Justin Bieber

About

Justin Bieber is a teen Canadian pop musician, singer, songwriter, and actor who rose to fame after several videos of his musical performances were uploaded to YouTube. He is often the subject of conversations online from both his critics, and his rabid supporters, known as “Beliebers”.

Online History

Justin Bieber was born in London, Ontario on March 1st, 1994. At the age of 12, Justin’s mother started uploading videos of him singing pop songs onto her “kidrauhl” YouTube^[12] account on January 15th, 2007.

According to Reuters^[1], this was the pivotal moment when Justin’s popularity began to rise. In 2008, when Justin was 13 years old, American talent manager Scooter Braun contacted him after seeing one of Justin’s videos on YouTube, and offered him a record deal. Justin flew out to Atlanta, Georgia, to record demo tapes, and met the R&B artist Usher.

His first album, “My World”, was released on September 17th, 2009. It sold 137,000 albums in its first week, and peaked at number five on the U.S. Billboard 200^[2]. His next album, “My World 2.0”, released on March 23 2010, gained number 1 status on the U.S. Billboard 200, making him the first artist since the Beatles to debut at No. 1, and proceed to sell more the following week^[3].

On Social Networks

On Facebook, anti-Bieber fan pages and groups have surfaced since the beginning of his career, and still exist. As of July 2011, “I Hate Justin Bieber”^[16] has 1,856,257 likes, and “Justin Bieber SUCKS !!”^[17] has 50,618 likes. These numbers are much smaller than Justin Bieber’s “Official fan page”^[18], which has over 37 million likes as of November 2011.

On Twitter, Justin’s official page^[19] has amassed nearly 14,000,000 followers as of November 1st, 2011. Other Bieber fan Twitter accounts^[20] have followers ranging in the hundreds of thousands.

On YouTube

On YouTube, his videos make up several of the most viewed of all time, with 4 of his music videos in the top 50 viewed, including his music video for “Baby”, which is the most viewed video of all time as of July 2011.^[13] The music video also has a like to dislike ratio of about .488, showing that there are around twice as many dislikes for every like.^[5] In fact, some of Justin Bieber’s music videos made the “Top 10 Most Disliked Youtube Videos”, only seconded by Rebecca Black’s Friday. Even in videos not concerning Bieber, highly critical comments are posted about him. Multiple parody videos of Justin Bieber and his songs have been uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube Views

On November 1st, 2011, Justin Bieber’s YouTube Channel JustinBieberVEVO reached a new milestone of 2 billion total views. According to the TIME Magazine^[30], the new record views were boosted by the teen idol singer’s latest music video release for the Christmas single “Mistletoe,” which has been viewed more than 28 million views since its debut on October 18th, 2011. The previous viewcount milestone was established by Lady Gaga, who became the first artist to gain one billion views in October 2010.

Free Bieber

On October 19th, 2011, a campaign called “Free Bieber” was launched that targeted the proposed Bill S.978 that recommends unauthorized streaming of copyrighting works should be punished with a maximum prison sentence of 5 years. The website FreeBieber.org^[25] explains that the bill could technically send Justin Bieber to prison for videos he had previously uploaded to YouTube:

A new bill in Congress makes posting a video containing any copyrighted work a felony-- with up to 5 years in prison. But wait… didn’t Justin Bieber get famous by posting YouTube videos of himself singing copyrighted R&B songs? Yep. If this bill passes, he could get 5 years in jail.

The campaign was subsequently covered on BoingBoing^[26], Torrent Freak^[27], and TechDirt^[28] the same day.

Reputation

Many people criticize him for his youthful appearance, relatively high pitched voice, overabundance of heart throb songs, and the quality of his music. His manner of speech has also come under criticism, being called a dialect “more suited to rappers”^[4]. On the web, Bieber is frequently targeted by internet trolls, most of whom comment either on his sexuality, feminine hair style and voice, and his undeserved popularity.

The Beliebers

A “Belieber” is an extreme fan of Justin Bieber. According to Urban Dictionary^[11], the name is a fusion between “Bieber” and “believer”. From Wikipedia^[22]:

Bieber’s popularity among pre-teen and teenage girls, including his wide-ranging fan base colloquially known as “Beliebers”, has occasionally led to some harsh criticism by his fans of other people, including personal attacks, death threats, and slanderous remarks. The website Belieber.com^[21] is a blog dedicated to Justin Bieber related news.

On 4chan

4chan has played an important part in the spread of attacks against Justin Bieber online. On June 13, 2010, a campaign was launched by the Anonymous of 4chan to get the phrase “Justin Bieber Syphilis” the number one Google Trend. According to Gawker^[6], it became the number one trending search before 2:00 A.M. the following day.

The contest for Justin Bieber’s “My World Tour”^[15], that asked for fans to vote on a country that Bieber should visit for his tour, was launched in early summer 2010. Anonymous used this as an opportunity to vote on sending Bieber to North Korea, a country with limited internet access, and strict borders.^[7]

Censoring Bieber

Many countermeasures have been taken to eliminate the over-occurrence of Justin Bieber online. On May 14, 2010, Twitter released a new algorithm for their Trending Topics feature, commonly called “Bye, bye Bieber”. The Algorithm limits trending topics to “immediately popular” and “most breaking”, which prevents any one topic from dominating Twitter for too long. Twitter noted that no topic is blocked from trending.^[8]

On May 17, 2010, Greg Leuch from the Free Art & Technology launched a Firefox add-on called “Shaved Bieber”, which removes any and all mention of Justin Bieber by blacking out any word mentions and censoring any pictures of him^[9].

Flying Water Bottle Incident

In December 2009, at a Sacramento radio event, Justin Bieber was hit onstage with what appears to be an empty water bottle thrown by a fan. It was later revealed to be a bag of Sour Patch Kids wrapped in a Justin Bieber T-shirt.^[10] It is still unclear as to wether the person in the audience was a Justin Bieber fan, or a hater in disguise.

C.S.I Appearance

Justin Bieber appeared on two episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation^[24] as Jason McCann^[23]. Jason is the brother of Alex McCann, who bombed a police’s funeral in the beginning of the episode Shock Waves. Alex then later tried to bomb the whole LVPD. After Alex got shot dead during an attempted escape, Jason went on to bomb the police, and got shot and killed at the end of another episode, Targets of Obsession.

After the episode was aired, numerous clips of the show went on the web, most notably the part of which Justin Bieber was shot and killed.

Paternity Lawsuit in 2011

On November 1st, 2011, a number of celebrity gossip blogs and news sites including Star Magazine and TMZ reported that a 20-year-old woman Mariah Yeater filed a paternity lawsuit against Bieber, claiming that they had sex backstage at one of his concerts in 2010. The singer’s legal team has dismissed Yeater’s claim as false allegation.

Search Interest

External Links