Not just one, but many large-format photos from multiple angles.
At the very end, there was a line of red text: "Hi, daddy, my juicy kitty is lonely~" followed by an address.
"Holy sht—" Shane felt his eyes had been polluted.
Karen, right next to him, naturally saw it too. Her arms suddenly tightened again, and at the same time, she opened her mouth and bit directly onto his shoulder, forming a two-pronged attack.
"Ouch, ouch, ouch! I'm dying! I'm the victim here! I'm the one being fcking sexually harassed!"
Karen's bite wasn't light; he felt like a chunk of his flesh was about to be torn off.
Shane quickly exited, deleted that private message, and then clicked on the second one.
The second one was even more fcking outrageous. An obvious male profile picture sent a very impactful close-up of a specific body part, with the caption: "Do you prefer top or bottom?"
Shane's face almost turned green. He quickly closed the private message, reported it in passing, and then neatly blocked and deleted it.
The third one was asking if he sold drugs (steroids).
After scrolling for more than ten seconds, just when Shane thought his private messages had turned into the South Side dark web or an internet dumping ground, he finally saw a few with a normal style.
"Hello, I'm very interested in your 30-day training plan. My weight is severely over the limit now. I've tried many methods and failed. Seeing your comparison photos gave me a lot of motivation. How can I purchase the course? Can you provide some preliminary dietary advice? Thank you."
"Is there a free trial class?"
Some others were more or less the same, and a few just wanted to freeload his knowledge and labor directly.
Shane finally sighed. There are still normal people after all.
Then he turned the phone screen towards Karen. "Look, these are the serious clients. Those just now were all internet trash randomly refreshed by the system!"
Karen glanced at those serious inquiries, then looked at Shane's slightly ingratiating smile. She finally let go of her hands and mouth, but her whole body was now hanging on Shane like a koala.
"Who knows if you secretly saved some trash."
"I swear, my eyes and soul urgently need bleach to clean them right now."
Shane sent his course purchase link directly to those few clients, then added some words, the intention very obvious: Don't think about freeloading. If you want to change, you have to buy the course!
Wait, Shane suddenly realized something. Every time he posted on Facebook, he would attach the link below.
Now that it was hyped up like this, with so much traffic—
Shane exited Facebook, found the mobile banking icon, and clicked in.
Because SMS notifications cost extra, he didn't activate that service.
And now, as the banking app interface slowly loaded, line after line of income information refreshed densely.
[PayPal] Payment received: $6.99 USD
[PayPal] Payment received: $9.99 USD
[PayPal] Payment received: $6.99 USD
[PayPal] Payment received: $29.99 USD
"Oho." Shane held his breath, his finger sliding quickly in the message bar. He wanted to calculate how much his courses had sold.
"10 of the 6.99 ones. The 9.99 ones—fck, 37 copies!? And one of the 29.99 complete course."
Shane quickly did a mental calculation. Ten basic courses for 69.9, 37 upgraded courses with recipes for 369, plus one complete course for 29.9.
Subtracting some miscellaneous handling fees, he netted about $450.
He originally thought people would only buy after the videos were released. He didn't expect... sure enough, traffic is king.
Shane turned the phone towards Karen, letting her see these income records too.
"Look, Karen, this is the charm of the internet. It's only been one day. Just relying on a few photos and arguments, I got this much—"
"So how much did you make now?"
Karen's voice rang in his ear, but he couldn't tell what emotion it held.
Shane brought the phone closer, letting her look carefully at these dense small income records.
"About 450. Hmm... the basic course and the course with recipes sold the most, similar to what I expected. If I can maintain this heat, in a few more days, I'll have earned enough for a car."
As Shane spoke, he suddenly thought he should take advantage of this wave of heat to hype it up again quickly and add some more fuel.
He returned to Facebook again, clicked on his album, picked out a few other training photos taken before, and then created a new post.
"Roids? Photoshop? See you next week on our YouTube channel. Real or fake, come see for yourself."
He attached the course link below again, carefully explaining the differences between each course, before posting it.
Karen watched Shane's side profile. Shane's gaze staring at the screen was very focused.
This look made him seem completely different from those South Side boys who, besides fighting and drinking, just muddled through their days.
But a subtle panic drilled into Karen's heart.
"He's moving faster and faster—"
Those messy women on the internet were looking for him, and now people were paying him real money just to see the words he wrote and those few pictures.
He was no longer just the Shane Gallagher sweating in Kevin's warehouse or selling breakfast from a broken food truck.
Karen seemed to already see the scene of Shane leaving the South Side step by step, moving further and further away from her.
By then, would there be women from the North Side or West Side standing beside him, far better than her?
And what about herself by then?
Maybe she would still be trapped in the South Side, trapped in that suffocating house created by Eddie and Sheila, trapped in a dim future of working odd jobs after graduating high school.
Karen felt an inexplicable suffocation. She didn't want this.
Then she had to do something... pull him back? Or at least leave a mark on him that no one else could replace.
But Karen said nothing, only hugging Shane tighter, pressing her body closer, as if this could slow down his departure.
Shane felt the sudden increase in Karen's strength and thought she was urging him to hurry up. After all, doing this had taken some time.
He turned around directly and kissed her, his hands starting to roam.
"Come on, Karen."
"Mmhmm~"
...
In the evening, Shane went directly to Lip's bedroom. "Lip, that webpage I used to sell courses before—"
"Hmm?" Lip was coding, his fingers dancing on the keyboard.
"Payment interface stuck? Or what? I told you that open-source plugin sometimes—"
"Not a payment issue," Shane interrupted him. "It's legal risk. I forgot this important thing."
Although awareness of online consumer protection was just starting in 2010 and the rules were vague, he still felt it was better to go through a bit of trouble to reduce risk.
"I need you to add a user agreement clause to that purchase page that must be checked before placing an order."
Lip finally stopped typing. "User agreement? Do you think you're Apple selling iPhones? With your broken PDF and videos?"