As you must have already heard, there was a picture of Bieber floating on the internet smoking a roll of marijuana (as alleged by some) at a party in his hotel room, a day after breaking up with Selena Gomez. Now, try to imagine what one could do with pictures like that.

Before you come up with heaps of ideas, keep this fact in mind; the size of Bieber's and Gaga's follower bases on Twitter are cited as a reason why marketers should pay attention to Twitter, due to their ability to reach millions of people with a single tweet. Also, Bieber fans are teenage kids and children that age are gullible. Obviously, this phenomenon is great for commercialization, but at the same time it is a breeding ground for online pranksters.

Earlier, there were rumours that Bieber had been contracted with cancer and some fake Twitter accountholders had encouraged his fans to go #BaldforBieber. This time over, something similar but unnecessarily dangerous; the concept of Operation Cut for Bieber  is to encourage ‘Beliebers’ to cut themselves and post the results on social media websites in protest of their hero’s use of weed, after breaking up with Selena Gomez.

Certainly, it isn’t a joke; the idea of having a laugh at the immaturity of ‘Beleibers’ is understandable, but not at the cost of this sort of bloodshed. It is arguable whether fans have actually cut themselves, but the issue of self-harm is a rather serious one. On the flipside, there are many who have shown their disdain on Twitter. Miley Cyrus, another teenage icon, posted: “I really hope this cutting shit is just a bunch of punk ass haters who have nothing better to do & no one out there harming themselves.”

And then, the parodies:

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