4chan successfully voted Justin Bieber to North Korea

Posted on: wired.co.uk by Will Hines

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il reportedly owns the world’s largest collection of Daffy Duck paraphernalia. Could his latest obsession be the youthful pop singer Justin Bieber?
As first reported by the Beeb, the Bieb crowdsourced the decision on which country he should tour first as part of his upcoming “My World” tour. With just under nine hours to go, North Korea held a growing, 9,437-vote margin over Israel and Poland, after which the voting drops off significantly.

North Korea won the vote!

As with previous artists, from The Beatles to New Kids On The Block, Bieber attracts the lucrative young female demographic, which still generates a significant portion of music industry profits as other segments grow increasingly distracted by other forms of media. It’s unlikely many North Korean girls are responsible for their country’s popularity in the poll, because they don’t have internet access or even electricity, actually.

Instead, this is the work of the pranksters who gather at the 4chan image boards, whose previous targets include the Church of Scientology and US telco AT&T. The 4chan hive-mind would evidently love to send the 16-year-old crooner to North Korea, from whence he might not return -- or could even cause the country’s infrastructure to deteriorate further, as his voice could be considered a bio-weapon where some older ears are concerned. Many hearts would be crushed by losing Bieber to North Korea forever, while others would fill with joy, given his polarising effect on music fans.
In addition to having succeeded in voting the pop star to North Korea, 4chan also hacked YouTube on Sunday, using special code to foil Google’s safeguards against the embedding of pop-up windows in YouTube comments. The hack led to messages indicating that Bieber had passed away appearing on the site, as well as redirecting to pornographic videos and superimposing “Fail” and other messages over his videos.

This is a lesson to any company that is contemplating crowdsourcing to choose the parameters with care. Bieber or his people could have eliminated North Korea from the list of options, given the obvious difficulty of touring there, but.....why they never did!