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July 20th, 2010

Bieber Does Battle with Star Wars Kid; Wins Title As King of Youtube

by Adam Hildebrand

YOUTUBE, USA –The lives of 22 Justin Bieber fans have been lost to Bieber Fever after 5 months of grueling music video watching that has some questioning our future as a nation. What was considered a mild hit has quickly transmogrified into a stampeding epidemic among the nation’s youth. Some are celebrating, and others are left baffled, confused, and generally bent out of shape.

A recent Business Insider article, featured on The Daily Swarm, reported that Justin Bieber’s hit music video “Baby” has rushed to 245 million views in just over 5 months. When confronted with news of this magnitude, statisticians from all over the country immediately began crunching numbers. With a running time of 3 minutes and 45 seconds, “Baby” has been estimated to have garnered 15,312,500 hours of watch time. This translates into 638,021 days, or 1,748 years, collectively spent watching this music video about the romantic exploits of a 16-year-old boy in a bowling alley.

According to the CIA Factbook, the average lifespan of an American is about 78.24 years. When factored in, this statistic shows that just over 22 American lives have been spent watching “Baby.” The notion of taking 22 healthy Americans from their mothers immediately after birth and forcing them to watch the music video until they die is appalling to many. For others, it’s the picture of a life well spent.

Sociologists have called the time spent watching a Justin Bieber video “dead time” for its apparent inherent lack of value, both personally and communally. One sociologist wrote, “When considering the fact that this inexperienced boy from Canada can’t possibly have anything of real substantive value to offer to the American collective consciousness in the area of love, the thought of spending time filling one’s mind with such nugatory lyrics is mind-boggling. Unless one truly loves his music, the act of listening to a Bieber album is inherently pointless.”

When confronted with the statistics, one historian began citing the numerous kingdoms and cultures that had risen and fallen within less time than the estimated 1,748 years spent watching “Baby.” Experts are calling this the “greatest loss of life since ‘Mmmbop’,” the Hanson single from their 1997 album, Middle of Nowhere.

One Fox News commentator, who will remain nameless, has called the 5 month “Baby” epidemic a “tragedy.” He said, “This Canadian has stolen countless hours from our beloved youth, when they should all be getting out there picking up trades, voting, and generally contributing to society. This is just the kind of thing that goes on when you get lax about immigration.” The commentator went on to call Bieber’s music “unAmerican.” He then scribbled illegibly on a chalk board attempting to illustrate Bieber’s possible links with Al-Qaeda and other terrorists organizations.

When asked what he thought of the “loss of life”, a businessman from Granada Hills, California, said, “Think of all the great things that could have been done with that time. They’re all so young. So much youth wasted. All this for a music video? I couldn’t possibly imagine a bigger squandering of time and resources.”

But not all have been so pessimistic about the massive number of views Bieber’s video has attracted. Kasey Fletcher, a “long time” fan of Justin Bieber, said, “I love that Justin Bieber is the new King of Youtube. Me and my friends have been working our butts off for this title for nearly 8 months.” Though the music video has only been on Youtube for roughly 5 months, Kacey cited a Justin Biber fan site that leaked information of the then forthcoming video 3 months prior to its release. When they heard the news, Kacey and her friends immediately started “training.” “We would test ourselves, and see how long we could stare at the computer screen before our eyes started to burn. We never watched any of the other videos [on Youtube] because we didn’t want to give them any more views and increase their numbers. Me and my friends even did endurance tests, where we’d stay up as long as possible, or until our parents made us go to bed. We wanted to make sure sleep wouldn’t be an obstacle.”

Kasey brings up a point that gets to the real nut of this article. Keeping in mind our previous official declaration of a strict anti-Bieber policy, I want to reassure you that this is not ultimately a story about Bieber. After all, Justin Bieber isn’t the one watching this music video millions of times over. No, this is the product of the determined hard work of millions of youth across the nation. Never in the history of mankind have so many people sat in front of their computers or gazed into their mobile devices for such a grand and unified purpose. This achievement is a beautiful illustration of the things we can accomplish if we pool our resources, and give it that old fashioned American elbow grease that helped us stomp the Nazis back in World War II. Yes, the future is bright, America.

(NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: This is a work of fiction … except for the statistics about “Baby.” Sadly, those are not fictional.)