Teen pop stars don’t deserve hate

When I can’t sleep I often poke through the depths of YouTube.

One night I stumbled upon a video of a dorky kid singing in his basement.

He was bobbing around in front of an old Bart Simpson photo singing a cover of a pop song.

He could barely look at the camera out of what I can safely call crippling shyness, but I’ll give that he wasn’t a bad singer.

Shrill, but he didn’t look much older than ten and probably didn’t have balls yet; you can’t blame him.

Apparently the kid made it pretty big. I think his name was Justin-Something?

We forget that in 2009, “Justin-Something” was just a cherub churning out cute YouTube videos of himself singing R&B songs.

Had Scooter Braun not scooped young Bieber up when he did, he could have ended up just another adorable footnote in the lives of middle-aged housewives.

However, in contrast to most highly talented, musical children, Bieber’s number of “haters” is almost as large as his tweeny-bopper fan base.

Most people don’t care about innocuous teen idols but the Justin-Hate was big for a while.

I think I personally drew the line on my own Justin-Hatred when listening to the radio.

One morning I heard three grown men cruelly ripping on the kid for botching an interview, a kid who had confessed to being shy, explaining why he doesn’t talk much in interviews anymore.

Once Bieber Fever slightly slowed down, it seemed apparent we still needed teenage royalty to fill the hot seat. Enter Rebecca Black.

Overnight, the world decided that Black was one of the worst things to hit music since, well, Bieber Fever.

We all heard her song somewhere, partially or in its entirety, and we all needed to tell someone just how much we hated it.

Black’s mother paid $4,000 to ARK Music Factory so her daughter’s vanity video could be made with decent production value, and was clearly not meant to be seen by anyone outside their family and friends.

But oh, was it seen.

The Internet culture clung to this video as soon as it went viral and Black was only 14.

I guess this is just one of those trends I don’t understand.

I’m not going to demand that everyone stop berating awkward child stars but when has it ever been anything but disgustingly pathetic for people who’ve already gone through puberty to berate the ones that haven’t?

Truth is, these songs are easy to ignore since they rarely get airtime on mainstream radio.

Perhaps we just don’t have enough evil people in the world to hate. We go to class and learn about the monsters of our history, like Hitler and Stalin.

But we apparently like this better; the public slaughter of our youth over stupid songs on YouTube.

It’s no question that Bieber’s star is cemented for at least a little while, but all the publicity from “Friday” was enough for Black to try for fame as well.

And whether you despise these pop stars or not, remember that you created them with your unintentional power and unwarranted abuse.