Justin Bieber was recently photographed smoking marijuana in California, where recreational use is illegal, and his obsessed fans have gone to an extreme and disturbing level to get him to notice them.
A campaign called #CutForBieber started after a group of people posted photos of bloody blades and slashed wrists with the hashtag mentioned earlier. The campaign urges Bieber fans to harm themselves as a protest of Bieber using drugs.
The first posts in the campaign were part of a harmful and disgusting prank by members of the message board known as 4chan. One user in the board said, “Let’s start a cut yourself for bieber campaign. Tweet a bunch of pics of people cutting themselves and claim we did it because bieber was smoking weed. See if we can get some little girls to cut themselves.”
The campaign seems to have worked so far, as fans devastated by Bieber’s drug use news took to Twitter to post messages and pictures that featuring cut arms with blood. One of his fans wrote “@justinbieber stop smoking weed or I might actually kill myself.”
It seems as though the campaign has worked, with varying results, as some have participated in it and other have mocked it. Those who have mocked the campaign tweeted photos of themselves cutting paper with scissors. One of Bieber’s friends, Miley Cyrus, tweeted, “#cut4bieber? Cutting is NOT something to joke about. There are people who are actually suffering from self-harm, this is so disrespectful.”
Bieber has not responded to the campaign yet.