What can the Pope learn from Justin Bieber’s Twitter profile? Since becoming Pope in March 2013, Pope Francis has become one of the most beloved public figures in the world. His renowned humility and concern for the poor, as well as his outspoken stance on gay and women’s rights has endeared him to even the most militantly atheistic liberals.
Saving our eternal souls aside, however, there is one area in which even Pope Francis falls behind: his social media profile. In order to help Francis spread his message of love and tolerance further online, we’ve decided to help Francis out, by seeing what Twitter lessons we can glean from Justin Bieber, the most followed man on Earth.
The Pope Needs to Take More Selfies
Sure, proclamations of God’s limitless love and our moral obligation to better the world are nice and all, but what everyone really wants to see is selfies. Bieber is completely self(ie) obsessed, and posts upwards of 5 pics a day.
Image Source: Hekaheka
Sure, the Pope has taken selfies before, but any old selfie won’t do; Justin has expertly cultivated a number of always popular picture categories, including, but not limited to:
- Looking into the middle distance, with a pensive pout plastered across his face.
- Showing off his toned body, trendy tattoos and washboard abs.
- Living a life of luxury in some of the world’s most glamorous locations.
- Doing stuff in the gym.
What the Pope Can Learn
To really emulate Justin’s selfie success, it is imperative that the Pope starts a punishing workout regime and gets random, unrelated religious iconography tattooed across his body. Sorry Francis, but the world’s pre-pubescent girls have spoken and spiritual purity isn’t enough: they want abs and ink.
Once the Pope’s body is suitably swole, he needs to stop donating the majority of his fat Papal paycheck to charity and start splashing out on gawdy watches, expensive cars and luxurious hotels.
Once everything is in place, the Pope needs to start cataloguing every single thing he does with his day, no matter how inconsequential it might be. Just bought a Starbucks Frappucino? Selfie it. Just went on a 20 minute bike ride? Selfie it. Just almost tripped up on a stair, but actually didn’t and everything’s totally fine? Selfie it.
If the Pope’s iPhone isn’t snapping away every hour of his waking day at everything around him, he’s doing Twitter selfies wrong.
The Pope Needs to Give Shout Outs to All His #Homies
The best thing about being famous is that you get to hang around with glamorous, famous people like yourself all day, rather than waste away the only life you’ll ever live by mixing with total plebs.
Whereas Bieber spends his days hanging out with Cristiano Ronaldo and Ed Sheeran, the Pope spends his days with the poor, the disenfranchised and the disfigured.
What we really want to see from the Pope’s Twitter feed is all the awesome celebrities and world leaders he gets to hang with all day. When Tweeting at his fab celeb mates, it’s imperative that he includes inside jokes which none of his followers will get, just to show that they are actually close friends and not just terrible opportunists mutually leeching off each other’s fame after being forced to spend time together by a publicist. Or anything like that.
We Suggest for the Pope:
OMG! Such an awesome day spent with my daaawg @BarackObama good hangs, deep chats about the ongoing situation in #Palestine #deep
Yo yo! Me and South African president @JacobZuma are kicking #AIDS ass, one irresponsible lie at a time!
Inspirational day spent with @pitbull what a guy. Changing lives with his music each and every day. #Givemeeverything
He Totes Needs More Indecipherable Acronyms and Textspeak
To the uninitiated, JB’s Twitter feed would look like a jumble of random letters and bizarre, misspelt words with little to no legible meaning. However, contrary to the content of his tweets and his songs and everything he’s said in every interview ever, Justin Bieber is not a semi-literate buffoon – he’s just using textspeak.
Correctly spelt words, grammatical structure and fully formed sentences (and ideas) are so 1999. To really catch up with the times, Pope Francis needs to alienate all the old, stuffy followers he has and start talking the language of the young’uns who make up the majority of Twitter’s user base.
Some Helpful Rewrites:
Original: “From the cross, Christ teaches us to love even those who do not love us”
New: “Frm da X, Christ teaches us to luv evn thos hu dnt luv us”
Original: “Let us ask the Lord for this grace: that our hearts become free and filled with light, so that we can rejoice as children of God”
New: “Lt us ask da Lord 4 dis #grace: tht our hrts bcum free n filled with #light, so tht we cn rejoice as children of God”
Original: “It is by God’s mercy that we are saved. May we never tire of spreading this joyful message to the world.”
New: “It’s by #Gdog’s mercy tht we r saved. May we nvr tyre of spreading dis joyful msg 2 da world”
Let Your Followers Dictate Your Style
Pope Francis is famous for denouncing the $20,000 most cardinals spend on their clothes, instead choosing to dress more modestly. In a similar act of inspiring altruism, Bieber actively encourages his followers to make all his style choices for him. Like some sort of narcissistic Dice Man, JB puts the fate of his look in the hands of his fans, encouraging them to tell him how he should dress, and even if he should shave all his hair off.
Style Tips for His Holiness:
To really ramp up his Twitter followers, the Pope needs to take it one step further than JB, and relinquish every single choice he makes to his fans. Using Twitter polls and voting forms, the Pope need never make another decision again, allowing his loyal followers to determine the outcome of every aspect of his life – from what cereal he should eat in the morning (Rice Christies, obviously) to what the Vatican’s stance on nuclear disarmament should be.
By becoming little more than a puppet of the public’s will, the Pope could become one of the most popular fixtures on social media.
Autonomy is a small price to pay for #megafollowers.
