A couple of nights ago I thought I had a fever. I felt distinctly viral. Achy. Hot and then cold. Turns out it wasn’t a fever, it was BIEBERFEVER. Actually, that’s rubbish. It was just dehydration. No bull. But I had spent some time during the day pondering this Justin Bieber phenomenon as I watched pictures of THE RIOT SQUAD trying to control the rioting teenage girls trying to get close to their love object, a small boy with ridiculous hair whose voice hasn’t yet broken and who looks younger than my 12 year old.
Here he is on Sunrise this week, after his outdoor concert had to be cancelled due to the above mentioned riot.
Watching him and the reports of fan hysteria I really was puzzled about BieberFeber. Then I remembered who I was in love with when I was a tween and teen. There was Adam Ant. Boy George. Leif Garret. Two of them were gay and almost in drag. The other was extremely pretty, soft and young. All were sexually neutral and totally unthreatening. And so it is with Justin Bieber.
If you’re still wondering who the heck he is, here is a cheat sheet.
If you don’t have a tween or pre-tween in your house, keep reading. If you do – you already know.
Justin Bieber is arguably the biggest pop star ever launched by YouTube. Bieber’s personal brand has leveraged social media to new heights…or is it lows?
The sixteen year old Canadian singer was catapulted from anonymity to superstardom in three years. Living in Stratford, Ontario, at the tender age of 13 he competed in “Stratford Idol” and posted the videos on YouTube. Ten million views later, he was signed by Usher. Following a breakthrough single, “One Time,” with his debut release of “My World” last November, Bieber had topped 100 million YouTube views.
Bieber is a new phenomenon – spawned by digital/viral social media; a crossover digital/analog/print phenomenon…one foot in Internet stardom, and the other on old-school TV, with print sandwiched in between.
On Twitter, the ultimate real-time metric of celebrity success moment by moment, Bieber’s name was tweet-checked 84,846 times in one day. He occupies a solid holding pattern on Twitter’s “Trending Topics” list.
One of the most interesting thing (apart from how the hell he manages to keep that hair all over his face without going batshit crazy) is how he is an artist who was really created by fans via social media instead of a record company. That’s kind of organic.
Do you get it? Have you got girls in your life who are afflicted with Bieberfever?
Top Comments
well... boy-george...
Someone of my age having Bieber-fever is a jailable offence I believe.
It's a running joke in our house. When my husband had a temp of 38 degrees last week, we decided he must have Bieber-fever. My 6 year old thinks the name is Justin Bever, so he thinks everyone has Bever-Fever. JB might be sixteen, which is pretty young anyway, but he looks about 9! Good on him though, anyone who can still make girls faint with that hairstyle has my vote.