Britney Spears fans send her decade-old song up the charts to spite Justin Timberlake.
The pop star’s most committed supporters, famous for their concern for Britney's wellbeing, have banded together online in a bid to "cancel" Justin’s new single.
The song, titled Selfish, was released on 25 January and is the first single from his upcoming album.
But Britney’s defenders have joined forces to bulk-stream her 13-year-old song of the same name in an attempt to overtake Justin’s song in the charts.
The campaign came about after Britney fans felt aggrieved that Justin had treated Britney unfairly when they dated.
In her recent memoir, The Woman in Me, Britney talked about falling pregnant with Justin while they were in a relationship between 1999 and 2002.
"Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young," she wrote.
While the petty-revenge campaign began as a joke on X (formerly Twitter), the owner of fan account BritneyxTtube told Entertainment Weekly it took on a life of its own as Britney's song began to climb the ranks, 13 years after it first debuted.
"We all joined in, saying that Britney Spears was coming back with a 'brand' new song," BritneyxYtube told EW.
"I still can't believe that it became so big, and we see the results we see now."
At the time of writing, the two songs were neck and neck across global music charts, with Justin’s Selfish just edging out Britney’s song of the same name.
