Before he could even retort to the other woman, another streamer, who was also live at Yamada Residence, spoke up.
"I take it you’re a food vlogger too, right?"
"I started out as a small streamer myself, so I know exactly how you young guys think."
"You just start an account and you’re already desperate for that one viral hit to get famous overnight. So you look for hot topics to glom onto and stir up trouble."
"You probably saw that Red Bird has been doing a big promotional push lately and has a lot of buzz, so you came here to deliberately cause a scene and generate some hype for yourself, didn’t you?"
"But with this kind of self-media work, you have to take it one step at a time. You need a solid foundation."
"These kinds of underhanded tricks won’t get you far. Take some advice from your big sis: there are people in this world you can’t afford to offend."
"You should leave now, before the restaurant decides to press the issue."
In fact, Li Xiao had already recognized the streamer standing before him.
He’d previously looked up information on local Yangcheng food streamers when he was planning a countermove against Yun Ji Wonton Noodles.
If he remembered correctly, she was a food streamer with over 900,000 followers.
While over 900,000 followers might not be a huge number in other niches, it was quite impressive for the food vlogging category.
However, he hadn’t chosen to work with her back then because he felt her video stats were clearly faked and inflated, and her asking price was too high.
He never expected to run into her today, let alone be lectured by her in that shameless, self-proclaimed ’veteran’ tone.
He tilted his head and glanced at her phone.
"Seeing you talking to your phone earlier... you must be streaming live too, right?"
"I wonder, for a supposed ’industry veteran’ like yourself, how many people are in your stream right now?"
Hearing Li Xiao’s question, He Xiaoru felt a surge of pride.
If this whole thing hadn’t happened so suddenly, she might have even thought Li Xiao was a plant hired by her own assistant.
On any other normal stream, she would probably be feeling a little insecure right now.
She was well aware that her account’s numbers were heavily inflated.
But because she had signed a sales contract with Red Bird beforehand, there were specific data requirements for her streams and videos.
So, she’d had her team buy a significant amount of traffic. Her stream, which usually only had fifty or sixty viewers, now had over 900.
A stream with over 900 viewers might not sound like much, but that was enough to crush 99% of other streamers.
She smugly flipped her phone around.
She showed the screen to Li Xiao.
"Hey, kiddo, can you see this clearly?"
"Your big sis has over 900 people in her stream right now."
"Don’t worry, I didn’t have the camera on you, so you weren’t on screen."
"But if you keep making a scene, you might just end up on camera in front of almost a thousand people. After that, you probably won’t be able to continue streaming."
"I can see it’s not easy for you to build an account. Just go. And don’t pull these kinds of shady stunts again."
When Li Xiao heard her stream didn’t even have a thousand viewers, he let out a derisive snort.
His three dorm mates also burst out laughing at the girl in the schoolgirl uniform.
Before Li Xiao could even grab his phone, Huang Zhiyuan at his side eagerly picked up the phone that was streaming live.
Fearing she wouldn’t be able to see the viewer count, he deliberately held the phone right up to her face.
"Hey, sis, want to take a look? See how many people are in our stream right now?"
The girl in the schoolgirl uniform was startled by Huang Zhiyuan suddenly rushing up to her, at first wondering what he was about to do.
But she relaxed after hearing his words. With a disdainful sneer, she glanced up at the phone screen to see just how many viewers this guy’s stream had.
But in the next moment, the smile on her face froze completely.
Ones...
Tens...
Hundreds...
Thousands...
Ten thousands...
"11,489!!! How is that possible?"
"How can your stream have over 11,000 people?"
Her heavily-eyelined eyes widened in an instant, fixated on the viewer count in the upper-right corner of the stream.
’Something’s wrong!’
’He’s clearly a local Yangcheng streamer, but there are only a handful of big names in this circle.’
’She’d been a streamer for years, but she’d never heard of this guy’s name before.’
’Then, a possibility occurred to her: he must have bought traffic, just like she did.’
But she quickly dismissed that thought.
As a streamer who frequently botted her stats and bought traffic, she could tell at a glance that these numbers looked real.
You could certainly buy viewers, but that kind of data costs money.
Especially on a major, legitimate platform like this one, you usually have to go through third-party channels and buy them from botting studios.
To bot one ’realistic’ viewer, it costs at least 1.5 to 2 yuan.
That meant botting over 10,000 viewers would cost more than 15,000 yuan.
That was a steep price, considering most paid promotions only fetch between 5,000 and 10,000 yuan.
That’s why most people, even when they did buy traffic, wouldn’t overdo it.
After all, besides buying viewers, you also had to purchase a corresponding number of bullet comments and a certain amount of virtual gifts.
If a stream had over 10,000 concurrent viewers but only a few people were chatting and basically no one was sending gifts, anyone who wasn’t an idiot could tell something was fishy.
However, the stream in front of her didn’t seem to fit the profile of a botted channel.
The number of bullet comments was simply staggering; she couldn’t even read them before they scrolled past.
And all sorts of small virtual gifts were popping up nonstop.
She was no fool; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to build a million-follower account in just two years.
It hit her all at once. She had really picked a fight with the wrong person.
Just as she stood there, at a complete loss for what to do...
Li Xiao walked over and took back his phone.
"Alright, alright, that’s enough. Look, you’ve scared the poor girl’s face pale."
Realizing she was likely facing a heavyweight, the girl’s attitude did an immediate 180-degree turn.
A fawning smile instantly appeared on her face.
"I’m so sorry, sir. I had no idea you were such a big shot. My deepest apologies for before, it was all my fault."
"Please let me apologize to you, sir."
With that, the girl grabbed the nearby flask of sake and, tilting her head back, chugged the entire thing.
Perhaps because she drank too quickly, or perhaps because she wasn’t much of a drinker, she immediately started choking and coughing violently after downing the flask.
Although Li Xiao wasn’t a fan of food streamers who took money to shill for any business without discretion, he also knew that’s just how the world worked.
Her attitude earlier had been arrogant, but she was also very quick to admit her mistake.
She was the type who could be bold but also knew when to yield.
She had already punished herself with a whole flask of sake. If he, a grown man, kept pressing the issue, it would be beneath him.