CH 112

On the screen of Wang Chao’s laptop, some seemingly complicated data analysis diagrams were listed.

If he hadn’t gone to college, Lin Chen would find it difficult to understand what he summarized. He couldn’t help but feel that children nowadays are too powerful.

Among the charts listed above, the first picture was a light green line chart. The line chart had climbed to a very high position in a short period of time.

“See this influence index?”

Wang Chao excitedly pointed to the top left corner number that jumped from 61 to 63. “Look, the heat is rising fast!”

“What does this number mean? Is 63 popular?” Lin Chen asked earnestly, in the spirit of asking questions when he didn’t understand and in the principle of making children happy.

Sure enough, Wang Chao excitedly replied, “Of course it’s high. This number represents the event influence index, which is calculated through a complex formula. The full score is 100 points.”

“About what specifically?”

“Specifically… Do you know what the popularity of the Yongchuan University case that we dealt with before is?”

“How much?” Lin Chen still asked patiently.

“Hehe, don’t be sad when you hear it, A’Chen,” Wang Chao said while pulling up the public opinion monitoring data for the previous case.

Although Lin Chen wasn’t sure why Wang Chao was monitoring these things…

He glanced at Xing Conglian inadvertently. This was presumably under another strange order from his boss.

“23?” Looking at the number on the screen, Lin Chen couldn’t help but feel surprised.

Honestly speaking, although he never had the idea of boasting in mind, such a major regional criminal case like the one at Yongchuan University regarding mass suicide only rose to 23 in terms of popularity online, which seemed a bit low.

But he quickly realized the true significance of a normal, unhyped regional case on the web.

Regarding the Li Jingtian throat-slitting case, it was now close to the popularity value of 65, which obviously was related to the influence of him being a star, but was Li Jingtian really that popular?

Before he had time to ask anything more, Xing Conglian suddenly interrupted them.

“Given how high this index is, people will think it’s due to the police’s ‘inaction’.” Xing Conglian smiled and patted Wang Chao’s laptop.

As soon as the teenager was about to yell, Xing Conglian gave him a glare, which made him quickly shut up.

Lin Chen also stood up, looked back at the girl with ponytails who was stretching her neck behind the bar, and left the shop with them.

……

Naturally, Wang Chao didn’t finish what he was about to say precisely because Xing Conglian felt they had reached the most important point, so he interrupted him.

In the elevator, the teenager kept talking, filling the small elevator with his excited voice. “A’Chen, A’Chen, let me tell you. The value has now soared to 65!”

Xing Conglian had no excuse to buy more ice cream, so he played with his car keys in his hands and remained silent.

Since no one was giving him a response, Wang Chao’s long-winded nature was exposed again. He said, “The current index is already as high as the popularity index of our country’s internet when a new Xinni president was elected. Isn’t it amazing?”

“That’s really high.” Lin Chen paused and said helplessly, “Don’t put more pressure on us.” As he spoke, he glanced at Xing Conglian. “You know, we’re standing in the elevator right now discussing a case that is as influential as a major political event in another country. This image still seems not solemn enough.”

“Oh, solemnity can’t be eaten.” Wang Chao snickered as he walked out of the elevator first. Holding the laptop in his arms, he continued to walk into the underground parking lot. “Actually, A’Chen, you don’t need to be so stressed. If you think about it, it’s impossible. I have compared all the data similar to this kind of case where the heat has soared to 65 within an hour, and the only ones that are comparable are those of sudden major natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, so…”

Lin Chen suddenly understood what the teenager was alluding to, so he asked, “So behind this, there must be a powerful water army* pushing it?”

*Group of users paid to post online comments with vested interests.

Wang Chao snapped his finger.

They had already reached the side of Xing Conglian’s Jeep.

Wang Chao didn’t react until they got into the car. He grabbed the front seat and asked his boss, “Captain, where are we going?”

Xing Conglian had just hung up a call about Li Jingtian’s current location. He threw the phone in the storage box and put on a Bluetooth headset. “Officer Xiao Wang, naturally, we’re going to visit the victim according to police procedures, yeah?”

“What victim? Do you mean Li Jingtian?” Wang Chao leaned in his chair and pulled on his seatbelt discontentedly. “He’s not a victim.”

The teenager opened his laptop on his lap and continued to talk about the topic he hadn’t been able to finish.

“Where did we leave off, A’Chen?” he asked.

Lin Chen replied, “We talked about the fact that behind Li Jingtian, there’s a powerful water army pushing it.”

“Yes, A’Chen, you have such a good memory.” Wang Chao always knew how to suck up in the strangest way.

Lin Chen looked at the time. It would take about 20 minutes from where they were to the municipal hospital. He hoped that within these 20 minutes, the teenager would be able to finish his entire inference.

“In fact, the line graph is just a rough estimate, and it’s not intuitive. A’Chen, you might as well look at this,” Wang Chao said as he opened another chart.

Lin Chen didn’t know how he sorted out so many charts in a short period of time. Most likely abnormal children had their own advantages.

He lowered his head and looked at Wang Chao’s knee. Sure enough, the chart was more intuitive than the previous line graph.

It was a pattern composed of countless dense dot matrices. The pattern was like a starry sky, or rather, more like a human neural network that was more vast than a starry sky. Of course, this wasn’t a human neural network but just a network of human society. A microcosm of propagation dynamics of an event.

Whenever a small dot lit up in the pattern, it meant another person on the network was spreading the “Li Jingtian” incident.

As could be seen from the map, although those flickering dot matrices seem to be irregular, most of the small dots were closely surrounded, as if they were a nebula, and formed several wonderful clouds that ranged from large to small.

Wang Chao said, “First of all, from this chart, you can see the progression of the event. The progression means how many times someone retweeted the Weibo post. The depth of spread regarding the Li Jingtian incident is now 6.”

Hearing this, Lin Chen frowned. Wang Chao seemed to see through his thoughts and added, “It’s very low, isn’t it? At least it doesn’t match its influence index of 65. This proves my first point. The heat of this incident is fueled by a water army, so there’s only breadth, not depth.”

Lin Chen nodded and motioned for Wang Chao to continue.

“A’Chen, look. In all the information clouds here, the larger each cloud group, the more retweets it has around it. Then the center of each big cloud group, of course, represents the root node of communication, which is the initial Weibo post.”

“The ‘tipping point’ of public opinion?”

“Hey, tipping point is a great way of putting it. A’Chen, you’re amazing!”

“I mean, I didn’t invent this word.” Lin Chen was slightly embarrassed by Wang Chao’s praise. “It comes from a famous book that explores the spread of popular culture. As the name suggests, the so-called tipping point refers to the sudden, nuclear explosion-style spread of information.”

“I’m letting you read more books, and you don’t even know this?” Xing Conglian unsympathetically poked the teenager.

“That’s because you understand, captain, so I don’t, okay?” Wang Chao shot back angrily.

“Isn’t that why I’m handing over the task of educating you to your brother, A’Chen?” Xing Conglian stepped on the gas as he replied lightly.

Hearing this, the teenager found himself unable to refute.

He turned back and looked at Lin Chen with cool eyes and said, “A’Chen, you’re right. In this matter of Li Jingtian’s throat-slitting case, there were indeed several tipping points. Uh, when the incident’s key spokesperson appeared and dominated public opinion, the rest were primarily responsible for forwarding.”

Kinky Thoughts:

The book Lin Chen is referring to is most likely The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. The book seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life.

It’s quite interesting. He proposes the theory of “the Law of the Few”, which according to him is the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts. According to Gladwell, economists call this the 80/20 principle, which is the idea that roughly 80% of the “work” will be done by 20% of the participants.

Interestingly enough, the “few” that Gladwell describes are 3 types: