What's inauthentic about the marketing and meme-creation skills required to propel a manufactured pop band into the Biebersphere?

Would you throw an egg at Justin Bieber? I don't think I would. Butsomeone did. In fact, this someone went quite a bit out of his way. He broke into a concert hall in Sydney and climbed up into the roof. Pelt! Splat! Pelt! Splat! The egg – several eggs, actually – didn't hit Bieber. Now the unnamed teenager, and promising music critic, has not only been placed under arrest, but charged with a criminal offence.

According to the Daily Telegraph, he has been "charged with breaking into the roof of a concert arena so he could throw eggs at Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber". Excellent that Australia has such a law on the statute books. But to return to my theme: what possessed the "egg terrorist", as he has been dubbed, to do such a thing?

Well, he's 17. And when you're 17, you have no sense of perspective. When you're the Australian police, evidently, you also have no sense of perspective. Actually, we should be glad it was only eggs.

My current favourite fact about human civilisation is that fully 3% of all activity on Twitter consists of conversations about Bieber. That is, 3% of an entire communicative medium – on which any and every idea in human history can potentially be discussed – is spent on talking about Bieber. You can imagine what's going on over in Twitterland even now, what with the egg near-miss.

The conversation about Bieber, as you probably know, is pretty polarised. Half is along the lines of "OMG!!! I love him LOL!! J", and the other half are trolls, dedicated to writing wishes for, or fake reports of, Bieber's death from cancer, unexpected decapitation, fistula etc. The demographics of both halves are pretty much identical, and there's the strong suspicion they need each other more than they are letting on.

It's strange and a little comical. How do so many millions of people entertain such strong feelings about such an essentially innocuous figure? Of all the things to want to sacrifice your pocket money/virginity/skin to, of all the things to obsessively wish death on – why pick this unremarkable pop moppet with his hair on backwards? It's like declaring war on the existence of digestive biscuits, or setting up a fan club for normal-length shoelaces.

And yes, yes: they're 17. He's 17. Everyone in the conversation is 17. Or under. But the Bieber conversation is more than just an epic schoolyard bitch-fight. It's the nth iteration of the original rock v pop, punk v disco, indie kid v Stock, Aitken and Waterman row. At its root, it is the perfect expression of the old hatred of "manufactured" pop.

Some of us don't like gabber techno; personally, it makes me think of German men dressed as Olympic cyclists having joyless chemical sex in dimly lit cellars. But we don't scale stadia to throw eggs at it. Actively hating manufactured pop seems to be an identity statement of some sort, and implies a rather simple-minded idea about authenticity: a sense that if all the talent that went into making the act isn't on the stage, it doesn't count.

The odd thing here is that haters and super-fans both adopt an identical misconception: a belief that the whole phenomenon that they love or hate – from horribly upbeat middle-eight, via cheesy music video, to fan club merchandise and pin-up calendar – is somehow the responsibility of the amiable teenager who fronts it.

The sensible thing to do, surely, is to regard the performer of manufactured pop simply as another musical instrument. You don't get yourself in a lather because the piano didn't write the Moonlight Sonata. And if you don't like the Moonlight Sonata, you don't hit the piano with an egg. As well as admiring the production and songwriting skills, the slick videos and makeup, the choreography and costumes, isn't it also reasonable to admire, possibly even more, the marketing and meme-creation skills that propel a manufactured pop band into the Biebersphere?

What's inauthentic about those skills? Winning the internet, as Bieber's giant team of puppet-masters have done, isn't a trivial achievement. Given how much money there is to be made, the competition is ferocious. It stands to reason that the people who pull it off are more than just lucky. And let it not be forgotten that they give pleasure to millions – fans and trolls alike.

Authentic is neither here nor there. The competition to play shoegazer rock to an audience of five nodding goths in the back room of a pub, be it noted, isn't too stiff. It's easy to be authentic and bad. Being inauthentic and good is the real challenge. It deserves not eggs, but cakes.

And now look: as if by cosmic synchronicity, the Monkees are back on tour. We love the Monkees. All of us, without exception. And what are the Monkees but proto-Justin Bieber, back-to-front haircuts and all? Who, now, would risk arrest to throw an egg at the Monkees? Most informed opinion places them rather higher than the Beatles. [Sam Leith-guardian.co.uk]