The schemers at gratuitous content hive mind 4chan countered their own overly successful foils Monday evening when members pulled the ultimate Justin Bieber bait-and-switch—repurposing the same trolling efforts that made #cutforbieber a worldwide trending topic on Twitter in an effort to do the same for its successor, the far-less-dangerous-but-just-as-parentally-aggravating #smoke4bieber, a nod to the Canadian pop star’s newly discovered affection for smoking marijuana.
The dustup started shortly before 6pm EST Monday, when an anonymous 4channer went to the community’s random /b/ forum and posted a calculated plan of action.
“Time to counter troll!!!!” the individual wrote. “We will now fuck with more kids by influencing them to smoke. It will still piss people off, and will make some stupid 12yr old smoke. At the end of the day, Bieber takes all the blame.”
Over the weekend, TMZ published photos of Bieber allegedly smoking marijuana, thus ceremoniously revealing to the world the truth that an über-popular musician from the perpetually pot-friendly country of Canada actually does like to toke up.
4channers jumped on the opportunity to continue with the antics, writing that “this one might actually piss people off” and agreeing to go all in on an effort to popularize #smoke4bieber and get kids who wouldn’t otherwise partake to try out some cannabinoid delicacies that their parents probably wouldn’t appreciate.
The group even managed to get community members on Reddit involved, appealing to pot-loving subreddit r/trees that encouraging cutting is wrong and “we need to get a reversal on this bad light!”
How successful was round two? The horribly dubbed #cutforbieber hashtag, which encouraged kids to cut themselves in response to Bieber’s newly publicized vice, rounded up more than 26,000 Twitter hits in a 12-hour period, according to statistics made available through Topsy.
#smoke4bieber was significantly less popular by comparison. Since launching Monday evening, the initiative was only able to muster 273 mentions on the microblogging site.
A valiant effort, but nothing worth lighting up over, to be sure.
Photo via DobbyLoca/Twitter