If you’ve been seeing some teenaged girls running round with shaved heads, crying over Justin Bieber, they’ve been pranked.
Seems there’s a Twitter hoax going around suggesting Bieber has cancer, and people should shave their heads in support of the teen idol’s struggles, reports Mashable.
It’s all just a skillfully done tall Internet hoax crafted by people on 4Chan, the image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images.
The hoax, which started on Oct. 22, began with a screenshot that looked like it was a tweet from Entertainment Tonight’s official Twitter account, claiming that the Biebs was diagnosed with cancer, and telling fans to shave their head and then visit #BaldforBieber on Twitter to talk about it. The screenshot also had a photo that looked like a tweet from Bieber’s official account, thanking ET for its support.
Then, after the tweets came out, a new website, BaldforBieber.com, launched showing Photoshopped tweets from the pop star thanking the fans for support and fake news stories confirming the rumor. But if you go there now, you’ll see a funny .gif of a troll thanking fans for support and links to the old site and a letter from Bieber’s legal people ordering the pranksters to cease and desist the website.
The original website also had a gallery of photos of people who supposedly shaved their heads in support of Bieber, and fake emails from Bieber’s doctors.
Rest easily, girls, Bieber is fine and just the target of yet another prank. We hope you didn’t shave your heads, but if you did, we hope you’ll tweet pictures of yourselves!