#BaldforBieber? Don't Beliebe it!

It’s tough to be a Belieber when trolls trick you into shaving your head because you think Justin Bieber has cancer! Yes, this happened. In 2012, internet trolls set into motion a pretty complex prank trying to trick Justin Bieber‘s fans into shaving their heads. These pranksters hacked the Twitter account of Entertainment Tonight and posted a photo of a snapshot of a tweet. The tweet said Bieber had been diagnosed with cancer, and his fans should go bald to show their support along with a picture of two bald girls, one holding a sign that read 'Bald for Bieber'. The tweet read, ‘Popstar Justin Bieber was diagnosed with cancer earlier this morning. Bieber fans are shaving their heads to show their support.’

The tweet was soon deleted, but not before it caught the eye of many young Beliebers and the hashtag #BaldForBieber started trending. Another fake tweet in the form of a comment to the original tweet was also seen in the snapshot, this time from Justin Bieber himself. It read, ‘Several of my AWESOME supporters are shaving their heads to help get me through this! I love my fans! #BaldforBieber.’ This trend also poured over to social networking website Facebook and video-sharing website YouTube. A page was created on Facebook which luckily did not take off, with only a few links being posted on it. However, a few videos were posted on YouTube that showed fans shaving their heads. One video showed a young girl smiling with a written statement reading ‘I went bald for Justin. Will you??? #FORJUSTIN’. However, most fans seemed to have outsmarted the pranksters this time and did not believe the hoax. One fan, for instance, tweeted, ‘It's sad that girls are going #BaldForBieber because I bet if one of their family members had cancer, they wouldn't even shave their heads.’

A Reddit user who claims to have been in on this prank said, ‘This is actually not true at all. I was there when we started this. Somebody made a few twitter accounts, we edited Wikipedia, we spammed chat rooms, and we even posted here on Reddit. Somebody made a few fake news posts, too, which were convincing, but without a link, it wasn't enough’. There had been no official response to this hoax from Justin or the entertainment channel, but Bieber's bodyguard took to Twitter to deny the news.