If Internet pranksters have their way, Justin Bieber will be performing in one of the world's most oppressive regimes. Communist North Korea is currently leading an online poll on Bieber's My World Tour website, where the 16-year-old singer asked his fans to choose which country he should tour in next. Bieber didn't put any place off limits and, of course, Web-based troublemakers took full advantage of the trusting Canadian heartthrob.
Users of the website 4chan-an influential Internet subculture that introduced the world to lolcats -- made sure North Korea received over a half million votes, catapulting it from 24th place to 1st place. That puts the despotic communist country ahead of Israel by about 5,000 thousand votes -- and if nothing changes before the contest wraps on July 7, it will make North Korea the winner.
Considering almost no one in North Korea is allowed on the Internet and the country's restrictive media probably doesn't give the mop-haired Bieber much coverage, it's fairly unlikely that any of those half million votes came from actual North Korean citizens.
[Photo: Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian hold hands during shoot]
Regardless of the online poll's outcome, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Bieber's tour manager can probably agree on one thing: the adorable, elf-like singer almost certainly won't be adding the harsh regime to his world tour.
This isn't the only thing the Internet has done to punk Bieber lately, though. Over the holiday weekend, hackers broke into Bieber's YouTube videos and redirected preteen fans to false articles about their idol dying in a car crash. And those were actually some of the more kid-friendly websites to which fans of the 16-year-old singer were redirected.
The rumors were so prevalent that the boy himself made a point of tweeting about it.
"Let's take some time to answer some crazy rumors...I'm not dead," Bieber posted on his Twitter account. "I had to check on this one...but it turns out I'm alive."
[Gallery: See Justin Bieber's 10 best looks]
Furthermore, he also assured fans that he's "not Peter Pan," demonstrating that the music sensation has a sense of humor about himself. Being a wildly popular teenage superstar probably takes the sting out of being the butt of Internet jokes like these.
Internet Pranksters Attempt to Send Justin Bieber Tour to North Korea - Stop The Presses!
No really Justin?
Too bad yahoo writers aren't so smart to explain HOW the website got hacked/bypassed etc.
2nd news source
Justin Bieber's tour page has become the target of an internet joke.
A public vote on the Canadian singer's My World Tour page asked users which country he should tour next, with no restrictions on the nations that could be voted on.
This spurred users of imageboard website 4chan to nominate North Korea, with the vote now turning viral.
There are now almost half a million votes to send Bieber to the secretive communist nation.
The contest, which ends at 0600 on 7 July, saw North Korea move from 24th to 1st place in less than two days, several thousand votes ahead of Israel.
Given the fact that almost all citizens of North Korea are denied internet access and there are restrictive controls over all media, it is unlikely that any of the votes have actually come from within the country.
A spokesman for the North Korean Embassy in London told BBC News that any application for 16-year-old Bieber to tour would be dealt with by its mission to the United Nations, although the matter would be referred to Pyongyang.
Hate campaign
Justin Bieber has been target of a number of internet pranks in recent weeks.
Last month, a post on 4chan urged users to all search for the term "Justin Bieber Syphilis" pushing it to the top of Google Trend's Hot Searches list.
And over the weekend, Justin Bieber videos on YouTube were the target for internet hackers, redirecting users to adult websites or triggering pop-up messages saying that the Canadian singer had died in a car crash.
Google temporarily suspended commenting on videos and issued a statement saying: "We took swift action to fix a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability." The vulnerability hole was patched a few hours later.
His Last FM page was also hit, with photos of the singer replaced by pornographic images.
There have also been false rumours circulating that Bieber had died, that he had joined a cult, and that his mother was offered $50,000 to pose topless in Playboy magazine.
"Let's take some time to answer some crazy (rumours)... I'm not dead," Bieber wrote in just one of his Twitter postings.
And last week he posted that "My mum is a moral woman... let's just leave that one for what it is... because that rumour just grossed and weirded me out."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10506482.stm
the cat needs to keep in mind thatBBC is better than yahoo