Almost every time I go to a classic rock video on YouTube, I see people dissing Justin Bieber. Often, an insult towards Bieber is the video’s highest-rated comment. Often enough, I see a highly-rated comment that says “really, why do you people keep talking about Justin Bieber on this sort of video?”, but that only proves the point: people love dissing Justin Bieber.
This strikes me as really extreme. Yes, he is a teenage heart-throb. But what brought about the situation in which this kid is hated so much that virtually all classic rock YouTube videos have statements like “I can’t believe kids listen to Justin Bieber instead of this shit” or “Bieber is a fag, Beatles=God”.
I think because he’s seen as a “flavor of the month” deliberately and cynically pushed by media conglomerates onto a young public that hasn’t yet developed the experience to see they’re being manipulated into buying into a prefab product solely meant to separate them from their (and their parents’) money.
You see it all the time, really. (Both the action - YMMV on whether it’s true in this case - and the reaction.)
I don’t know either. Quite often I’ll see that a friend on Facebook has posted some Justin Bieber hate video or something, and I don’t get it - these are childless women in their thirties who I know don’t listen to commercial radio, so why do they even care about Justin Bieber?
How can supposed adults think it’s OK to talk like that about a kid? Wishing him dead because… because… actually, it seems to be mostly ‘because it’s fashionable to hate him.’ And that’s even weirder, since two of the people I know who are the worst for this are lesbians with lots of trans friend and lots of the Bieber hate is homophobic.
My daughter likes him and gets some stick for it. She can’t understand why so many people go on about him having a high voice, since that’s hardly unusual in male singers.
The hate also gets REALLY extreme - detailed talk about violent death, rape, etc; it’s probably meant to be funny, but it’s posted in a really straightforward way without a punchline or anything to indicate humour.
Sure, teenybopper stars can be a little annoying, but he’s no worse than any of the others. It’s really weird.
Because he became a literal overnight sensation despite only average talent; he hangs out with and is encouraged by the ridiculously famous for no discernible reason; he has written a fucking autobiography even though he’s only been famous for about three weeks; and he has a stupid haircut.
I think that’s reason enough to hate the smarmy little bugger.
God knows I’m not a Justin Bieber fan (though if I was I would just say so, a life spent worrying about what others think of your musical choices is a sad life indeed), but I ask myself this question regularly.
I just do not know why people get so worked up about it - I mean, Christ on a bike, it’s just a singer, nobody is forcing anyone to buy his records, and radio these days is so fragmented/irrelevant that it can be quite simple to avoid hearing him very often.
I was right at the target age of the teen-pop explosion at the start of the last decade, right into it from Spice Girls in '96 through to the rise of hip-hop in 2001/2 that basically killed it, but I don’t remember any hate like this. I remember people being like “ugh, that sucks” and then just moving on with their lives. What kind of person sits around on the internet making violent/homophobic/cruel jokes about some singing kid and his pre-teen fans?
Part of it is probably down to the fact that he is presented as a straight-up pop star, and ever since teen-pop died at the start of the last decade, most American male singers have been presented with either having an urban or pop-rock edge - yeah, Bieber has Ludacris on one of his songs and he just did a collaboration with Kanye West but he’s too young and too “pretty” to really be considered as having any edge at all. So what is he? He’s a pop star. And because pop is stereotypically (and wrongly assumed to be) a genre enjoyed solely by preteens and gays, in the minds of internet idiots, Justin Bieber is gay and bad and wrong.
Look at me calling out people for wasting their time with Bieber hate, and here I am wasting my time deconstructing the Bieber hate. :smack:
I think it’s because a boy his age ought to be flopping around shouting himself hoarse in a garage band and generally displaying mucho angst instead of being all pussified and pandering to girls in training bras, if that.
Because many people in western society are whiny, angry dickheads. I wouldn’t walk across the street to see Justin Bieber perform but I have seen a few things that indicate that he doesn’t take himself nearly as seriously as his critics do. I think that is a very fine thing.
I’m certain the OP is already aware some people hate the kind of music Justin Bieber makes - I think the question is why this particular singer has aroused such an extreme level of hatred.
This. But I don’t hate Bieber for it - if someone had told me at that age I could have fame, fortune and millions of teenyboppers at my feet I think I would have had a hard time saying “no”.
Mostly I hate the music industry. Bieber will eventually get older and will go the way of Britney into desperate irrelevance, and some new sensation will be raised up to part the masses of hormonal pre-teens from their cash.