America Chooses To Arbitrarily Hate Bruno Mars

The votes have been tallied, the bracket has been closed, and at last, March’s unprovoked madness is at an end. We asked you to choose which bland, inoffensive celebrity the nation should next cast its unwarranted aspersion on, and without hesitation—or any sort of forethought at all—you pointed a trembling finger squarely at the person you feel has done the most to not particularly deserve it, besides be famous and inexplicably irritating.

You chose to arbitrarily hate Bruno Mars.

In retrospect, we can definitely see where you’re coming from. After all, Bruno Mars has the audacity to work tirelessly and enthusiastically on his craft, producing infectious hits like “Uptown Funk” and “Just The Way You Are” that blur genre lines as easily as they bring disparate audiences together with their catchy, palatable takes on R&B and pop.

He’s a consummate entertainer who, nevertheless, remained humble enough to spend years writing and producing hits for other artists before being allowed to release his own. And then—just as he was breaking through—he turned down stadium tours with bigger acts, just so he could build a grassroots following by playing smaller venues.

And at every turn, Mars has avoided any kind of personal drama, amicably settling a pair of copyright infringement lawsuits; immediately owning up his arrest for cocaine possession by admitting that he made a mistake, then avoiding similar missteps ever since; and, as far as we can tell, enjoying a stable, turbulence-free relationship with the same model girlfriend for a couple of years. Here’s a typically tedious story about them riding roller-coasters at Disneyland.

In summation, Mars is a musician whose focus remains squarely on his songs—most of which are, at worst, mildly annoying in their ubiquity, but definitely not as bad as some others. He’s also a pretty dull celebrity who is rarely, if ever, the subject of gossip.

So of course we should all hate him. Where the hell does this guy get off?

Maybe Bruno Mars thinks it’s somehow okay to be proud of the music he puts so much effort into, simply because a broad swath of the population seems to like it. Maybe Bruno Mars thinks it’s cool that he can sing, play multiple instruments, and dance really, really well in addition to being able to compose in a variety of musical genres, just because these many talents differentiate him from so many other performers who prop up their relatively mediocre skills with an army of hired guns. Maybe Bruno Mars should take a goddamn seat before he lets his considerable professional acumen and well-documented accomplishments convince him he’s something special.

Plus, he has a dumb pompadour and wears dumb hats sometimes. And he’s pretty short. Like, 5-foot-5, which is about five inches shorter than the average. He’s a dumb, short guy with some dumb hats that sings that one dumb song that all dum-dums love.

Yes, we can see why you arbitrarily chose to hate him.

And so, Bruno Mars, this will be the year that America’s arbitrary hate swings mercilessly in your direction. Ask not for whom the bell shrugs, Bruno Mars. It shrugs for thee! With this mandate from the people, we shall seek out every opportunity to remind you that the nation has developed a vaguely defined distaste for you, and that it wishes you ill for the crime of simply existing. And when we don’t find that opportunity—as you continue to be sort of a boring guy—well, we’ll just have to invent some, won’t we?

After all, it shouldn’t be too difficult within the constraints of libel law to find reasons to constantly bring up how detestable Bruno Mars apparently is, even if dogging on Wilson Phillips would have been a lot easier and far more fun.

Way to fuck that up for us, Bruno Mars. You really are the worst.