Study Finds Half of All Bieliebers Actually Biebnostic and/or Imaginary

A shocking report from the analytics hub, Socialbakers, confirms a sneaking suspicion we all sort of had: half of Justin Bieber’s 37,274,495 fans on Twitter are not really his fans. In fact, many of them are not real at all.

While most of us gave up creating imaginary friends a long time ago, it turns out Bieber has been collecting them like the Pokemon cards of yore. Or pogs, if you were more into those.

“Often celebrities or large corporations will ‘buy’ Twitter accounts to increase their numbers and make their brand seem more popular,” says Caitlin Abber, a social media expert from Brooklyn, New York. “But what they are really getting are a bunch of phony accounts that will create zero interaction, thus weakening the reputation of the brand.”

When calculating what makes a Twitter account “fake”, Socialbakers takes into account how often, if ever, the account has tweeted, as well as what they are Tweeting about. Tweeters who simply tweet one word phrases, such as “diet”, “make money”, and “work from home”, are often robots. Which, it turns out, makes my entire to do list a robot.

Before this shocking revelation, Justin Bieber was the most popular person on Twitter. Now he is second only to Lady Gaga, whose fans are desperately awaiting some sort of comeback. (Come on, Mother Monster, you can do it!!)

When pressed for comment, Bieber declined, saying, “My feelings are hurt, and I don’t want to talk to anyone but Hubert.*”  Upon further investigation, Hubert was found to be a sock monkey that wears $50,000 diamond incrusted sock monkey shoes. This comes as no surprise, as Bieber’s real monkey was taken away after the world in general decided it was a bad idea for him to keep a wild animal.

 (image c/o Getty)

*Just kidding, we never talked to Bieber.