Entertainment

People Are Mad At BBC Channel For This Insensitive Joke About Britney Spears

REUTERS

Let's just make one thing clear: April Fool's Day sucks. Anybody who thinks it's hilarious to just straight-up lie to everyone and then laugh it off as if nothing happened is a complete sociopath in my book.

Thankfully, most of the "pranks" (lies) are small and harmless, but BBC took things a step too far.

One of the network's channels, BBC Three, decided that for April Fool's Day, it would be a riot to tweet out a photoshopped picture of Ed Sheeran shaving his head à la Britney Spears in 2007.

Aside from the pic being an obvious fake (the original image of Britney shaving her head is one of the most iconic photos in pop culture history), many people got upset about the outlet turning Britney's traumatic breakdown into a joke.

Twitter

I guess BBC Three was expecting people to laugh about this, but they definitely did not get that response. A bunch of people on Twitter responded to the photo by reprimanding BBC Three for turning Britney's public struggle with mental health into a punchline.

Twitter
Twitter
Twitter

The wild thing is that BBC and BBC Three announced just a couple of months ago that they would focus on presenting those who struggle with mental health issues in a positive light throughout 2017. I guess that was just an early April Fool's joke?

In response to the outrage, BBC Three has deleted the tweet, and issued this semi-apology statement to the Daily Mail:

BBC Three has a history of supporting mental health issues and the tweet was not intended as a reference to mental health, or designed to cause any offense. We have therefore removed it from our twitter feed.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. People making jokes about Britney Spears' erratic behavior during her public breakdown in 2007 have become pretty much a dime a dozen online. Popular joke-stealing Twitter accounts with Tina Belcher or Fat Amy avatars are stacked with tasteless references to Spears' struggle.

This one is from just two weeks ago:

Twitter

You'd think people would start getting the hint that these jokes are not OK, especially since Katy Perry got dragged by Britney's fans for making similar comments a few months ago at the Grammys.

Let's just hope that BBC Three learned its lesson and doesn't oops... do it again.