From Skid Row to Superstardom: An Idol System Novel-Chapter 92: Traffic Song Boy (4)

"NOVA, cough, what the heck is going on? How did the missions get completed?" Ari asked in a raspy voice as he sat back on the bed while waiting for his phone to charge and turn back on.

[I wonder.]

[Congratulations.]

[You’re popular Queen Bee. The internet is abuzz all because of you.]

[Bzzzzzzzz]

Ari: ಠ_ಠ

"What did I do to deserve that? I hope it wasn’t the bullying thing at school that spread. That would be embarrassing."

[Do I look like a search engine on the internet?]

[My job is to assign missions to you, so instead of asking me silly questions, why don’t you show some initiative and search for the answers yourself?]

"And maybe you can try giving me missions without being sassy." Ari shot back while blowing his nose.

[Then maybe you can complete an entire week on an idol show without getting sick.]

[Remember how you thought it was easy to sing and dance? That you didn’t need training because you’re so big and tough.]

[Now look at you, sore throat, can’t breathe through your nose, and to top it off, you sound like a frog.]

[Pathetic.]

At NOVA’s harsh words that were unfortunately true, Ari swatted the blue screen in front of his eyes away in irritation, before picking up his phone, which was finally on.

On it were several texts from Jamie.

Jamie: Did you take medicine?

Jamie: Are you alive?

Jamie: Your royal sea-ness?

Jamie: Should I bring cough drops?

Jamie: Congratpulations!!!!

Jamie: Congratulations!!!!

Jamie: The water performance was genius!!!

Jamie: It looks so good!

Jamie: I’m jealous!

Jamie: We should celebrate at the restaurant!!

Jamie: Are you alive??

Jamie: Should I call an ambulance?

Jamie: My pops is mad at me. Please answer

Jamie: Captain!!!!!

Seeing the increasingly worried tone in the messages and several missed calls, Ari quickly messaged Jamie back.

Ari: I’m fine.

Ari: Thanks?

Ari: Go hide in the gym or something. Call you in a bit.

Guessing that the congratulations had something to do with the performance videos, Ari quickly turned the computer on before navigating to the Pop Star Academy WeTube Channel, which had gained thousands of followers.

The very first video at the top of the channel was a video with a thumbnail of Benjamin, Jamie, and Rex jumping in the air while flames flared on either side of them.

The video had amassed over 700k views and was trending toward 1 million views, which was an inconceivable number to Ari, considering it had only been about 24 hours since it’s release.

Curious about what Jamie’s team performance looked like, Ari quickly clicked on it and had to whistle at the end of the video.

That...was a pretty amazing performance.

Everything from the vocals to the rap to the dance portion was amazing, and Ari couldn’t believe that Jamie’s team had the same amount of time to prepare the song as his team did.

Remembering the trauma of dragging his teammates along, Ari broke out into a coughing fit before popping a cough drop into his mouth.

Once he was calm, he quickly browsed through the comments, noting how people praised the team’s good looks and cohesiveness.

They also praised the outfits and the extras included in the performance.

A closer look at the comments showed that people actually recognized the contestants, not just because of the simple profiles that the producers had posted on the official pop star academy website.

Benjamin had apparently auditioned for several shows, such as Britain’s Best Talent, Euro Idol, Rap Game, and even X-Citing Factor, as a solo rapper, so he had quite a solid social media presence and a small, dedicated fan base.

Jamie was recognized because of his family, and when his image was searched in reverse, his image came up as he had songwriting and producing credits for several country musicians.

Even Rex was known for being a trainee at a popular Korean record label and had been a backup dancer for several K-pop idols.

As Ari read through the comments, he realized anew how stacked Jamie’s team actually was.

It seemed that every person had previous entertainment industry experience.

Curious about all the other teams, he watched them all and read through the comments, noting that most teams hadn’t reached the number of views that Jamie’s team had.

The only teams that came close were William Forbes’ team, which had about 250k views, and the team with Levi Temple, Jin, and Tae Young, which had around 190k views.

The comments on those videos included the usual compliments and praise, but as people began investigating, there was also speculation as to each contestant’s identity.

While noting interesting comments and skipping over the rude ones, Ari continued watching the different performance videos until he glanced at his group’s video, which had the image of him stomping the water as the thumbnail.

His eyes glanced down at the view counter, which had over 1 million views and over 200k dislikes before accidentally closing the tab, and he began coughing from shock.

What the heck???

Why were the views and the dislikes so high???

He thought that his team had done as well as could be expected with their skill set, so it couldn’t be that bad, right?

Or maybe his vision of the water, emphasizing the choreography, didn’t translate properly on camera?

With his heart pounding, Ari reopened his team’s video and watched it from the beginning to the end.

His critical eyes and ears caught several of his own mistakes, but overall, he thought that the video looked quite good and captured the vision that he and Vishal had pictured when selecting the outfits and asking Selena to modify parts of the choreography.

Then maybe it was something else.

With hesitant hands, he clicked on the comments button, sorted from most liked to least liked, and began reading to understand.

And after scrolling a couple more times, Ari slowly understood what was going on.

Somehow, he had amassed a large group of haters.

Many people in the comments accused him of being ugly and hiding it with thick paint-like makeup, selfishly ruining the visuals of the performance with his face, monopolizing the parts that he did, trying to stand out in a stupid way, and not taking the performance seriously when everybody was clearly working hard.

He was criticized and insulted in various ways in at least five different languages, and Ari was quite impressed that disdain for him had become a global phenomenon.

And to top it off, others had somehow found him through a hashtag, and when he clicked on the glowing keyword, he was taken to a phone recording of his second performance, where a girl in the crowd had screamed ’tararara’ and he had played the trumpet while singing the song.

There was another video of him singing it with Jamie in the car, so he was newly criticized for not taking the competition by making a stupid song and trying to capitalize off of the popularity of another contestant, but the song was also trending on TokTik as people sang the traffic song with the sound bite of the girl screaming before he played the trumpet as the beginning portion.

There were also videos criticizing his poor trumpet playing technique, video analysis, photo-shopped photos of his face, and speculation of what his face looked like, and think pieces about his choice to wear a turtle neck in the two videos he had been spotted in so far.

Seeing the sheer amount of hate and content that had been generated in the past 24 hour hours from those who were critical, Ari thought that people really had a lot of free time.

He was quite thankful to those who liked and commented kind things, but the rest were kind of scary.

As he continued absent mindedly scrolling through 3-d simulations of what his face looked like behind the makeup, while thinking about the whole situation, NOVA popped up one more time.

[Aren’t you happy?]

[You’re finally popular.]

[Everyone is talking about you and singing your song.]

Ari shook his head.

Not at all.

Not in the slightest.

It actually felt kind of bad that the hard work he and the team had put in was being overshadowed by people trying to dig into his face and past while putting him down in comparison to other people.

And seeing some of the crazy things people were saying that the would do to find him, Ari vowed to increase his visual stat as fast as possible, to wear a different mask when in public, and to never, ever, ever reveal his identity if he didn’t have to.

The internet was clearly a crazy place, and he wanted no part in it.

Quickly shutting down the computer, he popped another cough drop into his mouth and called Jamie.