A question about Justin Bieber... is he apparently a meme or something?

[kane_magus]

At least in Youtube comments, anyway? I glance at the comments (big mistake, I know, but sometimes I just can't help myself), and I see all these references to Justin Bieber. Usually these are in conjunction with the "X number of people clicked the dislike button" meme that I hate, in the form of "### people are Justin Bieber fans" or whatever. Even if the video in question has absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to do with Justin Bieber, which is the case for all videos that I care to watch on Youtube.

As far as I am aware, I have never once heard a single Justin Bieber song, even accidentally. I don't know if he's good or bad or what. I have no real interest in finding out, one way or the other. The culmination of my knowledge about Justin Bieber consists entirely of what tiny bit I skimmed from that Wikipedia article above, and the fact that people on Youtube apparently just can't stop talking about him, even if it's to trash him. It is perplexing to me why this is the case. Well... it's perplexing if and only if I ignore the maxim that the overwhelming majority of Youtube commenters are idiots, that is.

Comments

[the-spore.livejournal.com]

Justin Bieber isn't a meme, but some of the things he has said has become a meme. There was this one interview where he doesn't know what the word "German" means (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFVkHLT4wlI), so every time Germany was mentioned somewhere on the internet, people would say "What's a Justin Bieber?". Then a few months ago, he compared himself to Kurt Cobain during a magazine interview... and people turned that into a meme.

The only reason people are saying things such as "### people are Justin Bieber fans" in YouTube comments is because the only fan base he has are prepubescent girls. He has no musical talent and the music industry is using him for the sole purpose of capitalizing on said girls. I'm a neither a fan nor a hater of him. The only reason YouTube commenters say that is because they got butthurt because someone clicked the "dislike" button on a song they like, and retaliated by saying that the "disliker" is a fan of a manufactured pop star with no real talent.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

It's not just music videos that these idiots are commenting on. Just about any video that has those retarded "### are blah blah blah because they clicked dislike" comments (which seems to be almost all of them, these days), at least one of those kind of comments, usually several, will mention Justin Bieber in some way. What the hell does Justin Bieber have to do with, for instance, Minecraft or the Terminator or Star Trek or whatever? If happen to not like a particular Robocop video, that means you are a Justin Bieber fan? What? I've seen his name being flung around in the comments for videos such as that. This is why I'm wondering if Justin Bieber himself, as a whole, has become the meme, or at least his name anyway. It's like it doesn't even mean anything anymore and is just something people say now simply for the hell of it. It certainly doesn't mean anything to me, because I have only the vaguest clue who the guy even is, and would have remained blissfully ignorant had these morons not puked his name all over Youtube.

It just seems like Hate Dumb (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HateDumb) on steroids to me. I, personally, could not care less about Justin Bieber, one way or the other, and am simply fed up with seeing his name all over Youtube in the most nonsensical of places. It's like bashing Justin Bieber has become the new bashing Twilight (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/346762.html) or something.

With that said, since I made the above post, I've actually listened to snippets of some of his songs. He is..... decidedly not to my tastes. If I'd ever heard any of those songs cold, without knowing they were his, I'd have sworn on a bible that it was a girl singing them. But knowing that they are being sung by a 12 16 year old boy, it actually seems kind of almost squicky to me for some reason. That, and there seems to be an excessive use of auto-tune, at least in the few bits that I listened to. Holy shit, do I hate the use of auto-tune. The only song I've heard that has made good use of auto-tune is Space Olympics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Es6kbzcUA8&hd=1) by the Lonely Island, and that only works because he's supposed to sound like a weird alien. Every other song that uses it, not so much. I didn't even like the T-Pain bits in I'm On A Boat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avaSdC0QOUM&hd=1) because of the auto-tune. Okay, now I'm getting off-track in an entirely unrelated rant. See?! I'm becoming just like the douchebags who make the Bieber comments! Ugh. Well, except that I don't feel the need to just go on random Youtube videos and say something like "165 people like auto-tune" or something asinine like that.

Anyway, to sum up, I guess the solution is to stop torturing myself by reading retarded Youtube comments.