My Dreamy Old Husband

Chapter 229

It was every celebrity’s dream to get an invitation letter to the Academy Awards ceremony. After all, being qualified to walk on the red carpet at the Academy Awards ceremony was symbolic of one’s status and standing in the entertainment industry.

Endorsements for high-end products and the red carpets of prestigious awards ceremonies were battlefields for the celebrities to flaunt their standings in the entertainment industry!

Therefore, Cethosian celebrities would do whatever they could to get an invitation letter to the Academy Awards ceremony in order to show off—even if it meant throwing money around to get invited as sponsors.

Taylor and Harry had chosen the perfect timing for their return to Cethos, for the Cethosian celebrities who had attended the Academy Awards ceremony happened to be coming back around the same time. Because of that, Bayside International Airport became a battlefield for fans of different celebrities over these few days.

Before anyone had realized, viewerships and box offices had ceased to be significant benchmarks of a celebrity’s public influence. Instead, a celebrity’s popularity had come to be defined by how many likes and retweets he or she received, how frequently his or her name was searched on the Internet, and the number of fans coming to meet him or her at the airport.

As a result, some celebrities pretended to be popular by paying hired supporters to boost their online popularity; they even hired temporary actors to pose as fans who were there to meet them at the airport.

Before entering the departure lobby, the admins of Taylor and Harry’s fan groups—who were leading the crowd—warned everyone, “There is no need to care about what others do. Just focus on what we’re doing, and don’t come into conflict with fans of other celebrities. Many fans are hired on a part-time basis at 100 per day.”

As they entered the departure lobby, Sophia felt as though she had opened the door to a world she had never seen before.

The departure lobby was already filled with huge crowds of people; fans of different celebrities were packed like sardines, and some celebrities even had up to thousands of fans coming to meet them at the airport!

For the celebrities, this was a matter of face. Therefore, they had to spend a fortune to hire people to pose as their fans even if they didn’t have so many followers in reality!

Compared to the swarm of fans who came to meet their idols at the airport in the thousands, the mere 100 fans who came for Taylor and Harry were quite a sorry sight!

There was barely any space for them in the lobby, so the two fan groups huddled together in a corner.

Huddling in the corner, Sophia curiously watched how fans of other celebrities reacted upon meeting their idols at the airport.

Just then, a celebrity emerged from the exit while being surrounded by seven or eight bodyguards. A large crowd of fans frenziedly rushed toward them at once, hemming them in and screaming hysterically; some of the fans even passed out as they were screaming.

Sophia couldn’t help but frown at the sight of the scene. Was this the so-called fandom subculture?

These people weren’t fans, but essentially a bunch of hungry ghosts who leaped at the sight of a glossy roasted duck as if they couldn’t wait to devour it in one bite!

The celebrity would have been stripped naked if it weren’t for the bodyguards!

Was Tay Tay treated like that every day?Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

For some reason, Sophia couldn’t help feeling sorry for the celebrities.

The fan group’s admins said to everyone, “Don’t behave like them later. When Taylor and Lord Winston come out, just spread the banner open and stand at both sides so that Taylor and Lord Winston can walk in the middle. Also, keep those fat and ugly attention-seekers out; keep them away from our idol!”

Unfortunately, the flight Michael was on board had been delayed. He was supposed to arrive at 1 p.m., but he had not arrived even at 5 p.m. Fans of other celebrities had slowly left one after another, yet they were still waiting.

To make matters worse, an idol named Nicholas Yates seemed to be on the same flight as Michael, and his army of 500 fans had also been waiting at the departure lobby the whole time.

Nicholas was a celebrity who had only become famous last year. Presently at the height of his popularity, he starred in many TV dramas, and his expressionless face appeared on whichever TV channel one switched to nowadays; even those who didn’t watch TV dramas would see him in commercials and advertisements.

His acting skills were next to none since he looked just like himself no matter which character he played. However, he was blessed with handsome looks typical of the heroes of romance novels, and the PR team behind him was incredible at attracting new fans. As a result, he was now acknowledged as a celebrity among the A-plus list.

Not only that, his fans were also the most ferocious of them all. They had dissed all of their idol’s rivals in the entertainment industry, including Taylor and Harry. In particular, it was because Nicholas had often been compared to Michael.

Nicholas had starred in two films, but their combined box office sales failed to exceed 500,000,000. On the contrary, every film Michael starred in grossed at least 500,000,000 at the box office, including niche art-house films.

Sophia had no idea what was there to be compared between the two celebrities, but Nicholas’s fans had been showing a tendency to pick fights with Michael lately; that was because Nicholas’s team had seriously overestimated their abilities by acquiring the film rights to a particular novel that had been made into a film several years ago with Taylor playing the male lead.

Furthermore, Nicholas’s fans often shamelessly chanted the slogan ‘We can’t live without Nicky.’

Because of that, Nicholas’s fans and Michael’s had been at odds with each other all the time, and Nicholas’s team continued to have the media write disparaging articles to vilify Michael.

However, Michael wasn’t involved in any scandals, nor did he have a stain on his reputation. Therefore, they could only find flaws in Elizabeth, his mother. Besides that, they disparaged him for his so-called lack of popularity, though the truth was that he always maintained a low profile. Since Michael never appeared in commercials, they mocked him for never receiving any offers to appear in one. Also, they claimed that he never appeared on variety shows because he was never invited to appear on them due to his lack of prominence in the entertainment industry.

Michael took acting primarily as a sideline since it was one of his hobbies. He never cared about the vilifying rumors surrounding him, but his indifference only served to inflate these people’s arrogance.

Nicholas’s fans were very overbearing; they took up more and more space, shoving Taylor and Harry’s fans into a corner. They also dropped litter everywhere, and the space they occupied was littered with trash. On the contrary, the space Sophia and the others had occupied was impeccably clean, for the used instant noodle cups were all packed up and thrown into the garbage can.

It was only natural for two fan communities that were at odds with each other to get into a squabble when they were side by side with each other in real life. One of Nicholas’s fans approached Sophia and maliciously struck up a conversation with her. “Our Nicky has just come back from the Academy Awards

ceremony, and there are so many beautiful photos of him walking on the red carpet. Why wasn’t Taylor and Lord Winston at the awards ceremony?” she asked.

Sophia glanced at the fangirl as if the latter was an idiot without answering her question. Our Taylor isn’t interested in attending the Academy Awards ceremony. Is there any problem with that? she thought to herself.

However, the fan was going to find flaws in whatever she said, so she chose to bite her tongue instead.

Seeing that she didn’t respond, the fangirl started getting impatient. She said, “Say something! I was asking you a question!”

However, Sophia responded by lowering her head and fiddling with her cell phone instead of talking to the fangirl, infuriating the latter even further. She said, “Why are you so rude? I’m talking to you! Are Taylor and Harry’s fans so ill-mannered?”

Several other fangirls of Nicholas came over as if premeditated before they each started speaking sarcastically in support of the first fangirl. One of them said, “Their idol is a megastar who outclassed most of the celebrities in show business. His fans are as aloof as their idol, so they must have disdained talking to us.”

“That recent film actually did so well at the box office despite being such absolute trash. Nobody is going to be deceived, though! God knows how much of its box office sales were faked!”

“You’re not going to get an answer to your question. How could a male celebrity who’s past his prime receive invitation letters? They certainly aren’t going to talk about something so embarrassing!”

“Allow me to tell a joke—they are merely a bunch of fat and ugly attention-seekers praising two queers to the skies! Haha! Those two queers never lay eyes on them, yet this bunch of bumptious, fat, and ugly attention seekers show them excessive passion.”