Revenge Begins: Reincarnated as a Hated Idol!-Chapter 32: Popularity Score

Aren exhaled wearily as he finished watching both episodes of The Insiders.

He had to admit that the show boasted a much higher quality than To Your Heart in terms of direction, screenplay, and performances.

Ryan Black and Luna Veil were truly masters of their craft. Whenever they interacted on the screen, viewers could sense the palpable tension in the atmosphere.

However, Theon was nowhere near their level, rendering his interactions with them feel comedic. It was as if he wasn’t acting but rather striving to demonstrate that he was acting. He appeared desperate, overcompensating beyond necessity.

For example, there was a scene in The Insiders where he needed to show his frustration; that scene specifically caused Aren to wince. Theon’s expressions in that scene were exaggerated, his face contorting unnaturally to show frustration.

Perhaps this wouldn’t have been so noticeable had he not been acting alongside Ryan and Luna. Witnessing them together on the screen, anyone would compare them subconsciously.

Furthermore, his screen time was equal to both leads, inducing a headache in Aren. He just seemed like a try-hard at this point.

In the scenes where he had to be calm and serious, he was stiff, almost unnaturally, and where he had to act lively, he would overemphasize his dialogues and exaggerate his expressions.

Another issue Aren noticed was his dialogue delivery. He didn’t do any voice modulation, nor did his dialogue flow naturally.

His presence altogether was the biggest flaw of The Insiders.

After finishing The Insiders, Aren decided to give To Your Heart a watch.

...

The following day, as netizens awoke, they were startled by the rankings of various platforms’ viewership data released by marketing accounts.

The Insiders had ranked first, just as everyone had expected. Recently, there was no drama that could compare to the momentum of The Insiders. However, what caught everyone off guard was To Your Heart sitting in second place, defeating major dramas from high-budget productions.

CloudPlay, Phoenix, and Sun Films all had a drama in the top ten list; however, they all lost to To Your Heart, a cheaper drama from AxisPlay.

It was more shocking because AxisPlay was a platform that had formed after splitting up from CloudPlay; so to defeat their own parent company was a first for AxisPlay.

Even though the three platforms hadn’t given their all this time, it was still a surprising outcome considering that they were titans of the drama industry alongside Dragon Films, and their shows were almost guaranteed to receive high viewership on their premieres.

Another shocking fact was the clash.

AxisPlay’s To Your Heart had gone head-to-head against The Insiders, an annual blockbuster of Dragon Films. To manage to receive a viewership high enough to rank second was mind-boggling.

What if they had released separately?

What if there was no clash?

Netizens couldn’t help but wonder about the what-ifs.

[To Your Heart really managed to snag the second spot? Am I dreaming?]

[Who is even watching To Your Heart? How are they getting such a high viewership?]

[What is this? To Your Heart’s first season didn’t even appear on the rankings, so what’s with the sudden jump? Are you telling me just because Aren appeared, people are flocking to watch that shit?]

[Hahaha, so what if they ranked second? The Insiders is still ahead. This is just people curious about the shows. Once everyone realizes the difference in the quality of both shows, The Insiders will soar, and To Your Heart will plummet to the place it deserves.]

In the rankings, The Insiders had received a popularity score of 120,000+, whereas To Your Heart had received 91,000+.

The difference was only around 29,000.

However, this gap could widen or narrow in the future depending on the shows’ respective performances.

A popularity score of more than 100,000 signified the drama as a blockbuster hit. This served as the benchmark that determined whether a drama was a blockbuster or just an average success.

Popularity score was calculated by marketing accounts, incorporating multiple factors such as views, comments, new subscriptions, replays, and fervent discussions about the drama on social media.

To Your Heart’s 91,000+ cemented its premiere as a colossal triumph; however, The Insiders was still leading by a substantial margin.

Yet, AxisPlay’s executives couldn’t be any happier. Just yesterday, they had recorded the highest number of subscriptions in the platform’s history.

Just the thought of being able to compete with a behemoth like Dragon Films was enough for them.

Furthermore, this was the first time their drama had secured the second spot on the list of trending dramas right on its premiere day.

This day, history had been forged for AxisPlay. This occasion would surely go into the annals of glory for the platform.

They had even defeated CloudPlay, their parent platform.

It was all like a dream.

Right now, signing Aren seemed like the best decision they had ever made in their lives.

AxisPlay promptly made preparations to release articles about their new subscription gains. This served as a way to garner even more publicity and buzz for the show.

They even released the official viewership data for the two episodes of To Your Heart.

These moves from AxisPlay and the rankings of marketing accounts made other drama enthusiasts curious.

Since To Your Heart was the first drama of AxisPlay to top the rankings on its premiere, viewers familiar with AxisPlay couldn’t help but want to check it out.

AxisPlay’s usual dramas featured shoestring production budgets, rendering their quality as though fashioned by some students for amusement.

There was this one drama that got trolled heavily for depicting a wealthy character coming to school in a cheap, broken, everyday car just because they couldn’t afford to rent a luxurious car.

With such a tarnished reputation, their drama topping the ranking was peculiar to the viewers.

They didn’t bother to check the first season and directly jumped to the two episodes of the second season.

After all, they were only here to check the quality of the drama and the cast’s acting.

In their previous dramas, the cast would do cringeworthy acting, which had spoiled the reputation of AxisPlay.

Viewers had a set stereotype against dramas produced by AxisPlay.

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(A/N - Thanks for reading. ^..^)