Dear Justin Bieber,

You annoy me. Maybe not quite as much as the Jonas Brothers, but definitely more than Nickelodeon’s post-‘90s television shows.

You’re innocently cute on the February Vanity Fair cover and in your 3-D — really? — documentary ‘Never Say Never,’ which is premiering this Friday. And that head of hair makes me want to canoe down a serene river beneath a rainbow surrounded by butterflies.

Damn you, Bieber.

To say you’ve got the world on a string is putting it mildly. You dropped a bomb of preteen bliss on the entire western hemisphere. A bomb that has infected every girl under the age of 15 with an incurable fever — Bieber fever. Gross. And I don’t think there’s anything more obnoxious than your fever-infected fans. They tweet kissy faces to you, plaster your face all over the blogs and crop their pictures into that dumb ‘Face in Hole’ photo.

However, I’ve since realized that once upon a time, not long ago, I was a Bieber fan — most of us 20-something-year-olds were.

But his name wasn’t Justin Bieber. It was Justin Timberlake. And he performed in the glorious band *NSYNC. You were a mere toddler, Bieber, but you missed a magical era in which boy bands ruled the radio and made up for their mediocre vocals with cheesy choreographed dances.

Consider yourself lucky, Bieber. *NSYNC didn’t have the social media outlets to skyrocket them to idol status. But you did.

Seriously, imagine what life would have been like if Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Myspace and PerezHilton had existed 10 years ago. The Backstreet Boys-*NSYNC rivalry would have been so much better! Think of how easy it would have been to shut up those stupid Backstreet Boys worshippers, who — as any true *NSYNC fan would agree — were trailer trash.

We could have tweeted, blogged, status-ed every time *NSYNC beat the Backstreet Boys on the charts, appeared in more photos in J-14 Magazine, reported higher record sales, sold out their concert faster and had more music-video views on YouTube. The list of opportunities would have been endless. We could have wiped the Backstreet Boys off the face of the earth. I’m almost mad Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t born earlier.

I’ll admit my 12-year-old self certainly would have jumped at the opportunity to default a cropped picture of JT and me: a picture of us holding hands on a beautiful beach, where dolphins outlined the ocean. In a place where no one could ever find us…

But anyway.

Thank your lucky stars, Biebs. You exploded onto the scene at the opportune time, just ask your 7,114,072 followers on Twitter and 20,699,519 fans on Facebook. I would have created fake Facebook accounts just to ensure that *NSYNC had more Facebook fans than the Backstreet Boys.

On a side note, I still don’t understand how the Backstreet Boys were even successful. I’ll give them ‘Larger than Life,’ but ‘I Want it that Way’ might have been the worst song in the history of pop music, and I’m including Jessica Simpson’s ‘A Public Affair.’

In the end, Biebs, I guess my annoyance has slightly diminished, and I’m happy for you. You’re well on your way to solidifying yourself as the next JT, as long as puberty doesn’t get in the way. But slow your roll before you stumble down the wrong path and turn into the next Aaron Carter. Seriously, Taylor Swift doesn’t even have a documentary out yet, and I’m much more interested in the life that inspired all those sort of country, sort of pop, achy-breaky-heart songs.

Keep that in mind, and you’re golden. And I’m sure JT would agree that ‘God must have spent a little more time on you. ‘

Or at least that hair.

Best wishes,

Lauren

Lauren Tousignant is a junior writing and communication and rhetorical studies major. Her column appears occasionally. She can be reached at letousig@syr.edu.

 

Published on February 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm