Bieber Had Some Good Times… But Boy Are They Gone Now!
Justin Bieber. Once considered to be the poster child of pop music’s bright future, now reduced to social media memes and universal ridicule. It’s no one’s fault and he has no one to blame but himself. It’s safe to say that the “Baby” star has officially gone off the rails and in a bad way. There’s a fine line between living life to the fullest and completely losing your mind and trying to get away with anything and everything: Bieber was determined to find that line and once he found it, he leapt across it like an Olympic long jumper and never looked back. And as expected, it had some serious repercussions.
Bieber’s story can make for an interesting case study. Believe it or not, the roller coaster ride started with an innocent game of golf. Yes that’s right. See, Bieber was a budding golf player and used to play regularly at the local course (he claims his handicap was a respectable 7). One day he didn’t have enough money, so he took out his guitar and started belting out some tunes on the steps of a theater (‘busking’ as they would say in Jolly Old England). He only needed twenty bucks for a scratch round and instead came home with two hundred and an idea for a new career.
In this day and age, where everything is just a click away, internet can make you a star overnight (remember ‘the man with the golden voice’ – Ted Williams). The global interconnectivity allows fans across the world to become a cohesive unit on a single platform, say like Facebook or Twitter. So while internet can turn an artist into a star, it can also spit them out and never give them another look when things go wrong. There have been ‘social media assassinations’ in the past and Justin Bieber is just an example of how powerful this beast can be.
So here’s a little something about Bieber. What started off as a YouTube sensation became a worldwide phenomenon in just a few years. ‘Bieber Fever’ caught on and the ever growing ‘Belieber’ community placed the teen idol on a pedestal reserved for icons exclusively (Strike 1).
To some music aficionados, this was blasphemy to say the least. Here’s this young boy who is a mere novice but is being compared to legends like Michael Jackson. Rock legends like Slash were being asked to comment on the new kid on the block while Bieber’s mentor Usher faithfully defended his protégée. What followed was a hugely entertaining (for neutral observers at least) social media war between the diehard beliebers and the ‘non-beliebers’. We are talking an all out Holy war.
Then came the egg throwing, drag racing, breaking up with Gomez, alcohol influenced driving, resisting arrest, brothel patronizing and crazy partying antics. All highlighted extensively on social media. The rebellious behavior just didn’t go with the face and persona, some would say. This shows just how much power and influence social media has over an artist’s career. He lost quite a lot of fans on Twitter and the ball finally dropped for Bieber with the “Loser Keeps Bieber” billboard at the Olympic hockey game between USA and Canada. (Strike 2)
So for a teenager who’s thrown into the spotlight as one of the biggest stars on the planet, starts to lose it. Suddenly everyone sits up and takes notice. The frantic hype surrounding his career and the glaring media spotlight on his everyday life made for an intoxicating combination. To put it simply, he got carried away and committed some acts which brought him a truck load of negative publicity.
The strong vocal non-belieber community was quick to jump on these moments and all of a sudden #Bieber became the rage. Don’t take me wrong, Bieber has no one to blame but himself and his fans in a way. Egging your neighbor’s house, peeing in public, drunken drag racing or resisting arrest are all just dumb and irresponsible; these are quite similar to loading a gun and seeing how the bullet would look coming out. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Social Media is a double edged sword and it cuts both ways. Needless to say in case of Bieber, it already has. The final straw came when the ‘Belieber’ community, as unapologetic as the star they faithfully represented, took to social media and got massacred. (Strike 3 – Better luck next time)
Unfortunately for Bieber, as a result of his ‘meltdown’, the thing that really matters doesn’t seem to matter anymore; and that is his music. The public is more focused on his antics and he is now considered more of a tabloid fodder than anything else. But at the end of the day, he’s still young and has his whole life in front of him. If he can pull his act together, Bieber might actually become famous for the music he produces once again, and not for a sensational tweet.
Image courtesy: By Novvik2002 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons