A tweet from teen superstar Justin Bieber has unwittingly exposed some of the shallower elements of Twitter, causing a minor controversy in the process.
Bieber, in between the South African shows that capped off his most recent worldwide tour, tweeted:
No ad to show here.
Live life full
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) May 10, 2013
The tweet was retweeted over 100 000 times.
Bieber then retweeted an unofficial Grumpy Cat account, which suggested that if the pop star could get thousands of retweets with random words, so could it.
Justin Bieber got 100,000 retweets for tweeting “Live life full”. That’s just 3 random words. I’m going to try now. Nipple squirrel ham
— Grumpy Cat (@ExtraGrumpyCat) May 12, 2013
And that’s where things start to get a little messy. Grumpy Cat’s tweet may not have been as original, or indeed random, as it was first made out to be. Irish television and radio presenter Eoghan McDermott appears to have tweeted it first. His tweet, which received over 100 000 retweets was sent out on 11 May at 3:21PM.
Justin Bieber got 100,000 retweets for tweeting “Live life full”. That’s just 3 random words. I’m going to try now. Nipple squirrel ham
— Eoghan McDermott (@eoghanmcdermo) May 11, 2013
The Grumpy Cat tweet meanwhile was only sent on 12 May. McDermott has called the account out for stealing his tweet, but so far there’s been no response from Grumpy Cat.
.@extragrumpycat stole my Bieber tweet and now @justinbieber just retweeted it. RAGE!!!!!!!
— Eoghan McDermott (@eoghanmcdermo) May 13, 2013
Granted, nothing you choose to put on Twitter is protected by copyright but no matter what the platform, stealing other people’s ideas isn’t cool.
