Britney fans punish Justin Timberlake by making a 13-year-old bonus track out-perform his new single

Were we Justin Timberlake or his management, we might take some time out of our days—every day—to think about not pissing off the fans of Britney Spears. Timberlake has, of course, a long history with Spears, dating back to their time together on The Mickey Mouse Club, through a three-year romantic relationship in the early 2000s, all the way up to late last year, when Spears revealed, in her memoir The Woman In Me, that Timberlake had convinced her to get an abortion in 2000, a decision she called “agonizing.” His treatment of, and attitude toward, Spears has been a huge part of his public perception over the years (combined, obviously, with the infamous incident where he exposed Janet Jackson’s breast to the Super Bowl-viewing world in 2004); treating her still-fervent fanbase with a healthy (bordering on fearful) dose of respect just sounds like good business sense.

What we would not do is kick off our latest promotional push for a new album with a new single carrying the same title as one of Spears’ songs, for fear of exactly what has happened this week: Spears fans getting together to elevate her 2011 track “Selfish” above Timberlake’s own single of the same name on the charts, meaning the “President Of Pop”’s latest offering is publicly getting its ass kicked by a song that’s more than a decade old.

This was reported by Variety, which notes that Spears’ song—a bonus track from her 2011 album Femme Fatale—is sitting comfortably above Timberlake’s just-released single, the lead-off song from his upcoming studio album Everything I Thought It Was. (Both songs, meanwhile, are sitting beneath a just-released track called “FACTS (feat. Ben Shapiro)” from right-wing rapper Tom MacDonald, which either does, or does not, feature internet aneurysm-inducer Shapiro rapping, but god willing we’ll never have to find out.)

This kind of chart manipulation isn’t the hardest thing in the world to pull off, but it is pretty funny—and a reminder that, for all that Taylor Swift’s fans get held up as an unstoppable juggernaut, it still pays to be smart, and leave Britney alone.