Website 4chan tries to send Bieber to N Korea

Justin Bieber faces a headline tour of  North Korea after a campaign to rig a vote to decide which country "wants Justin the most" was masterminded by the notorious imageboard website 4chan.

At the time of writing, North Korea had 482,780 votes - 6,000 ahead of second-placed Israel, with 36 hours of polling to go.

In what was actually a two-pronged prank, 4chan users took advantage of a security breach on YouTube to redirect users looking for Bieber videos to hardcore porn or false reports that the 16-year-old Canadian R&B singer had died in a car crash.

It is just the latest in a series of pranks played by 4chan at the expense of Bieber, who might be considered the victim of bullying if his clean-cut image and maddening attempts to construct a 'street' persona via the medium of Twitter did not make such attacks justifiable in the eyes of so many.

4chan is responsible for many of the pranks and memes that make the internet so enjoyable – and 'NSFW' (not safe for work). Many of its products, including a paedophile bear called 'pedobear', are considered beyond the pale and the site has been described as the 'sphincter of the internet'.

In that context, the jokes it has played on Bieber as part of its campaign, dubbed 'Operation Blue Crayon', have been relatively mild. They include:

• A campaign to propel the term 'Justin Bieber syphilis' to the top of Google Trends' Hot Searches list
• Replacing pictures of him on his Last FM page were with porn  
• Starting rumours that his mother had accepted $50,000 to pose topless for Playboy magazine, that Bieber had joined a cult and that he was dead (admittedly, internet death rumours are an occupational hazard for celebrities nowadays).   

Given the fact that 4chan is generally considered a moral-free zone, it is difficult to know how this will end. But we can be quite sure that Kim Jong-il isn't going to get a backstage pass to a Justin Bieber concert anytime soon. ·