Thousands of Twitter users have fallen prey to a new prank played by Justin Bieber fans aka 'Beliebers'.
It cannot be traced with certainty who originally came up with the idea but a hoax that Bieber's "Baby Feat Ludacris" video was deleted escalated rapidly, compelling users to check out the song on YouTube, thereby increasing the overall views of the video.
"Go see for yourselves if you don't believe me lol it stop 30 seconds in and just goes black #BABYWASDELETED", tweeted one prankster.
"Justin Doesn't deserve this. Go check guys, #BABYWASDELETED the baby music video is gone. It stops after 30 secs," wrote another hoaxer with the handle @ShwetaRanaaa.
Meanwhile, a user with the handle @biebclause, who fell prey to the prank, tweeted: "baby video works fine for me!"
But the prankster continued his/her efforts by replying, "Are u sure? Refresh and keep checking", adding: "refresh after 30 seconds".
These exchanges are only examples as thousands believed that the video was actually deleted and went on to check it, increasing the YouTube views.
A user with the profile name 'I love Bizzle' said that the video achieved 10 million more views in just 9 days. "We can do it. We should do it for our hero #BABYWASDELETED," he quipped.
As of Thursday, 20 February, the "Baby" video has a total of 991,431,491 (over nine hundred and ninety one million) views.
Here are some of the most interesting tweets related to the "Baby" hoax:
Beliebers trended #BABYWASDELETED and it's not even deleted... pic.twitter.com/luZ0INYRGe
— cece (@partyhardbiebs) February 20, 2014
Me when I first saw #BABYWASDELETED and then understood what's going on pic.twitter.com/xP4VBF4KWH — Justin Bieber (@WeHonourJustin) February 20, 2014
Trends #BABYWASDELETED to get more views. Beliebers be like: pic.twitter.com/kM09Drkpp7
— ʙɛℓιɛʙɛʀ (@iKidRauhIArmy) February 20, 2014
lmao beliebers trend #BABYWASDELETED to prank haters so that we reach 1billion views but most of us fell for it pic.twitter.com/C9loKiacrL — arctic monkeys ☽ (@ArcticBieberx) February 20, 2014
#BABYWASDELETED omg I'm crying I can't believe this happened! HOW?