I saw his face, I'm not a Belieber

Well, if you tuned in yesterday, you'll know that I conducted an ill thought out experiment to see if I could bait a Belieber into threatening me with bodily harm.

I admit I didn't try very hard, I just commented on the whole Anne Frank/Justin Bieber news story (There's a link to the story on the BBC website in yesterday's Blog) and said something to effect that Beliebers are more likely to make death threats than they are to be effected by them.

You'll be pleased to know that I've not been threatened, or had my sexuality or the very reason for my existence questioned, unlike some people I could mention.

There have been no DMs from 14 year old girls from Oregon telling me to leave their future husband alone or face the consequences.  Neither have I had clouds of youngsters with nary a pubic hair between them camped on my front lawn burning effigies of whichever member of One Direction is popular at the moment which they've quickly drawn a moustache and titanic sideburns on to make it look more like me.  My cat has not been nailed to the front door and my goldfish has not been blown up with my own pair of antique, Victorian fire bellows.

So, this lack of affirmative action leads us to a number of possible conclusions.

1. I am not important enough to bother with.

Now ,this is my favoured explanation, I assume that the people who issue the threats are only interested in clashing swords with the great and the good.  A sort of Munchhausen by famous proxy deal.  By abusing a famous person, they belie(b/v)e that they become famous themselves, or at least they interact with people that they see on their 50" plasma screen balanced precariously between the sink and the toilet of their aloominum skinned single-wide trailer.

2. I wasn't obvious enough

I like to think I'm fairly subtle. I mean, I enjoy knob jokes as much as the next man... As much as the next few men all rolled together if truth be told, but you know - I do tend to dress things up in 'purty talk' more befitting my inferred Dandy status.  Instead of comparing the antics of his more psychotic fans to things that may have gone on in the latter days of the Wiemar Republic - I should just have said something like 'Beebur iz gay an Sucks Donkey D*ck' and let them have at me. (Please note: I have no insider knowledge of the 'artist' in question's sexuality, or his propensity for performing fellatio on farm animals, I include this section purely for dramatic effect, as an example of the language that his fan-base would be familiar with, no offense is inferred, implied, intended or suggested - Just in case there are any multi-armed cybernetic lawyer machines watching).

3. It's all a big con, engineered by his management to keep media attention on the pint-sized popinjay.

Contrived? Well, if your manager is a real life Van Wilder from the nation that can turn the honest and honourable sport of all-in wrestling into a mass market soap opera, then why shouldn't you take the angst and hormone fueled attention of love-starved teens with unformed emotional compasses into a huge (but supremely moist) cog in the media machine.  After all, you've turned a nineteen year old from a prosperous suburb of London (Ontario) who started out posting videos of himself singing on YouTube, into what I understand is termed a 'Wigger' and a polished, preened and soul-less cash cow.  what's one more offence against youth helping to weigh your soul down into the fiery pit?

Whilst we're on the subject of his management, I wonder if Mr Braun has had a quiet word with him about the whole Anne Frank debacle, what with his own grandparents having only narrowly escaped the holocaust themselves?

One would hope so... Wouldn't one?

Anyway, the only thing that happened to me was that I had my original tweet immediately picked up and forwarded by what I presume to be a Bot... And the number of hits on the Blog was slightly higher that I would have expected (23 hits in the first few minutes, rather than the normal 10-15)

On the whole, a bit of a damp squib, which by a strange quirk of fate, is, I beliebe, the name of Mr Bieber's next album.

-oOo-

As an aside, during the rigourous research procedure before the publishing of today's Blog (the customary flick through Wikipedia to check names and dates) I noticed  a couple of (semi) interesting facts.

London, Ontario (The City of Mr Bieber's birth) is in the county of Middlesex.  Which goes to show that if you don't nail things down, people will steal them, geography included.

There's a river running through it called the... See if you can guess... That's right, The Thames!

There's a Blackfriars Bridge, a Victoria Park, an Oxford Street, and the township of Westminster (which includes the village of Lambeth)

However, the most unintentionally funny thing that I read is that there was a fire in 1845 which destroyed a fifth of the (then) town... That's not the funny part though, the funny part was that one of the first 'casualties' of the fire was the only fire engine that the town had.

I know that Americans don't understand irony, I wonder if the Canadians do?

He said Baby, Baby, Baby, Who?

Pretty quick one today, probably, About a fishing trip.

Now, I'm not one for your actual fishing, I mean, I can see the appeal of sitting by the side of a picturesque lake, in the sunshine, with a bucket full of cold cans and a bacon sandwich, but the whole stabbing worms and having a mouthfull of maggots has never appealed to me, jus' nah ma t'ing Brah!

Anywho...

I read a news report this morning about a certain Mr Justin Bieber, who, on a recent visit to the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam left a message in the guestbook stating:

"Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

OK, so it was ill advised, probably a spur of the moment thing. Who amongst us can say that the nineteen year old versions of ourselves have never done anything stupid? I know I can't... I really, really can't.

Effectively, if I was feeling charitable, I'd imagine he was saying, 'I hope she'd have liked my music, or my personality.'

Uncharitably, I'd be thinking, in the back of my mind, that he meant 'Hey grrrl, the whole dying in Belsen thing musta been real whack, and I don't really know your story, but you musta been fly as they gave you your own museum. You'da liked me, I'm da shizznit'

What I think might be MY personal problem with him hoping that she'd have been a Belieber is that there are a vocal hardcore who viciously dive on anything anti-Bieber and tear it apart with their rabid, pre-pubescent fangs. There's an even smaller, even harder-core sect of Belieberdom that does the same to people who have stood next to, kissed, looked at, or even breathed the same air as La Bieber - How would the world have been changed if Anne Frank, generally seen as the very personification of persecuted youth, had joined those hallowed ranks?

Now, I know it's against the laws of the Internet to invoke the name of a certain Austro-Hungarian born fellah with a toothbrush moustache and side-parting, but I am quite fond of using the word Nazi as you may have noticed in previous posts. One of the first traits that people think of when you say the word 'Nazi' is fanaticism. (Along with the whole 'Aren't those Hugo Boss designed SS uniforms darkly fashionable' thing.) And fanaticism is something that Bieber's fans are keen to show in spades. You only have to look at the replies that Drake Bell, popular Nickelodian actor, guitarist and Belieber troll got when he suggested that Mr Bieber might not write all of his own material, or possibly could benefit from guitar lessons.

Not only were aspersions cast on his sexuality, musical talent, sanity and relationship status, but there were honest to goodness, actual death threats. With one young lady going to the lengths of tweeting 'live' threat updates as she got her Dad to drive her to the airport where Mr Bell had 'challenged' the irate Superfans to meet him and air their grievences in public.

Seemingly, when it came down to it, there was little 'carrying through' of threats, but some generally good natured banter ensued.

You have to worry if stuff like that is just advertising hype though, designed to raise their profiles. I hope it's not, I currently quite like this Bell chap, (my Daughter was a great fan of 'Drake & Josh'), and would hate to have my regard for his integrity dented by the foul mistress that is the Hollywood fame machine.

So, I thought I'd conduct a completely non-scientific media experiment.

This morning, I tweeted the following message:

So, #Bieber thinks Anne Frank would be a #Belieber, strange, when she spent her life hiding from death threats, not issuing them.

Complete with hashtags designed to ensure that the most bottom-feederish, hardcore, Belieberettes would rise from the murky depths like fame-addled sturgeon hunting for frozen peas.  Just to see if they turn their spindly hate-antennae towards me, or just concentrate on the famous Hollywood types.

So far I've been re-tweeted by someone called Justin Bieber - I'm going to go ahead and assume that it's not the real songstrel himself, or even a real person, as the Twitter ID of this person is @JustinBCookie, but they do have 3,462 followers, which is a start.

But we'll see what happens when the USA starts to wake up in a few hours - I'll keep you in the loop.

Wish me luck fellow citizens of the Blogosphere, but the chances are I won't need it.