Making the Cut

Have you heard about the latest thing "trending" on Twitter?  (Whatever the fuck that means.)  It's called "#cutforBieber" and all the cool kids are doing it!  Apparently a video surfaced of Justin Bieber smoking pot with his friends or something, and this prompted a bunch of teenage girls to cut themselves and post pictures of it on Twitter along with their heart-aching appeals of love, sorrow, and devotion - the idea being, I suppose, that they'll stop hurting themselves as soon as Justin stops hurting himself with marijuana.  Isn't that adorable?

Now, I know how incredibly dumb teenage girls can be when it comes to their crushes and obsessions, and I don't want to add my voice to that pointless chorus of "What is this world coming to!?", but seriously, what... the... FUCK!?  There is an whole laundry list of emotional sicknesses at work here, most significantly this idea of hurting yourself to make someone else feel guilty.  "Oh Justin, look what you made me do!"  Uggghhh.  That's wonderful, sweetheart.  You might want to keep a bottle of bleach handy for when your first real boyfriend breaks up with you.  Sure you'll be throwing your entire life away for a cheap punchline, but think of the lesson you'll teach him!

I also love that they're doing this over something as innocuous as marijuana.  Way to go D.A.R.E. program.  You've drilled the idea so deeply into these kid's heads that pot is just as bad as heavy drugs like cocaine and heroin, that they're willingly to mutilate themselves in protest when they see their favorite androgynous celebrity taking a couple of hits from the bong.  Maybe we can get them to guillotine themselves with a paper cutter if they catch the Beebs trying tobacco.  Sure, they won't have heads anymore, but at least we can thank God their lips will never touch a cigarette.  And there's nothing like a self-righteous gesture that's a million times more fucked up than the thing they're outraged about.

Of course, if you go to Twitter now and search "#cutforBieber", you'll mostly find tweets of people making fun of this abomination: people taking screen shots of Windows' cut and paste function, people cutting paper with scissors, people spreading ketchup on their arms for fake blood.  One guy even went the extra mile and made a whole sandwich out of his arm.  Ah, I love you sometimes, internet!  But then, mixed in with these gags, you have people whining that "cutting is a serious problem, guys."  Apparently, the full time cutters are annoyed that these Beiber freaks are cutting in on their action.  Either that, or it's a handful of those soppy dishrags that treat everything like it's a "disease."  No, sometimes kids are just fucked up, and they have fucked up ideas, and they do fucked up things for attention.  If you'd stop patting yourself on the back for being such a soft "caring" slice of milquetoast for five seconds, you'd see that treating them like they have a "disease" just plays right into their problem.

One girl, who posted a particularly bloody picture of her arm, apologized because it didn't come out right; she wasn't able to spell his name with the razor the way she wanted.  That's alright, dear.  That's just fine.  Don't worry about it.  I'm sure you tried your best.  You made an effort and that's all that matters.  I'm sure Justin will appreciate that and I'm sure he'll think your sliced up arm looks lovely just the way it is.

Maybe just send him a cake next time.