Justin Bieber may or may not know how to eat a burrito like a civilized human being but a viral photo that appeared to show the Canadian pop star eating the Tex-Mex wrap like it was corn on the cob turned out to be a hoax.
A photo of what many thought was the 24-year-old sitting on a park bench eating a burrito sideways went viral late last week, prompting media outlets to question whether The Biebs had any clue as to how to eat a burrito properly (with a knife and fork, right?).
Turns out the photo was hoax and a Cambridge, Ont., Bieber lookalike helped make it happen. YouTubers, dubbed Yes Theory, enlisted Brad Sousa to play Bieber in the elaborate prank.
Yes Theory’s, Matt Dajer, Thomas Brag, and Ammar Kandil, who met at Montreal’s McGill University, spotted Sousa on Instagram and decided to fly him out to Los Angeles to play the pop singer in a variety of situations, hoping to create a viral story.
“The thing is, to get this to go viral, we have to have people in the news think it’s real. Those are the people that are going to spread it,” Brag explained in a YouTube reveal.
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After studying recent paparazzi footage of Bieber, the boys spent a better part of the day trying to get Sousa styled.
Their first attempt on a viral video was having fake Bieber help a hired elderly woman cross a road in the middle of traffic. Then they moved onto the burrito attempt.
“We tried to think of something that would offend the internet,” Brag explained. “Like one of those things, like you put the milk in before the cereal. One of these things that, you’re like, ‘What are you doing?’”
“We are getting Brad to eat a burrito, biting it from the middle, which makes absolutely no sense,” Brag said.
Yes Theory then posted photos on various social media channels, including Reddit, hoping for the image to take off. It did, eventually. After posting on a sub-Reddit, the image went viral within five hours.
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Several mainstream websites, magazines and morning talk-shows picked up the image, debating what they thought was Bieber and his sideways burrito-eating fiesta.
Though it was a well thought out prank, you can’t help but notice just how much Sousa looks like the Biebs.
Here’s a look.
In an interview with Global’s The Morning Show, Sousa said since Bieber has grown out his locks, he’s not mistaken for this singer as often as he used to be.
“People will still stop me and say that I look exactly like him,” adding that he has no problems getting into nightclubs.
–with a file from Katie Scott