(Photo: YouTube)

Yesterday morning, music news outlets across the Internet began reporting that human Girl Talk game Justin Bieber had his laptop and camera stolen at a concert in Washington state. On Wednesday, the Biebs tweeted out to his 29 million followers that his stuff had been ganked from the Tacoma Dome. "yesterday during the show me and my tour manager josh had some stuff stolen. really sucks. people should respect other's property," he lamented. "i had a lot of personal footage on that computer and camera and that is what bothers me the most. #lame #norespect"

Rumors of possible nude pictures existing on the stolen harddrive immediately began swirling. Mr. Bieber tweeted at the alleged thief, a user named gexwy: "@gexwy no matter what you have and what you post tomorrow i know my fans wont leave me. screw it. #toostrong."

Gawker published a link to the alleged nude photo, which was quickly debunked as not belonging to Mr. Bieber because the "bellybuttons didn't match." Teen girls everywhere sobbed silvery, mascara-tainted tears into their Victoria's Secret LOVE hoodies.

But today, Mr. Bieber and his team revealed that they had orchestrated an elaborate hoax on the media and the millions of beliebers out there. They released the video for Mr. Bieber's newest single, which is called "Beauty and the Beat" and features Nicki Minaj At the beginning of the video, the following screen flashes:

(Photo: YouTube)

You just got trolled by Justin Bieber. And how does that make you feel?

Mr. Bieber's manager Scooter Braun is a known expert media manipulator, having scooped the Biebs up from YouTube obscurity and painstakingly packaged him into the megastar he is today. Plus, with 29 million drooling Twitter followers, it's not like it's difficult to control the message--for better or for worse. How quickly we believed the stolen personal tech tale also speaks to how saturated our culture has become with celebrity hacking.

It all just seemed so... beliebable.

Update: The Daily News reports that Mr. Bieber's camp says his laptop actually was stolen. We just don't know what to belieb anymore.

Here's the video. Maybe it will cheer you up.