14 DAY TRIAL // At this year’s Grammy Awards, Justin Bieber, the favorite of the evening, lost Best New Artist to “relative unknown” Esperanza Spalding. The Biebs may have taken this lightly, but the Beliebers, his fans, did not.
Gawker reports that, within minutes after the winner was announced – to everyone’s surprise, since literally no one saw this coming, Esperanza winning – her Wikipedia page had already been vandalized.
Most of the nasty, derogatory comments were edited in by Bieber fans, Gawker believes, but there were also some who were clearly happy that the teen idol had not won, having been beaten by a jazz artist whose name was unfamiliar to the general public.
“If you were just Googling ‘Esperanza Spalding’ – tonight’s surprise winner of the Grammy for Best New Artist – you may have been surprised to learn from her Wikipedia page that ‘SHE IS [expletive]-ING REATARD,’ or that her middle name is either ‘Justin’ or ‘Quesadilla,’ or, for that matter, that she beat out ‘Nominee and gay favorite Justina Bieber’ for the award,” Gawker writes.
“Far be it from us to cast aspersion on the accuracy of a user-edited font of knowledge like Wikipedia, but it certainly seems possible that fans of losing nominee Justin Bieber (or, perhaps, people who like to throw poop around the internet) may have been ‘vandalizing’ her Wikipedia page, adding possibly-untrue facts,” the e-zine writes.
Among the “possibly” untrue facts, Gawker lists her win for Best New Artist, “even though no one has ever heard of her! Yay!” as one user so directly put it.
The introduction on Esperanza’s Wikipedia page ended – in caps – with a hateful message telling her she should die for winning, clearly edited in by a Belieber.
“JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT GO DIE IN A HOLE. WHO THE HECK ARE YOU ANYWAY?” it read.
Then, another one from a non-Bieber fan: “HaHa Justin Bieber, you’re just a little boy with no Grammy for Best New Artist.irehjbpojeh[ker”
Shortly after the Grammys, Justin Bieber took to his Twitter to address the so-called “controversy” around his not winning Best New Artist: there’s always next year, he said with optimism.
