Overview

Amanda Bieber (Twitter handle: @MandaSwaggie) is a Twitter user who began expressing her appreciation for the Canadian pop star Justin Bieber in March of 2012. After several bouts of insulting tweets against well-known artists such as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, the British boy band One Direction and Freddie Mercury of Queen, some Twitter users responded with harsh criticism towards the Twitter user for being ignorant and offensive. While some have suggested the account was created for trolling purposes, many have reacted to the tweets as if they were genuine.

Background

The @MandaSwaggie Twitter^[1] account was created on March 30th, 2012, with its first tweet proclaiming that Justin Bieber had become more famous than the deceased pop star Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson fans saying Bieber will never be as big as Michael was. REALITY CHECK – he already is!!!

— Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie) March 30, 2012

On June 13th, 2012, @MandaSwaggie published a tweet comparing Justin Bieber to the deceased rock star Kurt Cobain, saying Bieber was a bigger star for having one of the largest fanbases on Twitter.

Justin Bieber is much bigger than Kurt Cobain, so shut up. Did Kurt Cobain ever have the biggest fanbase on Twitter? NO.

— Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie) June 13, 2012

Notable Developments

On June 14th, 2012, the day after the Cobain tweet was published, the women’s interest blog Jezebel^[13] published an article titled “Justin Bieber Superfan Burns Kurt Cobain By Saying He Wasn’t Huge on Twitter”, which criticized the tweet for failing to recognize that Cobain died in 1994 before Twitter was even invented. On June 16th, the entertainment news blog Digital Spy^[14] followed up with an article titled “Justin Bieber fan sparks controversy with Kurt Cobain remark”, which reported that @MandaSwaggie's Cobain tweet had been retweeted over 5,000 times and further speculated that the tweets may have been intentionally written in a controversial manner for trolling purposes.

The same day, Redditor bigbenecu submitted a post to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[15] subreddit titled “My immediate thought after reading the infamous Amanda Bieber tweet”, which featured a Futurama Fry image macro implying that the Twitter user was actually a man causing trouble on the Internet (shown above). Also on June 16th, several of @MandaSwaggie’s tweets were posted in a compilation on the Internet humor site 9gag, which suggested nuking the state of California to eradicate the Twitter user. On June 18th, the “Amanda Biebers Tweets” Tumblr^[2] blog was created, which posted screenshots of tweets published via @MandaSwaggie. The same day, a Change.org^[11] petition calling to remove @MandaSwaggie from Twitter was created, which received over 375 signature within 10 days

Also on June 18th, the MSN music blog MusicFix^[16] published a post titled "Justin Bieber fan attacks Kurt Cobain on Twitter." On June 19th, Redditor BerryKisses submitted a post to the f7u12^[12] subreddit titled "Amanda Bieber, The Fall of Humanity and Disgrace to all Amandas", featuring a rage comic expressing frustration with two religiously insensitive @MandaSwaggie tweets. The post received over 275 up votes and 80 comments within eight days.

Identity

On June 21st, 2012, Yahoo Answers^[17] user AsteRisque submitted the question "I Have Found Amanda Bieber, aka @MandaSwaggie?", which linked to a Pastebin page identifying the Twitter user as Amanda Nesheiwat. In the post, an anonymous commenter claimed that the information was incorrect and that @MandaSwaggie was actually created by the Lady Gaga fan @TobeyMonster.^[18] The commenter included a screenshot of a Twitter exchange remarking that the @MandaSwaggie account was created by someone named "Tobey":

Other Controversial tweets

Several other tweets by @MandaSwaggie have been the subject of criticism, including statements supporting racism, homophobia and violence.

If I had to choose between killing my family or Justin Bieber, I would probably kill my family… #bieber4ever

— Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie) June 18, 2012

Search Interest

External References