Burning Question: Is Justin Bieber Purposely Trying to Alienate Fans?


I watched Justin Bieber's speech at the Billboard Music Awards, the one he made after he was booed. Is he deliberately trying to tick off fans or what?
— L. Labile

Oh, don't stop with Bieber's entitled whining at the Billboards. There's that small matter of the baby capuchin monkey the singer accepted as a gift ... only Bieber kind of forgot that the animal needed, you know, vaccinations and import papers. Mally the monkey subsequently got confiscated during the German leg of Bieber's concert tour, leaving the Teutons to rack up the expenses for Mally's care.

Bieber also has indulged in righteous Twitter rants about his music sales posted myriad photos of himself shirtless; complained about having the "worst birthday ever" because a club wouldn't accommodate his underage friends; added Holocaust victim Anne Frank to his horde of groupies; allegedly spat in somebody's water bottle; and shared a recent snapshot of himself palling around with noted Chris Brown.

So, yeah: Either Bieber really wants to alienate fans, or he just doesn't know what he's doing.

For the record, crisis PR experts say it's probably the latter.

Take that speech that Bieber gave at the Billboards: "I think I'm doing a pretty good job ... I really just want to say it should really be about the music. It should be about the craft, the craft that I'm making. This is not a gimmick. I'm an artist and I should be taken seriously and all this other bull should not be spoken of."

As you wish, your grace.

"Bieber could have said something great with that acceptance speech by keeping it super positive," crisis PR expert Cherie Kerr pointed out to me. "Something to the effect of, ‘Sometimes I don't make the greatest decisions, but thanks for bearing with me.'

"I don't know who is counseling him right now for PR, but Justin really needs to distance himself from the negative right now."

Agreed, says fellow crisis PR consultant Joe Cutaia.

"It is clear he is not listening to his publicist," he told me. "No one in their right mind would condone this behavior. Could he be doing this on purpose? Perhaps ... [But] it seems the same audiences that launched his career aren't too keen on what he has become, and therefore have lashed out against the young icon.

"He needs to revisit his roots, and the same core values that launched his career. Who owns a monkey? No one. His fans can no longer relate to him and that led to retaliation."

Such as, say, booing.

Maybe Bieber should just get himself a cat.

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