epictring wrote:
While you can argue its not directly his fault. There was a top twitter trend this or last week something along the lines of "#cutforbieber" where kids started cutting themselves for him and posted the pictures (which I will not post, 18+) online.
There's a general point about responsibility here. It's not Bieber's fault at all. Just like it wasn't The Beatles fault when Charles Manson heard coded messages in the White Album. Just like it wasn't Judas Priest's fault when two kids who were fans of theirs took their own lives. Just like it wasn't Slip Knot's fault when some kid with severe problems decided to take a sword to school and start killing his class mates.
All these incidents are terribly sad, of course they are, but they're not the fault of the celebrities whose name is invoked. Anybody who is going to cut themselves because of something they read on Twitter had problems already. It's sad, it's a terrible thing to think about, but it is also not the fault of the celebrities.
This was apparently because he was caught smoking marijuana or something. Thats fine and dandy, but if your main audience is 6 year old girls (like my little sister). I feel you have a responsibility since you're their role model. I mean, Justin isn't even an adult yet, what is he going to display in 5 years?
Well this is not new. Way back when there was a judge who was very hard on Mick Jagger and Keith Richards because, he said, their status in the eyes of their fans meant that they had extra responsibility. The sentences he dished out led to the famous "who breaks a butterfly on a wheel" editorial in The Times.
It's easier for old farts like me. I know better now than to think that any famous person must have a better moral compass than me or ipso facto be better able to navigate their way through the tricky waters of life. In the meantime whether Bieber (or any other pop star) has set himself up as a role model is debatable. If you want to add up the score card then be sure to factor in his statements on pre-marital sex and his sponsorship of a charity that helps troubled school kids - which is more than Jagger and Richards would have had on their card.
I understand he is not the first artists/celeb to follow this path, but it just angers me how they do this and then stage an act of charity the next day.
Well I'm not sure what that means. It's possible that I'm not fully up to speed on the news. I'll tell you what though, if Bieber did and said nothing he'd be attacked for being callous. Celebrities can't win. Damned if they do. Damned if they don't.
