Singer-songwriter Justin Bieber, who has taken a break from music to focus on his health and marriage, received a lot of flak for sharing fake pregnancy posts on April Fools' Day to pull a prank on his fans.
However, it did not end there. Bieber took the joke a step further. Shortly after posting the ultrasound, Bieber shared a series of photos featuring Baldwin with medical professionals touching her belly.
"If you thought it was April fools," he captioned.
His posts were filled with congratulatory messages from friends and fans, while others questioned if this was just an April Fools' joke.
Bursting the bubble, in the end, Bieber clarified the pregnancy post with a doctored ultrasound photo that included a puppy and captioning it, "Wait omg is that a APRIL FOOLS!"
While some users called Bieber's prank "genius" others said faking a pregnancy is no laughing matter, slamming the singer for insensitivity for couples who struggle to conceive or have lost children.
A number of social media users advocated ending fake pregnancy announcements on April Fools' Day.
"Justin Bieber joking about Hayley being pregnant is soooooo insensitive considering there's so many women out there that cannot get pregnant or have lost children," a Twitter user wrote.
Another upset user tweeted, "LISTEN, I DONT CARE IF YOU ARE JUSTIN BIEBER OR HAILEY BALDWIN, A FAKE PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE."
Calling it absolutely sickening, a Twitter user wrote, "Justin bieber can sit and make an April fools joke about Hailey being pregnant and not get one bit of grief because he's famous? People commenting " genuis " just makes it even worse."
"I just feel so sick, justin bieber joked about him and his wife being pregnant then went and said "april fools!" it is not fucking funny. people miscarry, people cannot have children, people struggle to conceive. pregnancy is not something to joke about," an angry user tweeted.
Many other users called out the 25-year-old singer on social media, however, Bieber has not addressed the criticism surrounding the prank yet and all three posts remain on his Instagram page.
The pregnancy prank comes after a source close to the singer recently told PEOPLE that the 'The Feeling' singer is ready to be a father.
"That's what he wants to be. He knows that he has to get things figured out so that he can be the dad he wants to be. But that's his focus. Being a dad is his dream right now," the source revealed.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Justin opened up about his struggle with depression in an interview with Vogue. The 25-year-old artist reflected upon working on some of his "deep-rooted issues" in a lengthy Instagram post explaining his fans that his music career is taking a back seat as his health and family are top priorities at the moment.
Justin and Hailey, after exclusively dating for a while, decided to make things official and secretly tied the knot in a New York courthouse in September 2018.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)