Her seat barely warm, she opened the "Forrest Quinn Project Progress" board on the company intranet.
Sure enough, the new marketing copy was already live.
The "beaten by life" slogan for the five-kernel mooncakes hadn’t changed; they had merely tacked on a promotional line at the end: "Mid-Autumn Early Bird Special: Buy Two, Get One Free."
She clicked on the ad links deployed on X and TikTok. The comment sections were mostly filled with safe, generic remarks like "Five-Kernel Squad reporting in!" and "The discount is just average." It was obvious that this base layer of comments was padded by paid trolls or longtime brand loyalists. Occasionally, a stray complaint like "This copy is a bit preachy, isn’t it?" would pop up, but it was quickly buried by new comments. There was barely any real malice.
"Looks like it just went live, and people haven’t reacted yet."
Wendy Lynch muttered softly at the screen. Her fingers scrolled the mouse, minimizing the project page to open her own logistics report. Typing rapidly on her keyboard, she verified the department’s monthly office supply requisition data, then began organizing the sign-up sheet for next week’s team-building event, occasionally glancing up at the time.
At 11:30 AM, the comment section still hadn’t made much waves.
She let out a small breath of relief and pinched the bridge of her nose. Perhaps the situation wasn’t as bad as the email suggested? Maybe the younger demographic would just treat it as a joke and move on. After all, pastry ads before the Mid-Autumn Festival were a dime a dozen, and very few actually sparked real controversy.
At noon, Wendy Lynch followed her desk neighbor, Ms. Campbell, to a fast-food restaurant downstairs for lunch.
While waiting in line to order, the conversation between two girls in jeans at a neighboring table drifted into her ears, so clear that she couldn’t ignore it even if she wanted to.
"Did you see that Forrest Quinn mooncake ad in the elevator? The one for the five-kernel flavor." The girl with the high ponytail poked at her bowl of rice in disgust.
Her companion, a girl with light brown hair, immediately furrowed her brows. "I saw it! Saying people don’t like five-kernel because they haven’t been ’beaten by life’—isn’t that way too condescending? I was scrolling through Red this morning and saw quite a few posts mocking it. Just as I was about to comment, I clicked in and realized all the previous comments were gone. Word is, they’re being deleted!"
"Are you serious? That’s totally outrageous!" The high-ponytail girl pulled out her phone, her fingers tapping furiously against the screen. "I’m posting this on Instagram right now to call them out. Who are they to say that not liking five-kernel means you haven’t suffered in life?"
Wendy Lynch paused, her chopsticks holding a piece of leafy green hovering in midair. Whatever flicker of hope she still harbored instantly vanished.
Sure enough, the public backlash had already started to ferment; the fire simply hadn’t reached its peak yet.
She didn’t dare waste any more time after finishing her meal and hurried back to the company. The moment she sat back down at her desk, she restored the minimized project page.
On the X trending list, the hashtag #ForrestQuinnMooncakeAdPreachy had quietly climbed to the twenty-eighth spot, and its popularity meter was still ticking upward. Meanwhile, the views under the TikTok hashtag #InsultedByFiveKernelMooncakeAd had surged by half a million within just thirty minutes, and a massive dogpile of complaints was forming in the comments.
"What’s the point of deleting comments? Are we not even allowed to say we dislike five-kernel now?"
"I get chewed out by my boss at work, nagged by my parents at home, and now I have to be lectured for being ’too young’ by a mooncake ad? Is Forrest Quinn out of its mind?"
"Do they want us to get on our knees and hand them our money? They actually expect to sell mooncakes with this kind of attitude?"
"Haven’t I been beaten by society enough as it is? Now I have to be gaslit by an ad while eating a mooncake?"
The comments were refreshing at breakneck speed. The main promotional video, which only had a few dozen comments before lunch, had now racked up over three thousand, and almost all of them were overwhelmingly negative. To make matters worse, people began posting screenshots of their deleted comments, mocking Forrest Quinn for having a guilty conscience. A vicious cycle of "the more they delete, the harder we curse" echoed louder and louder throughout the comment section.
While Wendy Lynch kept a close eye on the unfolding situation, chaos was brewing elsewhere.
Inside the planning department.
Felix Carter, the S5 team leader, stared at the data and comments cast onto the projection screen, his brow furrowed so tightly it could crush a fly.
"Nobody panic!" Felix’s voice wasn’t particularly loud, but it carried clearly to everyone around him. "The comments are a mess right now because our paid engagement hasn’t caught up yet, and our competitors are secretly fanning the flames.
"Just look at these accounts complaining—a lot of them are newly registered. They’re obviously trying to intentionally manipulate the narrative."
A young planner with black-framed glasses nearby chimed in anxiously, "But Felix, there are quite a few genuine users tearing into us too. Shouldn’t we revise the copy? Or maybe issue a statement clarifying our intentions?"
"Revise what?" Felix instantly cut him off, a trace of impatience bleeding into his tone. "The copy was finalized and approved by Director Walker. If we change it now, isn’t that just slapping him in the face?
"Besides, it’s just a vocal minority throwing a tantrum. It’s not a big deal."
Another senior planner spoke up hesitantly, "But it’s already trending. If we don’t handle this..."
"Handle it! Who said we aren’t handling it?" Felix pulled out his phone and opened their work group chat. "Operations is already on it. First, we’ll delete all the vile comments. As for the complaint videos, report them directly for infringing on the brand’s reputation.
"On top of that, have the engagement farms double down and push the positive reviews to the top. We can’t let this negativity gain the upper hand."
"But Felix, won’t deleting and reporting comments backfire..." The young planner tried to reason again, only to be silenced by a sharp glare from his team leader.
"Enough with the ’buts’." Felix’s tone hardened. "Director Walker was just asking about the situation in the group chat. He said this is a minor hiccup and told us to suppress it.
"This isn’t the first time competitors have tried to smear us. Are we really going to let them ruin our Mid-Autumn sales?
"Just do as I say! If anything goes wrong, it’s on my head!"
The planning team fell silent, bowing their heads to execute his orders. The initially lively discussion quickly gave way to the frantic clattering of keyboards. However, a clear look of reluctance painted everyone’s face.
Anyone with half a brain could see that this wasn’t suppressing a minor hiccup—it was pouring fuel on the fire.
Time ticked by, minute by minute.
Over the next few hours, the controversy exploded faster than anyone could have anticipated. By 3:00 PM, the hashtag #ForrestQuinnDeletingComments shot up the ranks, sitting side-by-side with #ForrestQuinnMooncakeAdPreachy on the trending list—one at twenty-third place, the other at twenty-fifth. By 5:00 PM, both hashtags had squeezed their way into the top twenty. And out of nowhere, #ForrestQuinnAccusedOfGaslightingConsumers debuted at eighteenth place, amassing over fifty million views.
Staring at the exaggerated surge in popularity, Wendy Lynch felt a deep sense of shock, even though she had seen this coming. This absurd level of virality and speed of escalation was indeed partially due to the fact that the marketing copy had trampled all over the younger generation’s triggers and pain points. But if someone were to claim that their competitors weren’t fanning the flames behind the scenes, she wouldn’t believe it for a second.
In a mere matter of hours, negative public sentiment surrounding Forrest Quinn had become overwhelmingly pervasive.
Before today, Forrest Quinn had been considered a rising star in the mooncake industry, securing a sizable chunk of the youth market. Yet, ever since the condescending copy circulated, it had become a brand utterly despised by young people everywhere. In her eyes, Forrest Quinn already had one foot in the grave.
The planning team was in total disarray. One moment, they were demanding operations contact the platforms to pull the trending hashtags down; the next, they were ordering the copywriting team to draft an apology statement. No one could decide on a firm course of action.
It wasn’t until 6:00 PM that Director Walker rushed back into the office from outside, immediately dragging Felix Carter and a few core planners into the conference room.