A photo of what appears to be Justin Bieber wearing an orange backpack and playing/watching a game of beer pong at a house party surfaced on the Internet today. But what does it mean? Seven ways of considering this banal titillation:
1. Is this a scandal? Bieber is 18, which is the legal age to drink in his foreign homeland, Canada. Some say this picture was taken when Biebs was 17 and in Alabama, but he’s got plausible deniability on his side, so this could go the way of Miley Cyrus’s “salvia” scandal-not-scandal. And, maybe Bieber is really good at beer pong and never loses rounds, and thus does not need to drink.
2. Metallic blue cans — Bud Lite? Natty Ice? So the child millionaire didn’t spot cash for the beer run. Noted.
3. Reasons why a teenager wears a backpack to a party: He is uncool and came straight from tutoring lesson, or is really cool and carrying contraband materials, like alcohol or drugs or sex. Portable sex. Travel-size sex. A collapsible starlet, to impress his bros.
4. These pictures coincide with Bieber onstage barf incident. “Drank too much milk,” my foot.
5. Bieber’s onstage barf incident coincides with Lady Gaga’s onstage barf incident. Biebs vs. Gaga milk pong tourney?
6. Everyone in that picture looks older than Bieber. Guy in the white V-neck even looks kinda hot.
7. If Justin Bieber rushed your fraternity, you would let him in even if you hated him. (Don’t deny it. Fame and fortune always win in Darwinist young adult social settings.) The real test of your character would be how you would haze him — worse than everyone else, to exorcise the inescapable demons of your jealousy? Or would you go soft, because deep down you just want to be friends with someone famous?
