Instagram users really believed that the “sorry meme guy” just headlined Coachella with Justin Bieber.
Jonatanas Kazlauskas first appeared on Lithuania’s version of the popular UK TV show X Factor in 2015.
Now, he’s sharing the stage with Justin Bieber at Coachella? Think again.
What many have dubbed “Bieberchella” is still in full swing, and content creators everywhere are capitalizing on the buzz.
One person in particular just convinced his Instagram followers that Canadian pop star Justin Bieber brought him on stage to sing his hit song “Sorry” at the coveted music festival.
Kazlauskas, an X Factor Lithuania contestant who recently went viral for a failed performance from more than 10 years ago, just posted a convincing image of himself on stage with Bieber.
The micro-influencer uploaded a multi-picture post to Instagram with the caption, “Thanks for having me, Coachella.”
The first picture shows a screenshot of a comment asking, “Why don't you participate in Coachella?”
The second slide shows Kazlauskas next to Bieber with text above saying, “Who said I wasn’t there?”
Many commenters took the saying “the camera never lies” seriously and went wild.
But when you look closely, Kazlauskas has labeled this post as AI content by adding “AI Info” to the post.
It appears that Kazlauskas used Meta’s in-app AI creation tools, as indicated by Instagram's information.
“This signal typically identifies content that was entirely AI-generated instead of content that was only modified with AI,” the Instagram info label reads.
Despite the obvious use of AI, the post received over 20,000 likes, 120 comments, and nearly 1,500 shares at the time of writing.
Reports claim that Bieber was paid roughly $10 million to headline the first night at Coachella.
Although they seemingly didn’t have the budget to book Kazlauskas.
Why did so many people think this was real?
It seems that Kazlauskas didn’t jump on Bieber’s debut at Coachella after his four-year hiatus blindly.
As part of Bieber’s arguably bizarre performance, he had a laptop onstage and decided to play memes during his set.
Bieber reportedly played memes such as “deez nuts” and, as The Independent put it, playfully leaned into the bizarre nature of internet culture.
Even though it seems that Bieber didn’t mention the viral meme at Coachella, lots of his followers didn’t know that.
So, the Bieber wannabe played on the hype, creating AI-generated images that convinced way too many people.
Who is the Lithuanian Justin Bieber?
Kazlauskas was seen as Lithuania’s very own Justin Bieber by the X Factor judges, yet his performance fell flat when he went on stage and started making up lyrics to Bieber’s hit “Sorry,” which was released that year.
The X Factor contestant simply didn’t know the words to Bieber’s track, but tried his best to make it through the performance.
While this video was buried deep in the archives, it was resurrected earlier this year, and Kazlauskas became a viral sensation over a decade later.
Memes and tribute videos began spreading across social media, amassing millions of views and earning Kazlauskas nearly 79,000 followers on Instagram.
Lithuania’s Justin Bieber quickly capitalized on his belated success and started posting reaction videos and promoting his original music.
The original YouTube video from Lithuania’s X Factor received over 3 million views and nearly 10,000 comments, with commenters expressing their disbelief over how old the video actually was.
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