest Tony Stark wedding documentary, yes, I've watched it too," said a man with a small mustache adorned with a full set of earrings and lip piercings, covering his mouth and pointing upwards at the bottom of the screen, "This one, the one that premiered last night."

"Oh, I know what you're gonna say, Captain America was so hot, that damn Iron Man was still as annoying as ever, and that handsome young researcher, plus the guy who married young—uh, who was it? Who cares, that's not my point."

"Friends... You little bitches sitting in front of the screen watching this video!! Look at this!!!"

The man began shrieking with his hand over his mouth, saying, "This doctor, oh, my God!! Beep——"

After being muted and the screen glitching, the man reappeared, seemingly calmer. He extended the thumb and index finger of one hand, gesturing and saying, "I know, I know, everyone calm down. I know people always fall easily for professions like doctors and firefighters, because apart from their good looks, their focused work demeanor is very charming, but that's not what I'm talking about either."

Taking a deep breath, the man said, "All I can say is that he's the biggest highlight of this damn boring documentary. I'm stuck watching that trashy channel's updates every day, just to see this doctor... Ah, sorry, I don't mean I want to see him in trouble, but it's just really funny."

"I'm so tired of superheroes!", a typical blonde woman in the video tucked the strands of hair at her forehead, rolling her eyes dramatically and blowing her hair out of her face, "Please, who wants to see superheroes playing New York Socialites on screen? Tony Stark should change his name to Tony Kardashian; the stuff he stirs up is utterly boring!"

"But I still watched it." The woman suddenly started laughing as if she found herself amusing. Taking a deep breath and sniffling, her face shrank on the screen, and the central part showed a still of Schiller.

"That's right, I'm watching just to see how this ordinary doctor is getting into big trouble among the superheroes, and it's really interesting, like navigating among your mentally ill colleagues, you're angry, complaining, helpless, but still diligently doing your job, both unlucky and funny."

"Have you guys seen that super hot documentary recently?" a chubby Black woman with dirty dreadlocks asked the screen, "Well, the best part about this documentary is it shows that superheroes are nothing special, they're just as annoying and troublesome as the nit-picks around us, always looking to start trouble every day."

"About how I discovered this, of course, I have to thank Dr. Rodriguez, because he's the only normal person among these demons and ghosts!!!" the Black woman rapped out at a breakneck pace, "Colleagues squabbling over trivial matters, acting like they're all bored out of their minds, one eyeing the other, this one wanting to punch that one, watching it made me so angry because it reminded me of at least eighty goddamn jerks by name!! That includes that damn effeminate Paul!!"

Flipping her lips, the Black woman continued, "Dr. Rodriguez is like a benchmark, showing us what the standard of normalcy is, come on, what did he do wrong? He just wanted to take a vacation. Even if Stark paid him a lot, so what? Doesn't my boss pay my salary? Besides that, we should be compensated for emotional distress!"

More and more faces appeared on the screen, indicative of a video format continuously circulating on personal media in the West, usually referred to as 'reaction'. Translated into Chinese, it would roughly equate to 'Review'.

But a more accurate description is, "I watched something new today and I have something to say about it, so I'll present both this thing and my own opinions on the same screen for everyone to see."

Reality show reviews are not uncommon, especially those rich with complex relationships and drama, as they often spawn plenty of bloggers posting review videos to share their views on someone or something in the video.

Although media copyrights are strictly enforced in many western countries, they are less stringent in this area since it helps promote these shows. TV stations usually don't care to trouble personal media creators.

2018 was a significant year because the global new media industry was about to welcome its perpetual god—yes, TikTok was coming!

Thanks to Schiller's push, Earth's development was rapid, which is why this app actually went international back in 2016, but it didn't catch on right away.

By 2017, it started to gain a little traction, with some famous individual media bloggers moving over, but mainly to analyze the relationship between China and the US, briefly turning it into a specialized political analysis app.

But as the saying goes, gold always shines, and the powerful algorithm and short video format are particularly well-suited for quick and engaging entertainment topics. The program "Tony Stark's Romantic Wedding Journey" ignited a wildfire upon its release.

In recent times, there hadn't been many appealing reality shows, and the topics of socialites around the world had been discussed to death. Documentaries about superheroes tended to have a more serious tone, without much entertaining content, making them somewhat cumbersome and difficult to spread.

However, now under the backdrop of Stark's selfless sacrifice, his wedding documentary achieved unprecedented success. It was a global sensation, with its viewership numbers reaching new heights and even breaking records for similar documentaries on platforms like YouTube.

The reason for this wasn't particularly special, no matter how you look at it, humans love drama. Ordinary people's arguments can't stimulate the audience to that extent, mainly because they revolve around the same few topics: who's wealthier, who has higher status, who loves which man or woman, and whose family is more unfortunate than others.

Even if the topics switch between countless regions and themes around the world, it's all more or less the same; audiences eventually get tired of the repetition.

But superheroes are different, aside from the typical topics ordinary people discuss, they have much more to talk about, starting with their abilities.

These are things ordinary people don't have, and also the freshest to them. For example, Tony Stark insisted on surfing with this group, and Peter said he was the only one among them without superpowers.

This led people to suspect that Peter actually had superpowers because if he didn't, he wouldn't say Tony was the only one, which sparked a lot of speculation about the genius researcher. Some people even suspected he possessed super intelligence.

And seeing Iron Man at a disadvantage was really interesting. If Tony appeared in other reality shows, he would undoubtedly be the superstar everyone paid attention to, but amidst a group of superheroes, he seemed like a poor little thing desperate for attention but lacking the capability to seize it.

Besides being amusing to ordinary people, it also made them realize there's a whole new set of rules within superhero society, completely different from the rules of the society they live in. Instead of judging things purely by materialistic standards, the inherent gaps between individuals were widened, which brought a wealth of topics to discuss.

From this perspective, many people began to analyze the past conflicts between Iron Man and Captain America, and some even dug up the old stories of the Superhero Registration Act.

Of course, the act never made it past the Congress and was not disclosed to the public, but the Federal Government was leaky as a sieve, so it was not expected to be completely unheard by everyone.

Then, there's the ever-topical mutant issue. People saw both the similarities and differences between mutants and superheroes. They could get along quite well and even join forces, like Wanda and the youth of the New Warriors Team, but the baggage they carried from their past made it difficult for some of them to get along with certain superheroes, and there were various conflicts among them as well.

The sisterly relationship between Scarlet Witch and Polaris was a hot topic—both were exceedingly beautiful and naturally drew the eye, being sisters with a father like that, and one of them had just become a mother. Anything about them could spark all sorts of discussions about family, mutants, social issues, and more.

Appreciating attractiveness was an indispensable part of the documentary. To put it plainly, these superheroes were good-looking, each with a unique charm, and people loved to watch these handsome men and beautiful women interact and judge their various strengths and weaknesses.

All sorts of fans—personal fans, shipping fans, and those just there for the fun—stirred up a frenzy on the TikTok platform, spiking the fervor to high levels.

But even with such high levels of interest in these topics, they couldn't beat the name that soared to the top of the trending searches overnight—Schiller Rodriguez.

Just like Schiller had previously asked himself, audiences around the world were curious about the same thing—how did such an ordinary psychologist end up among these demons and ghosts?

And curiosity has always been the primary driving force for humans to explore the world.