I'm not a literary giant

Chapter 42: Staring is Slavery

"Who?"

"A user. A user who spends more than 20,000 yuan on our app every month." Zuo Ziliang said, "She wants to see you."

Wang Zixu was in a trance for two seconds and said, "You know it's impossible for me to meet her. I have a wife."

Zuo Ziliang smiled bitterly and covered his face: "Do you think you have a choice? Or, do you think we have a choice?"

"What do you mean?"

Zuo Ziliang calmed down and said, "If you don't come forward, the user said that he would report us to the Xinle Office."

"What's funny potato?"

"It's not DouLeShu. It's the XinLe Bureau. The Infotainment Management Bureau." Zuo Ziliang said, "We are an online infotainment application. They are our direct management unit and are responsible for supervising whether there are any violations during our operations."

Wang Zixu stood up and said, "Didn't you promise me that you wouldn't break the law?"

Zuo Ziliang held out his hand and asked him to sit down: "I told you to calm down. How did we break the law? How could we break the law?"

"Then you're still afraid that she'll report you?"

"You don't understand at all." Zuo Ziliang frowned. "Even if it's not illegal, she reported it. Will the Xinle Bureau investigate? If they do, things will be troublesome."

"You haven't violated any law, so why are you afraid of being investigated?"

Zuo Ziliang said: "Do you know how to check? First, we ask you to write a self-inspection report, and then we send people to collect various materials, retrieve transaction records, check background records, and even require an audit of our services..."

"It's the same as our inspection."

"Yes, but what's the problem? The service we provide is speech therapy, and they will ask us to provide all our chat records! We can't disclose the users' chat records, so we can only ask speech therapists to take screenshots of their own records. If they are willing to cooperate, it's fine. If they don't cooperate, they will just quit. How many speech therapists will we lose?
"Not to mention that the very existence of the censorship is a punishment. Have you read Sartre? To gaze is to enslave, right?"

Wang Zixu said, I have read it, and I met him this morning.

Zuo Ziliang said: "Because of the gaze of others, we must live in a perspective prison and constantly discipline our free will. Auditing is the gaze of public power.

"Our speech therapy is a creative activity that requires the free expansion of free will. If there is an audit, there will be no freedom, and the speech therapist will be in shackles. And the scale of the audit is quite ambiguous.

"For example, if I say 'Miss, you are so beautiful', it is not against the rules, right? But if I say 'Miss, you are so sexy', it will be against the rules. The difference of one word can make the difference between against the rules and not against the rules. Even if I can do it well, can thousands of speech therapists do it well?

"To put it another way, our interaction is a joint effort. If the other girl says, 'I want to wear Pinru's clothes,' wouldn't it be reasonable for me to say, 'You are so sexy,' but I can't say that. If I say that, it would be against the rules.

"As soon as the review begins, our speech therapists will constantly be torn between 'you are beautiful' and 'you are sexy' in their minds, and everyone will fall into the quagmire of self-censorship. Free will disappears, and all that remains is the carefully considered words and sentences.

"Staring is slavery, and review is punishment. I believe that our Wenai app has absolutely no violations of laws and regulations, but as long as we are reported and the review begins, the punishment for us will begin. Even if we pass the inspection in the end, the shackles left by the punishment will continue to exist, and we will be defeated in the competition with other apps."

After Zuo Ziliang finished his long speech, he grabbed the cold water on the table and drank it. Wang Zixu fell silent.

He thought for a long time, thinking about Sartre, existentialism, and 1984.

He also thought about his royalties, his wife, and Ning Chunyan's Porsche.

Finally, he stood up and placed his hands on the table: "In that case, our fate ends here."

"What do you mean?" "I just want to make some money, I don't want anyone to interfere with my life. I have a wife, I can't expose the fact that I write scripts. I'm just a part-time worker, I can't bear the fate of your app. Now that you have invaded my life, I can only say goodbye to you."

Zuo Ziliang sat in his seat blankly, his bald head reflecting the gentle light of the cafe. Wang Zixu slowly stood up and waited for a few seconds to see if he had anything to say. Finding that he remained silent, he tentatively said, "Well, that's it, I'm leaving."

He walked back for a while, confirmed that Zuo Ziliang did not come to chase him, pushed the door open and walked out, feeling relieved but also a little disappointed.

It was chilly outside, the cool summer night air caressing his face. Just then, he felt a huge push from his back, and he stumbled to the street, and an arm came up from behind his neck and held him up.

"What are you doing? I told you not to force things!"

Zuo Ziliang exhaled from behind: "Come with me!"

"Where?"

"come over!"

Zuo Ziliang held Wang Zixu hostage, and the two of them walked down the street, spinning like they were dancing a duet. After turning a corner, Zuo Ziliang pushed Wang Zixu in front of a bar.

"Go in."

"what?"

"Get in!"

Prince pushed the door open falsely, and the noisy music hit him directly in the face. The heat mixed with the smell of alcohol and sweat penetrated his nostrils. The dazzling light from the LED screen cut out shapes in the darkness, and the silhouettes of the crowd danced like autumn grass in the wind.

"Come." Zuo Ziliang grabbed his arm.

The light from the light ball slid across Wang Zixu's eyelids, the red, purple and yellow lights, the clinking of high-heeled glasses, the dense bubbles of champagne making a "beep" sound, the drum beats, the piano, the saxophone, this gentle amber glass night.

Zuo Ziliang pulled him to the dance floor, pointed at the stage and said, "See that girl? The one playing the saxophone."

"I see. What's wrong?"

The light was too dazzling, and he couldn't actually see the person on the stage clearly. He could only see a white figure, swaying slowly, holding the saxophone in his arms, as if he was holding his dance partner.

"The saxophone player is the best jazz musician in Xihe City, or rather, the only jazz musician. Do you know jazz?" Zuo Ziliang said.

"Is it the one in The Legend of 1900?"

"It's like in The Legend of 1900," said Zuo Ziliang. "There's no sheet music, it's improvisation, everyone can join in at any time, let the music flow and grow naturally, relying only on the melody hidden in the soul."

Wang Zixu said, "Is that so?"

Zuo Ziliang said: "But what is being played now is the recorded music, and she is the only one improvising. Because she is the only jazz musician in the whole Xihe. No one improvises with her. So, this is not jazz."

Wang Zixu looked at him: "What do you want to say?"

Zuo Ziliang extended his index finger and pointed it at his chest: "If you leave, Wen Ai will only have me to improvise with. There will no longer be a jazz-like Wen Ai in the world. It will no longer exist. It will be gone. Permanently. Are you willing?"

(End of this chapter)