Bieber tweets most of phone number, real people driven mad
The singing wunderkind tweets a Dallas phone number--minus the last digit--asking someone to call. Was it meant to be a direct message? Those with a similar number are deluged with calls.
(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
It makes us feel better when famous people make mistakes.
It's not that we're cruel. It's that we want to believe that they are as incompetent and wayward as we are.
Yet sometimes, the mistakes of the famous can be visited on the anonymous. A couple of days ago, for example, Justin Bieber tweeted a Dallas phone number, so that someone could call him "right now." He omitted the last digit, which some might find peculiar.
Perhaps this was a tease. (Well, he is 18 now.) Probably--at least according to CBS Dallas/Fort Worth--it was supposed to have been a direct message.
I know that you can imagine what happened next, but please let me tell you anyway.
The rest of the number is blanked, in order to maintain social order.
(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)Little--and, no doubt, large--Beliebers began to call every version of the tweeted number, putting their own guesses as to what the last digit! actuall y was.
There is no record of any of them getting through to Bieber, but CBS offers plenty of record of people who were assaulted by hundreds, if not thousands, of phone calls.
Bieber reportedly removed the tweet as soon as he could. This was not, however, soon enough. One Dallas man--first name Kent--told CBS that he had more than 1,000 calls from excited--or, perhaps, foolhardy--human beings.
Kent has hired an attorney, who has reportedly tried to contact Bieber's representatives. They have not, thus far, returned his calls. Perhaps they have the wrong number.
Kent told ABC News that most of the callers were polite.
"They all said, 'Justin?' As fast as I could pick it up and put it down, it was ringing again. The caller ID was exploding with numbers from all over the country," he said.
Bieber has had some fun tweeting phone numbers before. Just a couple of years ago, he tweeted the number of Kevin Kristopik, a Detroit teenager who had allegedly hacked a friend of Bieber's in order to get the friend's number.
Surely, in this case, Bieber might offer a little compensation to Kent for this unwanted intrusion from the needy. And these people are very needy indeed.