One of the great privileges celebrities enjoy is the ability to break taboos. Using their influence over popular culture, musicians and actors can change the way we think about the world, challenging deeply held but outmoded ideologies and beliefs to effect positive change.
Or, in the case of this guy who’s probably Justin Bieber, they can act as agents of chaos by simply annihilating fundamental norms we all take for granted—like, say, the proper way to eat a burrito.
While the San Francisco Chronicle refuses to endanger its journalistic credentials by certifying that the bleached-blonde, man-shaped food beast pictured above is in fact Bieber, merely reporting on the story has opened a can of worms so vast it threatens to destroy our collective sense of reality. The paper, blithely playing with cosmic forces, did not simply condemn the Bieber-man’s baffling, corncob-style burrito technique, but instead asked the question of whether it was, in fact, ever acceptable.
Twitter, as you may have suspected, has dissolved into a frothing pit following this provocation. Several tweets preserve some semblance of universal order by shooting down the very basis of the “debate.”
Many (too many) others try to reckon with the coming of a strange new world by seeking any possible justification. These attempts are particularly horrifying—like someone at death’s door bargaining with existence itself for a few more years of life.
Most appallingly, one Twitter user tried to suggest that perhaps Bieber’s burrito approach was indicative of a larger Canadian trend. (Dear god, it’s not.)
Desperate to assert some level of reason over this truly haunting image, Twitter also moved to question whether the bench-dwelling trickster god was simply a random person who happens to look an awful lot like Bieber.
There is nothing to gain from this line of questioning. If, as some very much hope, the photo is of someone who only looks like Bieber, the social rot has already spread too far now to be reversed. Seeing Bieber, we believe the burrito-man is Bieber, and that association with celebrity has allowed us to seriously debate the merits of something that would otherwise be ignored. We live in a post-Bieberrito world now and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.
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