Justin and Hailey Bieber are fighting back against parasocial internet takes with the support of SZA.
In the social media age, everyone has gotten very comfortable talking about total strangers on the internet. Hailey Bieber would know this better than most, having been subjected to constant scrutiny about her marriage to Justin Bieber over the past few years. But it seems one TikTok user named Julie Theis managed to break through the noise, gaining the 29-year-old model’s attention and sparking potential legal action. Here’s the TL;DR.
What did Julie Theis say?
According to her own TikTok and Instagram bios, Julie Theis is a content creator with a master’s degree in psychology who posts “dark psychology breakdowns” online.
In a social media post from December 29, Theis used celebrity couples to explain her concept of a “tolerant, codependent woman” who “tolerates mediocrity, abuse, doing the majority of domestic and emotional labor in exchange for being a relationship.” She cited Hailey Bieber as her prime example, describing her husband Justin Bieber as an “addict,” and, therefore, an “abusive partner.”
The post, which is still up on TikTok, has more than half a million views on TikTok and over 900,000 on Instagram.
How did Justin and Hailey Bieber respond?
According to People, TikTok users began claiming that Hailey reposted a video about Theis’s analysis, which sparked a response from the model on her Instagram Stories. “Hey! I know you guys who live on the internet are really bored, but I didn’t repost any video speaking on my relationship,” she posted on January 10. “Have a beautiful Saturday!”
According to documents obtained by TMZ on January 14, the couple’s attorney Evan Spiegel later sent a cease and desist letter to Theis, claiming she “manufactured a false defamatory narrative.”
“Your contact is wrongful, highly demanding, actionable, and exposes you to sustainable liability,” Spiegel wrote in the letter, which Theis also shared on her social media accounts. Theis claims her video comments were her personal “opinions,” which she says she’s “legally allowed to have.”
Theis then made another post, citing one of Justin Bieber’s own Instagram captions from 2019, in which he wrote, “I started doing heavy drugs at 19 and abused all of my relationships.” In that Instagram post Justin Bieber admitted that he “became resentful, disrespectful to women and angry” prior to his marriage, which he described as the “best season of my life.”
Where does SZA come in?
According to a screenshot shared on TikTok, the 36-year-old singer—who recently brought Justin Bieber onstage for a cameo during her Grand National Tour with Kendrick Lamar—responded to Theis’s original video with a question. “Hi are you a licensed therapist or psychologist? You speak with SUCH certainty and [I’d] like to know. Peace.”
In response, Theis again stated that she has a master’s degree in psychology and that she worked as a behavioral specialist and researcher; she added that she is now a full-time content creator and takes on clients as a coach or mentor, but not as a therapist.
SZA wrote back that while she “respects study and inquiry” when it’s posed as such, “publicly diagnosing people you have absolutely no contact with and presenting that information as fact under the premise of education” may be dangerous “for all parties, including those you wish to educate.”
She added, “Just an opinion! All respect to you.”
The (incredibly cordial) back-and-forth launched a new discourse in the comments, not about “tolerant codependent” partners but about where we draw the line between “opinion” and slander, as well as whether or not public figures have any legal protections when it comes to creators who are building (and profiting from) narratives about their lives.