Aaron Carter sparks outrage with social media rant after artist accuses him of stealing his artwork
Aaron Carter is up to his outlandish antics again. The bad boy rapper-singer from Los Angeles sparked a firestorm on social media this weekend by stealing a German artist's work to promote his own clothing line. But instead of responding in a mature manner when he was called out on his actions, the younger brother of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter decided to double down and insult Jonas Jödicke, the German artist he stole from.
It all started when Carter started promoting new hoodies from his clothing line which would be made available on his official website. However, the 32-year-old singer also decided to use a striking image of two lions butting heads along with the merchandise announcement, an artwork called 'Brotherhood' by artist JoJoes Arts aka Jonas Jödicke, a 25-year-old professional artist based in Berlin.
When Jödicke learned that Carter was using his artwork without credit as part of a social media merch promotion, he decided to take action. "He did not mention me as the original artist and had not asked for permission beforehand. That‘s why I called him out in a tweet, in a polite way, to inform him that I was not alright with him using my art in that way," said Jonas.
"Hey @aaroncarter .. You are using my artwork to promote your merchandise. I have not given you permission to do so. My art is being commercially exploited by people on a daily basis. We artists have rights, too! Iˋd really appreciate if you could retweet this so he‘ll see it." read Jonas Jödicke's post on Twitter.
However, the 'Fool's Gold' singer then responded in a rude and immature fashion on seeing Jödicke's request and proceeded to taunt and insult the artist instead.
"You should've taken it as a compliment dick a fan of MINE sent this to me. Oh here they go again, the answer is No this image has been made public and I'm using it to promote my clothing line http://aaroncarter.com guess I'll see you in small claims court FUCKERY."
Needless to say, the Twitterverse was outraged on seeing Carter's brash and defiant response to the artist's earnest plea when he shared it on social media. Jödicke said that he "shared his response on my Twitter and Instagram and that is when it really blew up. In his Youtube livestream, he joked about my tweet having 17 likes. As of now, it has more than 70k likes and reached more than 5 million. You could say the artist community on Twitter is outraged."
They certainly are! Fans were up in arms against Carter for his bratty antics, and some even said that he was just doing all this for the attention.
"Grow up and get permission to use artists' work. I hope he sues you" said one tweet.
"The fact that @aaroncarter is a piece of shit thief is trending on Twitter. This makes me happy." said another.
"He's probably enjoying people talking about him again ... It's been a bit since he's been relevant lol" posted a third user.
Carter has been courting a lot of controversy of late - many people have been disgusted by the fact that he was sending flirty texts and pictures to a 15-year-old minor. Carter remained defiant to the end, however, saying "I'm actually reading tweets about me being a pedophile, a scam artist, a liar, a drug addict, art thief fake producer, I'm gonna explain something to you. EVERYONE who knows me professionally/personally all know ME, I'm not afraid to address this publicly any fallacies publicly." The singer also tried to brush off the recent accusations by saying they weren't bothering him - "Any angle this smear campaign can attack me they will, I'm actually laughing. thank you haters xoxo."
At the end of the day, all artists should be paid their due credit, as Jödicke explained, "I‘ve had Madonna use my art in the past, photoshopping her face into one of my paintings. I am so fed up with people taking my hard work for their own purposes without even asking. I also found my art being sold at a market in Thailand, when I was there on vacation. It‘s crazy."
The German artist also that he didn’t want to cause a storm of this magnitude, but at the same time, was glad that the issue of artist rights was coming to the public eye again. "Celebs like Aaron Carter should set an example, especially since he’s also from a creative background and knows copyright laws. If they can take art and do whatever with it, anyone can and will do it. If they’re not held responsible, people won’t stop treating artists like crap."